Cromford Canal

[Josher]

Hundreds ask council for £200k to turn canal into tourist draw This is Derbyshire

 

HUNDREDS of people have signed a petition calling for a stretch of a Derbyshire waterway to be cleaned up so it can be used by tourists and school children. Friends of Cromford Canal has more than 650 signatures from people urging Derbyshire County Council to help foot the estimated £200,000 bill for dredging of the three-quarters-of-a-mile stretch.

 

Chairman of the group Patrick Morriss said the charity wanted to use the canal to run a horse-drawn boat during school holidays. At other times the boat would be used as a "floating classroom" for school parties.

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The targeted part of the waterway runs between its Cromford terminus and the point where it meets the start of the High Peak Trail. The county council said it was already working with the Friends to submit a funding bid to help with the clean-up work but would "consider the petition in due course".

 

But Mr Morriss said the bid for Leader funding, which comes from Defra and the European Union, would amount to only £50,000. He said: "Even if we got that money, we would still be looking for funding from elsewhere." Mr Morris said the Friends wanted the section of canal cleared by spring 2012, as dredging needed to be done in winter so as not to disturb wildlife such as water voles. He said the cleared area of canal would combine well with plans to create a new visitor centre at the Grade-I listed Cromford Mill. He said: "Visitors would be able to come down from the mill to see a working canal. "And it would get them into a part of the Derwent Valley which they perhaps wouldn't normally visit, by horse-drawn boat. "We don't just want to have a boat there for the holidays, we also want to have it there more permanently as a floating classroom. "It would be a trip boat on high days and holidays and an educational resource at other times." Mr Morriss said he understood that the £200,000 estimated cost would be a lot for the county council, which has said it must make about £84.4m of savings in the next four financial years. But he added: "The canal is in the only World Heritage Site in the East Midlands. "The more there is on offer for visitors, the more likely they are to spend the night and improve economic activity in the area."

 

A county council spokeswoman confirmed the authority was putting together the bid for the Leader funding. She said: "We are still waiting to identify what the full cost would be. "The £200,000 figure is a very rough estimate."

 

The Friends of Cromford Canal aims to make the waterway's full 17-mile length – from Langley Mill to Cromford and Pinxton – navigable by boat.

[Josher]

One year on ...

 

Monday 21 November 2011 Major restoration plan for waterway Matlock Mercury

 

Horse Power - The Friends of Cromford Canal use a shire horse to pull a narrow boat from Cromford Wharf to High Peak Junction.

 

Cromford’s Canal could be turned in to a wildlife corridor with boat trips returning to the historic waterways. These are just some of the ideas being mooted as part of a major project to develop the 17-mile stretch from Cromford to Langley Mill. Consultant engineers WS Atkins has been drafted in to look at the future of waterway by Cromford Canal Partnership, set up to make the canal more attractive to visitors. The firm is looking at four options – to carry on maintaining the canal for walkers and horse riders, to turn it in to a nature reserve, to partially restore the waterways or carry out a full restoration scheme.

 

Patrick Morriss, chairman of the Friends of Cromford Canal, said full restoration – which would see the whole canal navigable by boat – was the group’s preferred option. He added: “This is a man-made canal with all is historic structures so unless there is a fairly active regime of maintenance it will fall in to disrepair.” Mr Morriss said the full restoration of the canal would go hand-in-hand with creating a wildlife corridor and a trip boat, running on the Ambergate to Cromford section, would help fund the project. He added: “If we make the most of modern technology the boat will not intrude on the environment. It would give people another way to view the natural environment, enjoy a trip on the boat and take people right to the middle of the site of special scientific interest.”

 

Derbyshire County Council has paid for the report by WS Atkins to be carried out. A spokeswoman for the council said the report would establish the current condition of the canal and look at the costs, benefits and risks of a number of development options. She added: “The findings are due to be considered at the next meeting of the Cromford Canal Partnership in March.”

[Athy]

The shame of it is, this WAS a restored canal, at least part of it was, and there was a trip boat working out of Cromford. I believe that the members of the preservation society fell out with each other some years ago, leading to cessation of boat movements.

I spent several years living in nearby Heanor, and explored parts of the canal. At the Cromford end it looks navigable and there's a splendid old steam-powered pumping station which I believe is fired up from time to time. At the other end, I've walked the route from Butterley tunnel past Pinxton to Langley Mill, much of it is still in water, bridges and locks are still there, and at the Langley Mill end a few hundred yards of it are navigable again - unfortunately only as far as a whacking great dual carriageway road.

The big problem will be the long, collapsed Butterley Tunnel. I'm not sure if it would ever be feasible to restore it to navigable condition, so the Cromford may have to function as a canal of two halves. Because it's a bywater off a backwater (the Erewash) it attracts little attention, unfortunately.

Edited November 21, 2011 by Athy

[Hairy-Neil]

At the other end, I've walked the route from Butterley tunnel past Pinxton to Langley Mill, much of it is still in water, bridges and locks are still there, and at the Langley Mill end a few hundred yards of it are navigable again - unfortunately only as far as a whacking great dual carriageway road.

 

 

I've walked the whole route except for the infilled/landscaped former opencast pit area north of Aldercar I believe there are plans to cross the A610 Aldercar bypass (actually single carrageway at this point) using an existing bridge from the disused (Brinsley?) colliery railway. A new lock is required as the bridge is at a higher level than the canal. Funding, as ever, is the problem rather than engineering solutions.

 

20 years ago there was a 'dream scheme' to connect the restored Cromford to the restored Chesterfield canal (and the latter to Rotherham too). It's only about 12 miles as the crow flies. We can live in hope I suppose....

[magpie patrick]

Indeed, the bypass is easy. In fact restoration to Butterley Tunnel and Pinxton is not difficult. I was subcontracted by Atkins to work on this study.

 

Butterley Tunnel and the canal from there to Ambergate present "difficulties" to say the least. Rodolph De Salis described the tunnel as being "in very indifferent condition" in 1898 - it won't have got any better. Then there is a new aqueduct needed at Sawmills over the road and railway, and the approach embankment from Ambergate for this has houses built on it...

[Athy]

I was aghast to read today that The Butterley Company, an engineering firm which had been there about 150 years and which, inter alia, built Vauxhall Bridge, the roof of St. Pancras Station, and the Falkirk Wheel, not only closed in 2009 but has already been flattened. It was not a thing of beauty but is was impressive in its scale, and seemed permanent. At this rate, the only jobs left in that once-thriving industrial part of the country will be either working at the Job Centre or selling hamburgers to people queuing up at its door.

[Hairy-Neil]

I was aghast to read today that The Butterley Company, an engineering firm which had been there about 150 years and which, inter alia, built Vauxhall Bridge, the roof of St. Pancras Station, and the Falkirk Wheel, not only closed in 2009 but has already been flattened. It was not a thing of beauty but is was impressive in its scale, and seemed permanent. At this rate, the only jobs left in that once-thriving industrial part of the country will be either working at the Job Centre or selling hamburgers to people queuing up at its door.

 

Older than that, the sign on the building used to say 'Founded 1790'.

[hughc]

The Butterley Company is a classic case of asset stripping by IIRC developers who have subsequently, having taken their profit, lost interest. Regards, HughC.