magpie patrick
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Posts posted by magpie patrick
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6 hours ago, Derek R. said:
Without 'knowing' for certain I would imagine it would be the bottom gates.
Top or bottom, why should it matter?
Because the claim is that the canal is the shortest at 154 feet long, and the top gates are some 70 plus feet further away from any sign, junction or bridge than the bottom gates. There is no dispute that the Wardle Branch includes the lock, it would be distinctly odd if the Wardle Canal didn't!
It's a footnote in canal history, but when folklore and fable become regarded as facts then, for the historian, something is lost. I've a number of publications from the sixties and seventies that state unequivocally that Tardebigge Top lock is 14 feet deep* and is the deepest in the country. This has since been discredited on both counts even without deeper locks on the Ashton and Peak Forest getting added to the top end of that particular list of records. Tardebigge is 11 foot 7 inches and even in the 60s before restoration got going there were 6 narrow locks deeper than that.
*The claim for Tardebigge being 14 feet is made in Bradshaw 1904 - which may be where the fable started, however in 1904 there were deeper locks on the Glamorgan Canal so it wasn't the deepest
The only argument presented that gives the Wardle Canal claim a free pass is that made by @David Mack, that it may have had special enabling legislation and thus is a canal in its own right when other contenders are not - by any other definition it's either not a canal in it's own right or it's not the shortest.
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1 hour ago, 1st ade said:
Anything (inscription?) on the underside?
No, but I can confirm that when the lock is turned upside down the gates fall off... 😯😄
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Charity shop find yesterday - now gracing my coffee table. A lock, with narrow boat and lock side house. The house and the boat lift off. The gates open but unfortunately are back to front. The footboard is on the water side when the gate opens!
No idea of its origin, I've never seen anything like it before. If anyone knows anything...! 🤔
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On 03/05/2024 at 20:55, Derek R. said:
The entrance to the Wardle Canal. The first lock is 154ft beyond.
But which end of the lock? The top gate is more like 220 feet away.
The whole "Wardle Canal is the shortest" strikes me as someone making a claim without checking their facts, and that claim becoming accepted fact.
My contention is that the Wardle Canal is not a canal in its own right, and if it is, there are shorter ones using the same definition of "canal".
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10 minutes ago, Chris Lowe said:
Forum merged my seperate posts.
No location was given on pinterest for that second picture, this forum will probably identify it though.
I think it's the second lock down in the Bath flight, taken from the top lock
From memory the bottom lock and then the top four were restored but not used for a few years until the deep one (which merged the two unrestored ones) was opened.
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6 minutes ago, Chris Lowe said:
This one on pinterest.
That one looks more like Bath, and Mogg is certainly a name from round here. But I'm not sure the locks were ever empty like that. The gates look in very good condition for a closed canal.
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30 minutes ago, Pluto said:
Below is the 'official' map of the Peak Forest dating from around 1890, possibly as a result of the Railway & Canal Tolls legislation, as several similar canal, maps date from this time. The original PF milestone is marked, but by this time they considered that the PF started at the junction.
Another contender is Lock 92 on the Rochdale Canal, which was built and operated by the Bridgewater. The detail design of the lock is very different to the other Rochdale locks.
It's always good when you join in @Pluto because you usually have evidence!
Interesting to note that the junction on that plan is the east face of the bridge not the line of the bank either side.
33 minutes ago, Pluto said:Another contender is Lock 92 on the Rochdale Canal, which was built and operated by the Bridgewater. The detail design of the lock is very different to the other Rochdale locks.
Using my system of measurement that one is 66 metres long, so we have the Portland branch of the Ashton at 45 metres long, then Dukes lock at 66 metres long, and then the Wardle Branch at 76 metres.
The claim for the "Wardle Canal" to be the shortest is beginning to look a bit shaky on both counts
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Just now, Tim Lewis said:
First heard about the stoppage talking to the CRT ‘measuring’ men who were just off the measure the collapsed gate, they said that the replacement gate was going to be made at Stanley Ferry.
It's unusual to make small gates at Stanley Ferry so that suggests they are trying to speed things up
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7 minutes ago, billh said:
I could be wrong ,I was once, but didn't the Ashton Branch over the aqueduct also include the arm in Dukinfield that is now Portland Basin Marina? That would extend its length to about 200 yards. Had the PF and Ashton Companies merged by the time of construction anyway?
There is a Milestone almost on the aqueduct on the PF side that is mile zero for the PF. If that really is the start then Portland Basin Marina comes off several yards up the Peak Forest. That milepost is around 150 feet from the nearest point of the Ashton Canal main line (determined by drawing a line connecting the edge of the bank one side of the junction to the edge of the bank the other side
Whilst Wikipedia claims that the Wardle Canal is only 145 feet long, VAR in the form of Google Earth gives 76m (250 feet) from the nearest point on the T&M (determined as above) main line to the top gate of Wardle Lock.
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1 hour ago, Tracy D'arth said:
A point missed I think, Branch and Twig? Twigged?
Only when I had coffee this morning! Can we leaf the puns alone now?
46 minutes ago, Heartland said:It provided a useful toll for the Trent and Mersey- see my book and that of Peter Brown.
I don't doubt that, and I must get hold of (and read) a copy of your book.
But in a way that's why I think it is a branch - it's purpose was to benefit the whole undertaking.
There are further questions that come out of this - given that failure to build Wardle Lock would have frustrated the objectives of the rest of the Middlewich branch, was there some compulsion on the T&M to keep their half of the bargain? Similar at Hall Green.
46 minutes ago, Heartland said:Is it no news May?
It's called an enquiring mind Ray
and also a pedantic one 
. I was enquiring as to why the Wardle Branch could claim to be the shortest canal in the country as this seemed to be using a definition of "canal" that wasn't applied elsewhere, and if it was other records could be claimed. The Churchbridge Branch of the BCN, if counted as a stand-alone canal would be the most densely locked canal on the network with 13 locks in 5 furlongs giving an average of just over 20 locks a mile. The very short arm of the Ashton that connects Portland Basin to the Peak Forest Canal wold be the only canal almost entirely on an aqueduct. And, incidentally, that branch is also quite a bit shorter than the Wardle Branch... (Dons hard hat and retreats....)
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16 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:
There is plenty of steel around to quickly make gates that will last longer than 40 years plus. Why do they continue to ignore the sensible approach and make steel gates instead of time expired timber? It is time that function replaced heritage.
That is true, but leaving heritage considerations aside there is a lot more to it than just life span. Steel transmits much more force back into the lock wall if the gate is hit, which takes it's toll on the structure, and whilst the gate will withstand being hit eventually it will bend and not return to shape. The current cost of steel gates is around twice that of oak (I'm involved in tendering for some on a restoration project) - it will be 25 years before the savings become apparent and in the meantime the cost of gates is doubled, a difficult call on already overstretched budgets.
There is a design for steel gates that got heritage lottery approval on the Monmouth Canal at Ty Coch - pictured. They use square section tubes to mimic the appearance of the large timbers. It's possible that these are the way forward especially if suitable timber becomes more difficult to get hold of
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More likely CRT don't immediately know whether they have the right timber for that particular gate.
They order timber from a yard in Pontrilas, when they place the order they know what gates are going to be built with that batch and it is roughly cut to size for them to finish. This also works on a system approaching "just in time" - they don't have six months worth of gate timber in the yard.
I would reckon that if, for example, they'd ordered wood for a pair of bottom gates at Marple (13 foot drop), and then a pair of bottom gates at Bosley (approx 9 foot drop) failed they could switch the timber over, but they can't do it the other way round.
The locks at Lowsonford have single bottom gates, and would need a different timber kit to a mitre pair or a single top gate, and there aren't that many single bottom gates on the system. My guess would be that the guys at Bradley (who know their stuff) will be in the process of working out whether they have timber on order already that will fit, but until they know this they will issue a standard "timber needs to be ordered" - in any event the ordered timber will go straight to the top of the queue, but the new gates can't leapfrog gates the construction of which has started.
Delivery times - again I guess that's a stock answer as deliver slots for all gates "in process" have already been booked and the next free slot is several weeks off, and they'll have to negotiate that a delivery trip to, say, Huddersfield is now going to go to Lowsonford.
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This looks like the Old Bush, it's certainly a Banks's pub
This looks rather the bend at the top of the old Tipton Green flight
These are Factory Locks
I've no idea what series or programme it's from, so it may be from a drama set in Yorkshire. Another drama, Frost is set in Wiltshire but the canal scenes come from Wakefield and Sowerby Bridge
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6 hours ago, David Mack said:
Who built the Middlewich Branch? Is it a 'canal' or a 'branch'? Was the Wardle Canal built by the T&M company under the powers of the Middlewich Branch, rather than T&M company's own powers? If so then perhaps it isn't technically a branch of the T&M Canal, but a separate freestanding canal which just happened to have been built by the same company.
At about the waking hour as i was preparing my first cup of coffee a similar thought came into my head - who's enabling legislation was used?
This did in turn lead me to wonder who's enabling legislation was used for the Hall Green branch of the T&M which served a similar purpose.
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12 minutes ago, adam1uk said:
Surely a branch is also a canal -- although a canal is not necessarily a branch.
Perhaps - but if the "shortest canal" is a branch canal, is there something shorter? The old side lock to the river at Figure of Three is probably shorter, but not counted as a canal.
This is often a problem, to establish this record, a particular definition of canal has been used, but not consistently applied
28 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:You have twigged it!
Can you justify that? My reasoning is that a branch canal is subservient to the main line and was built by the company that owned the main line. Their interests were for the main line in the first instance and the branch line served this bigger purpose. This was particularly true of the Wardle Branch, which was basically a protectionist measure by the T&M.
For an example of the opposite logic, the Newport Pagnell canal looks at first site like a branch off the Grand Junction, but the Grand Junction couldn't see enough benefit in building a branch to the town - the benefit was to Newport Pagnell, but that wasn't the GJCs problem, so a separate company built the canal.
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13 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:
Says canal on the signs. Maureen always said "canal" and it was the canal to the gauging lock outside the cottage at the end of the Middlewich Branch.
Neither of which really cut the mustard for a place in the Guinness book of records or any definitive source - "someone" decided this branch was a canal in itself - clearly that someone wasn't the T&M or the North Staffordshire Railway, who were the owners and managers of it.
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Having read yet another claim that the "Wardle Canal" is the shortest canal in the kingdom, if not the universe, I'm questioning this on the basis of the definition of "Canal". I know it's always difficult to pin things down and nomenclature varies (more on that later) - what, for example, is the Llangollen Canal? It exists only as a modern name.
However, to my way of thinking as a historian a canal, as distinct from a branch off a canal, was built BY a separate entity, sometimes these merged so that the many became one (Shropshire Union, Grand Union) but never the reverse. I may refer to the Caldon Canal but most historians know it is shorthand for the Caldon Branch of the Trent and Mersey Canal. I note that Bradshaw (1904 but I think all of them) refers to canals as separate entities even when they were later owned by the same company - e.g. the Ashton, Peak Forest and Macclesfield are identified as separate canals within the ownership of the Great Central Railway. Bradshaw identifies the Wardle Branch as a branch of the T&M, in turn owned by the North Staffs Railway.
In addition to this, I suspect that most modern boaters, those who only know of the Llangollen Canal and not the Ellesmere Canal, think of Wardle Lock as being on the Middlewich Branch (and may not even be sure which canal the Middlewich Branch is a branch of)
So how did the Wardle Branch become a canal? And if we're going to count a branch of the T&M as a separate canal, is there anything shorter? Some basin on the BCN perhaps? After all, a basin on the BCN may actually have been built by a separate company!
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Which navigation is this?
@Pluto is the authority on these things, but if we know which navigation there may be someone with local knowledge.
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8 minutes ago, Chris Lowe said:
This map has a water course going north from Cinderford Iron Works to a pool.
That's more like it!
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14 hours ago, Chris Lowe said:
Could this be it, this is from the Tithe maps?
That seems possible, although Broadmoor is to the north of Cinderford and that canal appears to run south - BUT, the fact Broadmoor is to the north doesn't mean the Dam Pool at Broadmoor was to the north (that is where Wikipedia says the other end of the canal was)
I can't find a "dam pool" on old OS maps, but then they don't go back that far and it may have vanished soon after -
I'd never heard of this, but an internet search reveals one or two references
The use of water supply canals as transport may have been more common that we now think not least because there would be little recorded - if the watercourse was unmodified and the use private there would be no tolls and no record of navigation works being built.
47 minutes ago, Heartland said:Some canals were made for water supply and a case in point is Benjamin Yardleys Canal which served a Flint Mill in North Staffordshire
The Compstall Navigation near Marple (or near Romiley depending on which of those towns you live in!) would be another example - it isn't obviously a navigation canal but records indicate it was used as such - without the records it would just be thought of as a big mill leat.
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3 hours ago, 1st ade said:
It looks like a Tingay boat but no name visible (and, again, no markings on the slide to help)...
If I was a betting man I'd bet that standing watching is a very junior @magpie patrick!
I think you're right! And I'd say that lock is on the river Nene, which makes it 1971 and makes me 5 at the time.
To add, the boat would be Joanna.
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9 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:
It would appear to be self propelled so cannot be a houseboat! (On uk navigations anyway)
It's being pushed and pulled by at least one (and probably more) small boats with outboard motors. The scale of the house is such they may only look small though
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37 minutes ago, BuckbyLocks said:
The upper of Ian Moss' photos looks rather like Beckets Park in Northampton just below the lock.
Quite possible - we went there on Joanna in 1971
4 hours ago, 1st ade said:
Steel balance beams,gate paddles only, no ground paddles, concrete wing walls - must narrow it down a bit.
Ornamental lock and boat in brass
in Arts and Crafts
Posted
The boat is about 8 inches long, which makes the model about 1 in 105, or very roughly TT gauge. I note you can buy buildings and scenery for this scale, although it's not one I've encountered often.