Restoration feature As the opening of the rebuilt Lock 15 completes another phase of the Grantham and maintained in working order for flood management purposes) was the site of a boat rally in 1973 - but this was done more The restoration back-story As long of a publicity exercise for the restoration ago as the 1960s there was local interest in than in the expectation that it would one day reviving or preserving what was left of the be part of the restored route. Elsewhere on abandoned Grantham Canal, which ran from the canal, navigation authority British Waterthe Trent in Nottingham to Grantham. In ways was reluctant to allow restoration of 1970 this led to the founding of the waterway structures, but the canal society Grantham Canal Society - initially to preserve carried out considerable towpath clearance the amenity value of the canal rather than to work, held a rally for small craft at Hickling, reopen it to navigation - but unfortunately created a picnic site and published a walking the early years of the society were not good guide, while a restoration feasibility study ones for the canal. Interest in saving the was carried out in 1975. canal had come just too late to save the Unfortunately in the late 1970s this Nottingham end of the route from being generally positive (if restricted) progress badly damaged by a new road construction came up against another major setback with scheme in the early 1970s, with a length of proposals to develop an important new the new A6011 and a major junction with the coalfield in the Vale of Belvoir which looked A6520 built right on top of the canal - ironiset to cause subsidence which would damcally just as the Canal Society was becoming age the canal restoration’s prospects. And to more of a restoration-oriented body. make things even more complicated, BW The first lock and a short length of proposed building a new large-scale canal to canal leading off the Trent (which had been transport the coal from the new mines to the transferred to the then Trent Water Authority Trent - leading to the Inland Waterways
Restoration feature: The Grantham Canal
Rebuilding under way at Woolsthorpe Lock 14 during a 2019 WRG Canal Camp
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