Bridge 99 On The Huddersfield Narrow Canal – Stalybridge, UK - Made for the Millennium on Waymarking.com

This canal is one of three that crosses the Pennine Hills and built to provide transport between Huddersfield in Yorkshire and Ashton-Under-Lyne in Lancashire.

Work started on it in 1794 and partly due to the need to construct the longest canal tunnel in the United Kingdom it was completed 17 years later in 1811.

Although in the early days the canal was profitable, competition from railways and roads meant that it had closed by 1944.

During the 1970s leisure boating in the U.K. had become popular and there were various campaigns to re-open canals that had lain derelict for a number of years.

Work on restoring this canal started in 1981 and was completed in 2001. In urban settings such as the centre of the town of Stalybridge parts of the canal had been totally filled in and built over. A number of bridges in both Stalybridge and Slaithwaite were rebuilt using funding from the Millennium Commission Lottery Fund.

This bridge, the 99th from the start of the canal at Huddersfield was one of these bridges. It is next to the bottom gates on lock 7W. The old bridge only crossed the canal and did not enclose the towpath. The new bridge was made wide enough to also cover the towpath. This Pennine Waterways Website shows the extensive engineering works carried out on the bridge.

The keystone on each side of the bridge has the year 2000 carved into it and on the east wall of the bridge is a lottery commission plaque.

Related web site: [Web Link] Can you tell us who created the item: British Waterways Condition of the item: Great So what did YOU do for the millennium?: Attended a party

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