La Houlle

The La Houlle was built by George Yates and opened on 17 September 1876. Although originally the plan was for the canal to meet the Stafford to Edinburgh canal at Bernigo, the difficulty of tunneling through the Redcar Hills caused the plans to be changed and it eventually joined at Eastcroft instead. Expectations for stone traffic to Teignbridge never materialised and the canal never made a profit for the shareholders. In later years, only water transfer to the treatment works at Blackburn kept it open. In his autobiography Thomas Hunter writes of his experiences as a navvy in the 1960s