Talk:Charnwood Forest Canal

Route
I find it diffuclt to picture where exactly this canal ran. OK, I get a feeling about a line through Coalville, Blackbrook, Nanpantan and Loughborough but it should be stated explicitly. Is this it just north of the reservoir: And if the reservoir burst, how come it is still there?

(Funny I seem to remember making similar comments about Ambergate Junction.) -- RHaworth 12:36, 2005 July 15 (UTC)

The line did not run from Coalville. It started at a place on the Ashby to Loughborough road called Thringstone Bridge - but don't be misled by this, it isn't IN Thringstone. It starts at a farm which is on a bend in the Loughborough Rosad just by the George and Dragon pub/restaurant. It winds its way through Osgathorpe and Grace Dieu, through Shepshed and ended in a garden of a house just near the Priory pub in Nanpanton. From Nanpanton the coal was taken into Loughborough by horse-drawn tramroad. However, the canal was never much used at the best of times and I don't think it was ever used at all after the disaster of Feb 1799.

Wendy Freer April 2006

As a boy living in Shepshed during the early to mid 1960’s, I played on “the meadows” the other side of a gate across what is now Anson Road. To the left, and up against the Southern railings of the cemetery, was “The Cut”, but it was only in later years, as my interest in the Midlands canal systems developed, did I realise that this was the dry canal bed of the Leicestershire Navigation. There was at that time a steep bank, sort of “terraced” that we would toboggan down in the winter, with a shallow pond that we could sledge across if we were lucky and the ice was thick enough!

The “Cut”, which is of course the Forest Line of the Leicester Navigation, was built to speed delivery of coals from the developing Leicestershire mining areas around Thringstone and Coleorton and through to sale in Leicester. The engineer employed was the famous canal engineer William Jessup, who quickly determined there was insufficient water to enable the use of locks to lower the boats the seventy-five feet down from the contour canal terminus at Nanpanton, to meet the existing canal in Loughborough. It was proposed to build a tramway, using the novel idea of metal rails, whereby loaded trucks would be trundled downhill and directly onto boats at the wharf; the empty wagons returned from Leicester being towed back up to Nanpanton using proper horsepower!

The Cut continued east across Charnwood road, and explained why there was a strange wide footpath (the towpath) across the bottom of what was my grandmother’s house on Kings Avenue. The canal was already filled in by this time but the path is still there today.

Much further West of Anson Road was the “Ackerdock” as I knew it... of course a local colloquialism for “Aqueduct”. This was an embankment carrying the remains of the railway across the Blackbrook Valley. Expecting water shortages, in 1797 the Blackbrook was dammed by large earthworks, and a feeder provided into the canal to the western end of the aqueduct. In a flood of 1799, water cascaded over this dam, and washed away the earth wall in a catastrophic failure where an estimated million tons of water cascaded down the valley. There was a tunnel under the canal aqueduct sited just down the valley, but this couldn’t take the sudden onset, and the whole canal embankment was washed away. There was further expensive damage down the valley, even as far as Dishley on the outskirts of Loughborough, but fortunately no deaths. The aqueduct was rebuilt, but suffered another final failure when one bank was washed away following a severe leak just the very next year. This was considered to be due to poor workmanship, in that the newly rebuilt embankment had not settled sufficiently causing leaks through the puddling clay used to seal the floor and sides. This was the final straw, so the canal that had never been a great success, and only seen use light use for two or three years, was now closed. Some of the route, including the remains of the “Ackerdock” was eventually sold for use in the railway that terminated at Loughborough Station, near the bottom of Alan Moss Road.

Abandoned, and having broken once already, in 1804 the reservoir was drained to make it safe. But…… this wasn’t the end for the Blackbrook Reservoir, and the dam was rebuilt rather more permanently by Loughborough Water Corporation in 1906, this time using locally quarried masonry. It wasn’t the end of the scares either. There was a fairly hefty tremor in 1957, causing some of the copings to slip, but the wall held firm and Blackbrook Reservoir still continues to supply water to Midlands Homes.

The now heavily wooded Ackerdock can be seen to the left when driving towards Shepshed on the A512, in the dip just before the Tickow Lane turn, and on a map to the north west of this can be seen as the winding track following the contours and the remains of the old canal heading off towards the coalfields. Mostly the canal followed a route to the north of the Ashby Road, passing by Holt Close in Shepshed, but around Cow Hill, now mostly buried under mountains of M1 earthworks, and destroyed by quarrying, it headed south, and can be tracked again across the Longcliffe golf course, crossing Snells Nook Lane behind the Priory, to terminate on Nanpanton Lane.

It was not until 1883 that the previously mentioned rail-line was developed by the Charnwood Forest Company, becoming known as “The Bluebell Line”, but following tradition it was soon losing money, became bankrupt and was run by a Receiver until incorporation into the LMS network.

I originally lived in Loughborough, and would play in the derelict engine sheds at the Station Road terminus and I remember occasional trains. When I moved to Shepshed, the railway line was an easy route to Loughborough and we would pad along the sleepers from Charnwood Road, near to the two “Railway” pubs. The line was finally closed in 1963, being used only for quarry traffic from Shepshed at the end.

The book “The Leicester and Melton Mowbray Navigations”, by Philip A Stevens can still be found in local canal-side stores and makes an interesting read. (ISBN 0-86299-187-0)

Dave Webster: d@vewebster.com Davewebsternoble 02:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

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