Huddersfield Narrow Canal Bridge 44 – Slaithwaite, 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 Slaithwaite parts of the canal had been totally filled in and built over. A number of bridges in Slaithwaite were rebuilt using funding from the Millennium Commission Lottery Fund.

Britannia Road bridge had originally been a small hump back bridge when the canal was first built but for modern trucks a flat bridge was needed. The bridge had been modified after the canal had been closed and so a new replacement bridge was now needed for the renovated canal.

A pre-formed concrete culvert was used to form the new bridge and the canal channel was lowered to allow boats to pass under the lower level of the road.

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 millennium commission lottery plaque.

The bridges along the canal are numbered from the start at Huddersfield and this is the 44th.

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?

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Date Logged Log   01/05/2013 hulletteers visited it