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Canals with a pumped water supply


magpie patrick

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Following on from Heartland's topic on smallest reservoir, and the mention of The K&A with Wilton Water, I started thinking about canals that were dependent upon a pumped supply - Whilst this is quite common now I can only think of three (off the top of my head) that historically depended upon a pumped summit supply. Those three are:

 

Kennet and Avon - pumps at Crofton necessitated by the decision to build a shorter, higher summit and also pumps at Bath (rather short lived) and then Claverton to feed the locks down to the river in Bath.

 

The Somerset Coal Canal - once it became apparent they'd need locks at Combe Hay a Bolton and Watt engine was installed at Combe Hay to lift water out of the nearby Cam Brook, these were later moved to Dunkerton which was a much smaller lift. The canal had a supply at Timsbury Basin but this wasn't enought to cover lockage. 

 

Bradford Canal - denied use of water from the Beck following a cholera outbreak the canal closed and was reopened with a pumped supply bringing water up from the Leeds and Liverpool. 

 

Any others? I know the BCN received pumped water but I'm unsure whether that was a supply or the canal was a convenient way of disposing of mine water. 

 

 

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41 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

 

 

Any others? I know the BCN received pumped water but I'm unsure whether that was a supply or the canal was a convenient way of disposing of mine water. 

 

 


Didn't the BCN receive pumped water in the Digbeth area, around where the Custard Factory was, especially after it closed and the ground water level there started flooding basements?

I remember I had a customer there (car body shop, 1980's) whose basement was regularly under water and they used to say that was because the pumps had been turned off/broken down. There were certainly no mines in that area.

Edited by Graham Davis
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5 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

The Coventry also received water pumped from mine workings at Hawkesbury. As was established during the water problems this year it is a canal principally fed by natural discharge and not by reservoir.


 

 

I'd forgotten that - it must be very unusual for a canal to operate solely or primarily on run-off - going back to the "summit pound as reservoir" theme then such a canal would need to be able to allow levels to drop. 

 

To what extent did it also get a supply off the Oxford - ISTR there is a sluice that facilitates this?

 

 

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The Rochdale summit?   It had a number of resevoirs up in the hills so was not dependant on pumping, but additional water was pumped up from Hollingworth lake to the summit. The engine has long gone but quite a bit of the leat remains at the summit end.

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42 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

The Coventry also received water pumped from mine workings at Hawkesbury. As was established during the water problems this year it is a canal principally fed by natural discharge and not by reservoir.


 

It did have a reservoir - Oldbury, near Mancetter - seems to have disappeared though.......

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The disposal of mine water in South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire was often sent into local streams, but it was mainly down to John Smeaton who suggested the use of mine water to supply the original Birmingham Canal. The water that was pumped into streams often found its way back into the mines and Edward Marten was particularly active in persuading mine owners that a mine drainage authority be set up to pump water into the canals and improve the streams so that they did not leak into the mines. This came at a time when the larger mine owners were ceasing pumping and the mines were becoming flooded. 

 

The RCHS Weaver Collection maps are of particular use to show the early water supply including the mines supplying water prior to Smeatons report (1782)

 

Edited by Heartland
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Any good canal engineer would prefer to have a water supply from reservoirs. However, the canal could have a poor or difficult catchment area, such as the Birmingham, where the canal was peobably above the most productive level for water to be stored in reservoirs if it was going to serve established local industry. Canals planned in the 1760s and 1770s did not have too much difficulty in arranging water supplies, but by the 1790s there were numerous water mills whose owners already had a claim on local water supplies. Canal Acts passed at this  time can be filled wit clauses protecting water, and this was certainly the case wit the Rochdale. The summit level reservoirs allowed under the Act were always too small to supply the canal effectively, and the pumped water from Hollingworth was vital to the canal's operation. Other canals at this time were built through geology which was not water-retaining, such as the K&A, and for these canals pumping was required. In rainy periods, quite significant volumes could come from small streams feeding into the canal, as this weekly L&L report shows.

P1013690.jpg

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5 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

The Coventry also received water pumped from mine workings at Hawkesbury. As was established during the water problems this year it is a canal principally fed by natural discharge and not by reservoir.


 

 The pump engine was called Lady Godiva.

 

519_image_6.jpg

 

 "A disused engine house, built in 1821, stands on the western bank of the Coventry Canal. It originally housed a Newcomen steam engine, which was brought from Griff Colliery, where it had already worked for 100 years, and which was used to pump water from mines in the area to supply the canal. By 1913, the developing shafts of the Coventry Colliery had reached below the geographical reach of the pump engine. Named Lady Godiva, it was decommissioned in 1913 but left in place, and eventually moved to the Dartmouth Museum in the 1960s. This geographic resource meant that the colliery had an immediate outlet for its pumped-out water ingress."

 

Hawkesbury Junction - History (liquisearch.com)

 

Edited by Ray T
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5 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

 

I'd forgotten that - it must be very unusual for a canal to operate solely or primarily on run-off - going back to the "summit pound as reservoir" theme then such a canal would need to be able to allow levels to drop. 

 

To what extent did it also get a supply off the Oxford - ISTR there is a sluice that facilitates this?

 

 

Yes, there is a sluice by the footbridge at the end of the stop lock between the Oxford and Coventry Canals. When he was lock keeper at Sutton's one of Mike's jobs was to operate this sluice as and when necessary.

 

Sluice.jpg

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The summit of the Sheffield an Tinsley Canal. Water pumped up from the River Don. The cast iron pipe from around 1912 was replaced this year by a new plastic on running under the foot path along the Tinsley flight from near the M1 Tinsley Viaduct to the top lock to feed the three miles of canal to the basin.

My understanding is that the canal, as built was fed by a culvert from the river Sheaf, but that was lost when the Sheaf was covered over by the Sheffield Midland railway station in the 1840's (I've followed the underground course of the Sheaf, to its junction with the river Don). After that, alternative supply was needed. Would love to know the actual story, as this may be wrong.

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