The Day They Pulled The Plug

Rod Auton, Publicity Officer for Chesterfield Canal Trust tells us about the day the Chesterfield Canal went down the plug...

The Chesterfield Canal is one of the earliest in the country. It was designed by James Brindley and opened fully on 4th June 1777.

The outstanding feature was the Norwood Tunnel, which was the longest canal tunnel in the country at 1¾ miles when it was opened on 9th May 1775. Astonishingly, although it was dug with picks and shovels, it was possible to see straight from one end to the other.

The first three boats to pass through at the opening ceremony included a brass band along with the usual dignitaries. This must have been interesting in a very restricted tunnel for one hour and one minute!

There are two stories about the canal that are really widely known. One is about the stone for the Houses of Parliament. The original Palace of Westminster had burned down in 1834. The stone to rebuild it was quarried at Anston, taken down the canal to the River Trent and thence to London. Tens of thousands of tons of stone was transported in this way, mostly between 1841 and 1844.

However, it is the second story that still captures the imagination and gets endlessly repeated in books and newspaper articles. It was even mentioned on the QI programme on BBC2.

One day in 1978 a British Waterways dredging gang working in Retford pulled up a chain with a bit of wood on the end. They went for lunch and returned to find that the canal had been drained. The main player was assumed to be Bill Thorpe, because it was his photo, holding the plug and sporting a superb mullet, that was widely circulated. In fact this was not the case. Bill worked for British Waterways, but only turned up the next day and agreed to have his photograph taken, not realising that it would be used for decades to come. Unfortunately he died in the 1990s, aged 42.

The person who can really tell the tale is Kevin Bowskill. He worked for British Waterways and its successor, the Canal & River Trust, for 44 years. Kevin said that he was working on stabilising a concrete wall, near the Grove Mill in Retford. He was part of the dredger gang along with Mick Tweed and Jack Rothwell.

They were trying to put in shutter boards, but were prevented from doing so by a length of chain. Kevin was asked to bring in the dredger by the foreman, Jack Rothwell. At first they tried to pull the chain out with a rope attached to a vehicle, but this proved unsuccessful. Eventually the dredger removed the obstacle. However, hours later, the section of canal was drained.

The media were soon on to the story. The Daily Express wanted an exclusive. BBC Look North and ITV Calendar also came for interviews. However, somehow, Kevin got shoved into the background as others sought publicity.

Ten years later, though, British Waterways put on a Festival to celebrate the event, and Kevin was presented with a replica plug.

So, what happened to the plug? Kevin says it was at the BW Worksop Depot for a while and was then taken to the Canal Museum at Stoke Bruerne. The incident is mentioned in a book entitled The World’s Greatest Mistakes (1980, edited by Nigel Blundell, ISBN: 0-7064- 2136-1.)

“A canal goes down the drain." It was a tough job for Jack Rothwell and his workmates - dredging a busy stretch of the Chesterfield Canal, near Retford in Nottinghamshire. It had proved quite a problem, what with all the mud and rusting bicycles, prams and refrigerators. Now they were finding it impossible to shift a heavy iron chain lying on the bottom of the canal.

Finally, Jack, foreman of the gang, ordered the chain to be hooked to their dredger. Driver Kevin Bowskill started up and, with one sharp tug, the obstruction was freed. The workmen hauled in the chain, along with a large block of wood that was attached to the end of it, and knocked off for a tea-break.

While they were away, a passing policeman noticed an extraordinary whirlpool in the normally placid canal. He also noticed that the water level was falling. He rushed off to find the dredging gang. By the time they all returned, the canal had disappeared. It was then that realisation dawned. Jack and his men had pulled out the plug of the canal. One-and-a-half miles of waterway had gone down the drain.

The plug, put there by James Brindley when he built the waterway 200 years earlier, had remained undisturbed until Jack's gang came along in the summer of 1978. Now, the millions of gallons of water that had filled the canal were all draining into the nearby River Idle. All that was left were a number of forlornly grounded holiday cruisers, complete with angry owners, the dredger itself, which was stuck firmly on the muddy bottom ... and a plughole.”

Another version says that it was three anglers – Howard Poucher, Graham Boon and Pete Moxon – who raised the alarm. A third claims that no one noticed until that evening when the local police contacted Stuart Robinson, the British Waterways section inspector.

This story appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald Sunday Extra on June 22nd 1980. Apparently the incident even appeared in Lloyds Shipping List. Thus it seems that poor Bill Thorpe was set up for the famous photograph. However when I met his aunt, Pat Ward, a few years ago, she seemed pleased about Bill’s place in history.

The plug would have been installed in order to drain the canal if maintenance works were needed. For example, 200 years ago there were no dredgers so excess silt had to be dug out by hand. As mechanisation arrived, the old methods were forgotten, so by 1978 no one knew about these plugs.

Maybe there are more plugs on the Chesterfield or other canals just waiting for unsuspecting dredging crews to hit the headlines. Rod Auton Rod is the Publicity Officer for the Chesterfield Canal Trust which is campaigning to complete the restoration of the canal by its 250th Anniversary in 2027. For further information go to www.chesterfieldcanal-trust.org.uk .

Imagery, page opposite: Bill Thorpe with Retford plug, image courtesy of Chesterfield Canal Trust. From top image: Empty canal at Retford, The dredger that pulled plug - both images from 1978, RCHS, Kenneth Gardiner Collection. The dredging crew - Kevin Bowskill, Mick Tweed and Jack Rothwell, image courtesy of Chesterfield Canal Trust.