Chestfield Canal Trust
Devil’s Hole Bridge.
Chesterfield Canal Bridges The bridges along the canal hold lots of interest, here Rod Auton tells us more.
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The inscription on Shaw Bridge.
f you are travelling along a canal, you very quickly seem to enter a different world. You can feel quite disconnected from everyday life – which is of course one of the charms of a canal boat holiday.
However, there are times when you need to know where you are. This might sound odd because many people only see canals in towns, but there are long stretches, especially east of Retford, where there are few villages or locks or even houses. If you are looking for a shop or an overnight mooring or a pub, you will want to know how far away you are. The modern answer is of course to look at one’s mobile phone, but that is very much a 21st Century solution. Previously the best method was to look at the bridges – the most common features. All the bridges are numbered. Number 1 is Tapton Mill Bridge in Chesterfield, number 85 is Basin Bridge at West Stockwith. Easy? Well not quite. For example, there are no bridges numbered 5, nor 6, nor 8, but there is a bridge 8c! What has happened over the years is that bridges have been removed and others built. So the old bridge no. 8, Hounsfield Bridge or Steel’s Bridge, was removed in the 1990s, but well before that Works Road Bridge (8c) had been built. Bridge 8a no longer exists (it was in Staveley Works) and bridge 8b, an old railway bridge, was removed in 1969. Well at least the bridges are numbered logically, so there can be no confusion I hear you say. Well not quite.
Fountain Hill Bridge by Jan Warsop.
I suggest you go for a walk along the canal to the east of Worksop. There you will find Manton Bridge, number 45. This is followed by Manton Viaduct, number 45a and the new bridge to the Severn Trent Water facility which is numbered 45c. A bit further on is Rayton Farm Bridge which is number 45b. Why the STW bridge isn’t 45aa completely beats me, but it makes my point that logic is not always applied. Very often people do not refer to bridge numbers, they use bridge names. This brings another layer of confusion because many, possibly most, bridges have at least two names, some have three or even four. The obvious recourse is to check in a guide book. For this article I have consulted five different guides to the Chesterfield Canal. Christine Richardson and Jane Bird’s 1988 guide, Nicholson’s guide of 1997, the Richlow guides of 1994 and 2006-7 and the Chesterfield Canal Trust’s guide, based the Richlow guides, published in 2015 and soon to be updated. What a mixture we find. Two books name bridge 79 in Walkeringham as Hodson’s Bridge, in the others it is Fountain Hill Bridge. Carr Lane Bridge (74) in Gringley is elsewhere Hewitt’s Bridge, Leverton Road Bridge (58) in Retford is also Clayter’s Bridge.
Man Face Bridge.
