Stone Bridge 61 On The Peak Forest Canal – Buxworth, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 20.113 W 001° 58.090
30U E 568707 N 5910058
This stone bridge carries Silk Hill Road over the Peak Forest Canal at the site of Bugsworth basin, one of the largest inland canal ports in the UK and the only complete example of a canal and tramway terminus.
Waymark Code: WMKY4A
Location: North East England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/12/2014
Views: 1
The bridge carried a road that formed part of a route used to carry silk from the town of Macclesfield. It is situated between the top basin and the middle basin at the Peak Forest Canal / Tramway interchange and would have been built between 1794 and 1800.
At the northern end of the bridge, the road formed a junction with and crossed one of the high level tram ways.
The bridge is the last one on the canal and is number 61. There is no tow path under the bridge and there are steep stone steps built into the end of the bridge for boat users to give access between the canal and the top of the bridge.
Bugsworth Basin
The 18th Century had seen the development of the canal network in the UK to carry heavy goods, and led to towns such as Manchester become the first large industrial towns.
There was a demand for limestone and grit stone from the nearby quarries to be transported to Manchester and beyond and so the Peak Forest Canal was built with a connection to the Ashton Canal at Ashton-Under-Lyne.
The canal had a series of 16 locks to lift the canal a height of 209 feet from Ashton-Under-Lyne to this point, but the final rise to the quarries was to high for a canal. So a horse drawn tramway was built to form a connection between the canal junction here and the quarries themselves.
Much of the output from the quarries was loaded directly onto the canal boats but there was also a total of 19 lime kilns on this site to process the limestone into quick lime.
The wagons from the tramway took the limestone at a high level to the top of the kilns. After processing the processed quick lime was extracted from the bottom of the kiln and loaded onto the canal boats. A model of the site and information panel on the other side of the canal describe the operation of the site.
The site operated between 1796 until the 1920s. The canal and this basin was closed down and allowed to become derelict. However in the 1960s and 1970s leisure boating became popular and many canals were renovated and re-opened for leisure purposes.
Most of the Peak Forest Canal reopened 1974 and at that time terminated at Whaley Bridge. The remainder of the canal and this basin was reopened in 1999. However a major leak from the canal needed further renovation and it didn’t fully re-open until 2003. Much of the tramway has also been converted into a walking trail.
The basin is now protected as
Scheduled Ancient Monument number 242 under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.
It should be noted that the name of the nearby village changes its name from Bugsworth to Buxworth in 1930, but the basin continues to be called Bugsworth basin.