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Trundling along the Leicester line today.


johnmck

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Its the Brumuda Triangle i tells ya, extends across the Midlands and makes things like bridges disappear.

 

On our trip on the Ashby we moored at Shackerstone overnight, the next morning i had a terrible headache and discovered half a box of Camden Hells had entirely vanished! Its a complete mystery

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A look at the old OS maps says that in the 1880s Br. 35 was a footbridge with no narrows, which explains why it has so comprehensively disappeared. It is still marked on the 1950 6" map, but as that is "1899 survey with additions in 1950" it might already have gone.

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5 hours ago, Richard Carter said:

A look at the old OS maps says that in the 1880s Br. 35 was a footbridge with no narrows, which explains why it has so comprehensively disappeared. It is still marked on the 1950 6" map, but as that is "1899 survey with additions in 1950" it might already have gone.

 

Thank you for that. It just intrigued me whilst passing. 

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The most interesting removal of a bridge on the Leicester Navigation was the "Stephenson" Lift Bridge at Soar Lane Leicester that was used to carry railway waggons across the navigation. It went to the Snibston Discovery Park, but is now at the Great Central Railway

  

Soar Lane Lift Bridge.jpg

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3 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

CaRT should put a stoppage on the Leicester line while they investigate the disappearance.

 

Sounds like the closure at Yelvertoft in November should give them plenty of time for investigation.

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2 hours ago, JJPHG said:

Looks like it was still there in 1945

image.png.85aae3b372dd89dd6e67f17658146fc8.png

 

Interesting - good find, thanks.

 

I was also struck that even on the oldest OS maps there is no footpath marked either side of the bridge. This aerial view also shows nothing of the kind, the LIDAR ground radar maps draw a complete blank in the fields there too. Curious.

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8 minutes ago, Richard Carter said:

 

Interesting - good find, thanks.

 

I was also struck that even on the oldest OS maps there is no footpath marked either side of the bridge. This aerial view also shows nothing of the kind, the LIDAR ground radar maps draw a complete blank in the fields there too. Curious.

Accommodation bridge only, perhaps?

 

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2 hours ago, Stilllearning said:

Accommodation bridge only, perhaps?

 

It makes me realise it's something I never gave much thought to, but the vast majority of accommodation bridges, whether brick, stone, lift or swing, were wide enough for a cart, or to drive beasts over, and that footbridges (presumably with ladder access) were rare, except for boaters at locks. There's one just north of Foxton, which carries the footpath up to Gumley, and one at Crack's Hill near Crick (rebuilt in more recent years in a slightly different position), both carrying a marked footpath. The present one on the Welford Arm (Br. 2) replaces what the OS marked as a "swing bridge"

 

It makes Br. 35 on the Leicester summit odd on more than one count, being as there is also no narrows - an afterthought, maybe, despite being numbered in sequence?

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15 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

I thought bridges and locks were numbered long after they were built.  The old boaters always used refer to them by name anyway.

 

There was a thread within the last year about this, specifically about the joint GU/Oxford stretch west of Braunston. So far as I know each canal is it's own case, but the Leicester Summit numbering must at least predate the building of the railways, as the railway bridges are inserted into the sequence with "A" suffixes (5A and 9A)

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14 hours ago, Richard Carter said:

It makes me realise it's something I never gave much thought to, but the vast majority of accommodation bridges, whether brick, stone, lift or swing, were wide enough for a cart, or to drive beasts over, and that footbridges (presumably with ladder access) were rare, except for boaters at locks. There's one just north of Foxton, which carries the footpath up to Gumley, and one at Crack's Hill near Crick (rebuilt in more recent years in a slightly different position), both carrying a marked footpath. The present one on the Welford Arm (Br. 2) replaces what the OS marked as a "swing bridge"

 

It makes Br. 35 on the Leicester summit odd on more than one count, being as there is also no narrows - an afterthought, maybe, despite being numbered in sequence?

 

The reference to 'accommodation' is for access by farmers to fields divided by the canal when built, for stock and harvesting vehicles, hence the width. If the canal cut through a public right of way by footpath only, then the probability would be for a more lightweight structure to be built. Any 'carriageway' would have a wider structure. A 'carriage' might be what one would expect as being horse drawn, but also includes Sedan Chairs which are also a form of carriage. Don't see many of those around lately.

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15 hours ago, Richard Carter said:

 

It makes Br. 35 on the Leicester summit odd on more than one count, being as there is also no narrows - an afterthought, maybe, despite being numbered in sequence?

 

I don't think the footbridge over the Oxford summit near the radio mast has a narrows.

 

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Two of the footbridges on the L&LC were called Gallows Bridge, possibly because they were wooden framed, like a gallows. The one in the photo at Skipton was called Tonnage Bridge on a map of 1832, probably because there was a toll office next to the bridge, shown just below it on the map. The stream which now passes underneath the bus station seems to have supplied the canal.

Gallows bridge, steamer.jpg

1832 tonnage bridge.jpg

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2 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

I don't think the footbridge over the Oxford summit near the radio mast has a narrows.

 

Yep, good shout. Br. 129, no narrows and also no footpath marked on the early OS maps. Another one for the collection ...

1 hour ago, Pluto said:

Two of the footbridges on the L&LC were called Gallows Bridge, possibly because they were wooden framed, like a gallows. The one in the photo at Skipton was called Tonnage Bridge on a map of 1832, probably because there was a toll office next to the bridge, shown just below it on the map. The stream which now passes underneath the bus station seems to have supplied the canal.

Gallows bridge, steamer.jpg

1832 tonnage bridge.jpg

Interesting that this was not a swingbridge, given that there are roadways either side?

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5 hours ago, Richard Carter said:

Yep, good shout. Br. 129, no narrows and also no footpath marked on the early OS maps. Another one for the collection ...

Interesting that this was not a swingbridge, given that there are roadways either side?

Looking at the 1826 canal survey and the land purchase book, compiled at the same time, it looks like the canal followed a boundary between two land owners, so there was no need for a full accommodation bridge. The main roads at the time did have stone overbridges by that time, while the roads to either side of Gallows bridge were only of a local nature.

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On 01/10/2021 at 17:19, Richard Carter said:

 but the Leicester Summit numbering must at least predate the building of the railways, as the railway bridges are inserted into the sequence with "A" suffixes (5A and 9A)

Not necessarily.  The canal companies may have treated the bridge and lock numbers as what we would today call an asset register. I.e. they numbered the structures which they had built and which they were responsible for. The railways, coming after the canal, were responsible for maintaining their own bridges, so the canal companies didn't need to number them. It is only in recent years that letter suffix numbers have been added to railway bridges and newer road bridges as an aid to identifying locations, and also because BW/CRT asset registers now include all canal structures, whether owned/maintained by them or by others. Older leisure boating guides show such structures to be unnumbered.

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