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Highest lock pound in Britain?


larrysanders

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4 hours ago, Pluto said:

Narrow canals were built where the promoters were trying to keep down costs - it is about a third cheaper to build a narrow canal as opposed to a wide one, the main saving being in the price of land. In the late 18th century, few people knew if canals were going to be a financial success, so many canal promoters in the Midlands looked at narrow canals as the most cost-effective way forward. This may have been because their canals were, to a great extent, isolated from coastal seas. In Lancashire and Yorkshire, they were much closer to the seas, so they had more incentive to build canals suitable for coastal vessels, despite the additional cost. You have to bear in mind that our canals were not built as a system, but as a solution to local or regional transport problems. Only the narrow canals had much in the way of through traffic, with boats passing over several canals when making a single journey. 

 

The Huddersfield Narrow connects to the narrow Ashton and Peak Forest canals at the west end, and even if the channel and locks could have been built wide, the cost of a wide Standedge Tunnel would surely have been prohibitive. So narrow it was.

 

2 hours ago, larrysanders said:

That's really useful information - many thanks.  I never thought about the land costs - just construction, but that makes perfect sense.  I just wondered why these locks were around 60 feet in length?  Somewhat shorter than other narrow and broad canals.  Do you think it was to accommodate a certain type of boat then?   

 

The Huddersfield Broad Canal was built to the same size as the Calder and Hebble, which in turn was built to suit the size of river barges used locally when it was built. The lower locks on the C&H were subsequently lengthened, but this ddn't get up as far as the junction with the Huddersfield Broad.

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50 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

The Huddersfield Narrow connects to the narrow Ashton and Peak Forest canals at the west end, and even if the channel and locks could have been built wide, the cost of a wide Standedge Tunnel would surely have been prohibitive. So narrow it was.

 

 

The Huddersfield Broad Canal was built to the same size as the Calder and Hebble, which in turn was built to suit the size of river barges used locally when it was built. The lower locks on the C&H were subsequently lengthened, but this ddn't get up as far as the junction with the Huddersfield Broad.

Great info - many thanks. 

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7 hours ago, matty40s said:

I was going to say the Walsall at 416 feet but then remembered about the Tame Valley drain....

so yes, 246 feet - until they start digging the bedford mk link.

It would have been a sump pound from 1841 when the Walsall Junction Canal opened until 1844 when the Tame Valley Canal opened. Likewise the pound at Digbeth between the bottom of Ashted locks and the bottom of Camp Hill locks was a sump pound for 45 years between 1799 and 1844.

 

And how about the Severn between Upper Lode and Gloucester?

 

JP

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11 hours ago, Pluto said:

Narrow canals were built where the promoters were trying to keep down costs - it is about a third cheaper to build a narrow canal as opposed to a wide one, the main saving being in the price of land. In the late 18th century, few people knew if canals were going to be a financial success, so many canal promoters in the Midlands looked at narrow canals as the most cost-effective way forward. 

 

Sounds like typical British lack of foresight and inability to make the necessary long term investment. All over Europe they built proper broad canals, some of which predated our canals and many of which are still in commercial use today, while our narrow half baked efforts couldn't remain profitable and died. The same sort of thing happened with our railways - this time it wasn't the design of the infrastructure itself that was inadequate, but an inability to continue to make the necessary investment. I know some people will say that Britain's geography wasn't suited to the long term commercial viabitity of canals, but surely had bigger canals and boats been built to start with they would have stood more chance of surviving commercially and not just become nostalgic recreation areas with replica working boats, vintage engines and people reenacting the past?

Edited by blackrose
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4 hours ago, blackrose said:

 

Sounds like typical British lack of foresight and inability to make the necessary long term investment. All over Europe they built proper broad canals, some of which predated our canals and many of which are still in commercial use today, while our narrow half baked efforts couldn't remain profitable and died. The same sort of thing happened with our railways - this time it wasn't the design of the infrastructure itself that was inadequate, but an inability to continue to make the necessary investment. I know some people will say that Britain's geography wasn't suited to the long term commercial viabitity of canals, but surely had bigger canals and boats been built to start with they would have stood more chance of surviving commercially and not just become nostalgic recreation areas with replica working boats, vintage engines and people reenacting the past?

Regarding your suggestion that Europe had larger canals, they were in exactly the same situation as us in the 18th century. Those waterways directly accessing coastal waters did have boats similar to our broad waterways, and on the Rhine they were much bigger, but had much less draft, so did not carry significantly more than English wide boats. Further upstream on their 18th century waterways, the boats were similar in size to narrow boats, and often smaller. Several narrow canals were built on the continent, mainly in the early 19th century post the Napoleonic Wars. However, by that time railways were coming into operation and waterway engineering had developed, so usually wide waterways were built then. The mid-19th century was the main period for canal building in Europe.

On investment, people generally only invest in something which will give them a known return. At the time English canals and railways were being built, this was an unknown. For canals in particular, the main London money market was not interested, and it was down to local banks and families to finance canal construction. The investors did this because canals supported the investors industrial investments, and it was those which made money. Transport in itself is totally unproductive and will not produce a profit if it is genuinely run as a service. It took the L&LC, a very successful canal, over 100 years before it had paid off its original cost if you take interest and dividends into account. Most canals made little genuine profit for their investors.

On water, the catchment areas supporting English canals are pretty small. The L&LC was always at the limit, and being able to carry over 2 million tons per annum was a major achievement. Many large canals on the continent carry less than 1 million tons annually, their national figures often being obscured by the tonnage carried on the Rhine. Large waterways in England would never be economic, though it would be sensible to upgrade the A&CN and the Trent.

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22 minutes ago, matty40s said:

With higher water on both sides....therefore a sump.

Are you sure?

 

I just looked at the Wey & Arun Canal Trust site for confirmation and they show Loxwood and Brewhurst locks with the same direction of fall. I thought the canal was lowered under the road bridge by replacing most - but not all - of the fall of the original Brewhurst lock at the new Loxwood lock.

 

I bet @mark99 will know for sure.

 

JP

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42 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Are you sure?

 

I just looked at the Wey & Arun Canal Trust site for confirmation and they show Loxwood and Brewhurst locks with the same direction of fall. I thought the canal was lowered under the road bridge by replacing most - but not all - of the fall of the original Brewhurst lock at the new Loxwood lock.

 

I bet @mark99 will know for sure.

 

JP

you could be right....

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12 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

The question is different to the heading, the heading asks the pound, which there is probably only one, but then the question asks the lock, which of course there two

Only so if the highest pound is on a through route - it may be a dead end in which case there is just the one lock on its approach to the summit (eg Tipton, Llangollen or Caldon and plenty others)

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3 hours ago, matty40s said:

With higher water on both sides....therefore a sump.

Err - no

 

Brewhurst lock still falls in the same direction, but only about 2 feet rather than 8

24 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Only so if the highest pound is on a through route - it may be a dead end in which case there is just the one lock on its approach to the summit (eg Tipton, Llangollen or Caldon and plenty others)

I've spent far more time than is good for me thinking about summits, because many summits aren't, they are only summits on a through route with a branch climbing still higher. The Braunston summit has Watford Locks lifting to the Crick Summit, which in turn has the Welford Branch, which is a dead end.

 

I've found one summit with three locks climbing to it - the Wilts and Berks, although no-one has used that for a while

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1 hour ago, Mike Todd said:

Only so if the highest pound is on a through route - it may be a dead end in which case there is just the one lock on its approach to the summit (eg Tipton, Llangollen or Caldon and plenty others)

I think you mean Titford, not Tipton.

And you can lock down from the summit pound of the Caldon in two places, albeit that one of them is half way along.

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6 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

It's not really any different to a fully artificial channel. What happens to the excess water at Warwick and Wolverton? It doesn't go uphill.

 

JP

Some of it at Warwick/Leamington does!

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4 hours ago, David Mack said:

I think you mean Titford, not Tipton.

And you can lock down from the summit pound of the Caldon in two places, albeit that one of them is half way along.

True - I should have said Caldon, Leek Branch.

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Just now, Señor Chris said:

The Leek branch IS the top pound.

 

That was what I was saying but David Mack was - effectively - reminding me that from the junction you go down and under the Leek Branch if you are going the other way to Froghall.

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9 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

Are you sure?

 

I just looked at the Wey & Arun Canal Trust site for confirmation and they show Loxwood and Brewhurst locks with the same direction of fall. I thought the canal was lowered under the road bridge by replacing most - but not all - of the fall of the original Brewhurst lock at the new Loxwood lock.

 

I bet @mark99 will know for sure.

 

JP

 

 

I was walking past this section not so long ago and looked up why Brewhurst Lock looks "funny"   ;) . From Wik

 

 

 

 

 

"The new Loxwood Lock, under construction, in May 2006

The hump-backed road bridge at Loxwood was removed and in-filled in 1905, (to be confirmed) severing the canal in two and leaving a major obstacle to restoration. The last boat passed under the bridge in 1869.

Modern regulations prevented the installation of a replacement hump-backed bridge, so restoration required the canal to burrow underneath, leaving the road at its existing level. This was a major engineering exercise, achieved by lowering a 440-yard (400 m) length of canal so that there is adequate headroom for a boat to pass under the road. At the southern end of the length, Brewhurst Lock was reconstructed reducing its fall to 2 feet (0.6 m) from the original drop of 8 feet (2.4 m), and hence lowering the level of the water in the pound crossed by the bridge. At the other end, a new lock (Loxwood Lock) was constructed, to provide for the 6-foot (1.8 m) difference between the new and original levels of the canal. In between, the canal bed was lowered by 4.5 feet (1.4 m), the banks shored up with piling, and a new winding hole created. The new bridge crosses the canal on a skew angle, the resulting 'tunnel' through which the canal passes measures 25 yards (23 m). The towpath runs through the tunnel, alongside the canal, and also allows pedestrians to cross the road safely; however, the restricted bridge height means horse riders must cross at road level. Suitable access pathways had to be designed-in as the towpath is a bridleway at this point. The work was completed, and the first boat passed under the new bridge into the new Loxwood Lock in April 2009. The project cost £1.8 million, making it one of the most expensive projects to be undertaken by a volunteer canal trust, and was officially opened by Lord Sterling of Plaistow on 9 May.[27] The Canal Trust website includes a comprehensive photo-diary of the construction work."

 

 

BREWHURST

 

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Edited by mark99
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