Bridge 101a 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 is actually a completely new one. At some time after the canal had been filled in a new road was laid across the canal. When the canal was reopened it was necessary to build this new bridge by excavating the canal and inserting a preformed concrete structure to carry the road and provide a channel for the canal.

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 west wall of the bridge is a lottery commission plaque. On the east wall is a blue plaque indicating the bridge was re-opened on 28th May 2001 by Frank Ruffley Tamesdes’s “Mr Canal". The bridge is named Ruffley’ s Bridge in his honour. This Pennine Waterways Website shows pictures of the opening ceremony of the bridges and canal in Stalybridge. Frank Ruffley had campaigned for 30 years to get the canal re-opened.

The bridges along the canal are numbered from the start at Huddersfield. British Waterways made a decision that the bridges should retain their numbers from when the canal was first built. Any totally new bridges are assigned a letter after the nearest bridge number. This bridge was therefore given the number 101a.

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

Visit Instructions:
To record a visit to a Millennium Waymark, please:

Take a photo of the item during your visit.

Describe your visit and what you thought about the item.

Please also mention what you personally did to mark the new Millennium. Was it a night to remember?

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.