Restoration Feature Grantham

Restoration feature

As the opening of the rebuilt Lock 15 completes another phase of the Grantham

Restoration feature: The Grantham Canal The restoration back-story As long

ago as the 1960s there was local interest in reviving or preserving what was left of the abandoned Grantham Canal, which ran from the Trent in Nottingham to Grantham. In 1970 this led to the founding of the Grantham Canal Society - initially to preserve the amenity value of the canal rather than to reopen it to navigation - but unfortunately the early years of the society were not good ones for the canal. Interest in saving the canal had come just too late to save the Nottingham end of the route from being badly damaged by a new road construction scheme in the early 1970s, with a length of the new A6011 and a major junction with the A6520 built right on top of the canal - ironically just as the Canal Society was becoming more of a restoration-oriented body.

The first lock and a short length of canal leading off the Trent (which had been transferred to the then Trent Water Authority and maintained in working order for flood management purposes) was the site of a boat rally in 1973 - but this was done more of a publicity exercise for the restoration than in the expectation that it would one day be part of the restored route. Elsewhere on the canal, navigation authority British Waterways was reluctant to allow restoration of waterway structures, but the canal society carried out considerable towpath clearance work, held a rally for small craft at Hickling, created a picnic site and published a walking guide, while a restoration feasibility study was carried out in 1975.

Unfortunately in the late 1970s this generally positive (if restricted) progress came up against another major setback with proposals to develop an important new coalfield in the Vale of Belvoir which looked set to cause subsidence which would damage the canal restoration’s prospects. And to make things even more complicated, BW proposed building a new large-scale canal to transport the coal from the new mines to the Trent - leading to the Inland Waterways

Grantham Canal

restoration, we take a wider view of progress to date and plans for the future

Association feeling that it needed to support the new freight waterway.

Later BW withdrew its plans (as it duplicated an alternative plan for reopening railway lines to carry the coal), and ultimately in 1982 a Government Inquiry turned down the coalfield plans. But meanwhile the uncertainty and the disagreements within the waterways movement hadn’t helped the restoration’s prospects.

By the 1990s, however, the restoration was making good progress at the Grantham end. With WRG Canal Camps support-

Pictures by Martin Ludgate

Lock 1 in Nottingham was the scene of a 1973 boat rally but is unlikely to feature in the restored canal’s route

The Grantham Canal

Length: 33 miles Locks: 18 Date closed: 1936 The Grantham Canal opened in1797 and ran for 33 miles via 18 locks from the River Trent in Nottingham to Grantham. Intended to supply Grantham with coal, it was a wide-beam waterway built with locks 75ft by 14ft, so that it could take the same size of boats as the Nottingham Canal. The canal was moderately successful for the first half of the 19th Century, but its owners saw the arrival of the railways as a threat to its profitability. When a railway was proposed that would parellel the canal from Nottingham to Grantham, the canal’s owners agreed to sell out to the railway company. The railway opened in 1850, the canal’s ownership was transferred in 1854, and traffic on the canal subsequently declined. The last trade ended in 1929, and in 1936 it was officially abandoned - although the Act of Abandonment stipulated that 2ft of water should be maintained in the channel for agricultural needs. Although abandoned, the canal’s railway ownership (by then it was the London & North Eastern Railway, following mergers) meant that it was nationalised in 1948 along with the railways, and has ended up under the Canal & River Trust. In the 1950s many of the road bridges were demolished, but the channel has survived largely intact apart from the loss of a length to a major 1970s road scheme in Nottingham.

Nottingham To Shardlow River Trent

Original route obstructed To Newark

Proposed diversion via

Polser Brook

Cotgrave Cropwell Bishop Funding sought for Locks 12-13 restoration

Redmile Woolsthorpe Locks

Grantham

Restored length including locks 7 and 8 Kinoulton The Long Pound Locks 14-18 restored A1

Restored from Woolsthorpe to A1 page 21

On the restored navigable summit level section between Woolsthorpe and the edge of Grantham

ing the Canal Society’s efforts, the top three locks of the seven-lock Woolsthorpe flight were restored, and a former freight railway embankment blocking the canal was removed. The summit level was restored from Woolsthorpe to the A1 crossing on the edge of Grantham, and a tripboat operation started on this length.

Progress hasn’t been limited to the upper end of the canal: a section near Cotgrave including two locks was restored as part of remediation works on a former coal mine site, initial clearance was carried out at locks 9-11, and on the 20-mile ‘Long Pound’ between these locks and Woolsthorpe, a length of some two and a half miles east of Hickling was cleared in the 1990s thanks to a Derelict Land Grant, while a WRG Christmas Camp in 2006 and weekend visits by London WRG and WRG BITM have helped GCS with vegetation clearance elsewhere on the Long Pound.

Meanwhile in the background, the Canal Society studied the options for bypassing the Nottingham section - not only the part obliterated by the 1970s new road, but a longer length leading out of the city which runs alongside the Radcliffe Road. There are multiple side-roads which cross the canal at low level immediately before joining the main road, and it’s unlikely that the highways authorities would accept either liftbridges or (as it would have originally had) hump-backed bridges leading directly to Tjunctions.

In the last few years GCS returned to Woolsthorpe for the major Lottery-supported project to rebuild locks 14 and 15 - and that

has been the main focus of a huge canal society volunteer effort (made even greater by the discovery that both chambers needed to be completely dismantled and rebuilt, rather than repaired as had initially been hoped) supported by numerous WRG Canal Camps over several years leading up to 2019.

It hasn’t all been good news: although the A46 main road improvement scheme did (as one would hope) cross the canal with navigable headroom, could easily have made better provision for the canal as part of the junction works carried out where other roads connect with it. Where are we at now? The recent reopening means that five of the seven Woolsthorpe Locks are now restored, and the canal is continuously navigable from the A1 crossing on the edge of Grantham to just below Lock 14. A length including two locks is restored in Cotgrave. In between, sections

Next in line for restoration (given funding): Woolsthorpe Lock 13 have been cleared, many bridges still survive (and one has been reinstated, initially as a low level structure but designed to be converted to a liftbridge when needed), and the towpath is open throughout as a popular walk. A route has been identified (but may yet change) which uses an enlargement of the Polser Brook to gain a new access to the Trent downstream of Nottingham. So what next? The obvious next step is to restore the remaining two Woolsthorpe Locks. It is hoped that (unlike locks 14 and 15) Lock 13 will be more of a restoration than a demolition and rebuild, while Lock 12 looks like it might be another one needing to be taken right down. But unfortunately the funding from the existing National Lottery Heritage Fund grant has now been used up, NLHF haven’t yet agreed any further funding, and it looks like being a couple of years before any will Medium-term target: Redmile, the next village west of Woolsthorpe be forthcoming. So page 23

why doesn’t GCS begin restoring the locks slowly, using what resources and funds it can find? The problem with that approach is that any volunteer work done would normally be counted as equivalent ‘match funding’ to any Lottery grants - but that can’t necessarily be done retrospectively. It’s hoped that this can be overcome and work can begin on those locks in the not-too-distant future, but in the meantime there’s progress on a slipway and other works in the Woolsthorpe area.

At the same time, GCS has been looking to get work going on a ‘second front’ much nearer to the Nottingham end of the canal: the five-mile ‘dry section’ from Cotgrave through locks 9-11 and via Cropwell Bishop to near Kinoulton. And then what? Once Woolsthorpe locks 12 and 13 have be restored, there are no more blockages for some distance along the Long Pound heading west. In fact there are only two obstructions - a farm crossing and a very minor road - between there and Redmile. Reopening the canal to Redmile would create a ten-mile navigable length from there to the outskirts of Grantham and Redmile village would be an attractive destination for trip-boats, trailboats, and any other craft.

In the longer term, although the A1 main road represents a serious obstruction, GCS feels that the value of having a canal running right into the town rather than ending by a road on the outskirts makes it worth looking for a way through it. And crucially, unlike the road blockage at the Nottingham end, the A1 crosses with adequate headroom. Perhaps if it’s ever upgraded to motorway standard, and opportunity might arise.

If some way can then be found of funding the diversion at the Nottingham end (whether via the Polser Brook or any other route), that would leave some 15 miles of rural canal (with a number of missing road bridges) from Kinoulton to Redmile. That might sound a lot, but on the plus side it’s in water, some of the bridges survive, and there isn’t a single main (A or B class) road crossing it. And no locks at all.

Martin Ludgate

To find out more and to join the Grantham Canal Society see granthamcanal.org