Bridge 101
This is the 101st bridge from the start of the canal at Huddersfield.
This canal had ceased to be a working canal in 1944 but with leisure boating becoming popular 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.
In this case the canal had been filled in and the archway under the bridge bricked up. A footpath had been laid from the top of the bridge along the in filled canal into the centre of town. As part of the restoration work, the infill was removed, the archway cleared and a new concrete channel for the canal was laid. At the same time iron railings were installed under the bridge to give protection to people walking along the tow path.
The top of the bridge is not open to road traffic, and the top of the bridge is now used by pedestrians.
This
website shows the stages of the restoration work.
The bridge is positioned on a slight bend in the canal and has a single arch over the canal and adjoining tow path. Marks are still visible on the east side of the bridge where tow ropes cut grooves into the arch as the canal boats were towed by horses.
The Huddersfield Narrow Canal
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.
As the name suggest it is a narrow canal that although was cheaper to build had less carrying capacity compared to the other two broad canals.
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.
The canal is only 20 miles long and due to the nature of the terrain has 74 locks even though the summit tunnel reduced the required number of locks. The canal climbs 436 feet from Huddersfield and descends 334 feet to Ashton-Under-Lyne.
In theory having a summit tunnel to reduce the number of locks means that the journey times should be relatively short. However the tunnel does not have a tow path and when it was first opened it was necessary to lead the horses over the moor to the other end of the tunnel. Meanwhile it was necessary to leg the boat through the tunnel. This involved specialist workers who lay on their backs and used their legs with their feet against the tunnel wall to leg the boat through.
Competition from the railways led to the closure of the canal in 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 the whole canal was finally reopened by 2001. These days the canal is only open to leisure boaters and with the re-opening of other connecting canals it is possible to travel far and wide.
However boats are restricted to maximum width of 6 feet 10 inches and a draught of 3 feet 3 inches which does restrict some boats that are used on the broad canals.