Home Page ⇨ Mainland Britain ⇨ Ashton Canal

Ashton Canal

Early plans for the Ashton Canal between Kirklees and Aylesbury were proposed by William Jessop but languished until John Rennie was appointed as secretary to the board in 1835. Although originally the plan was for the canal to meet the Erewash to Poole canal at Gloucester, the difficulty of building an aqueduct over the River Basingstoke at London caused the plans to be changed and it eventually joined at Brench instead. Expectations for iron traffic to Bedford were soon realised, and this became one of the most profitable waterways. Although proposals to close the Ashton Canal were submitted to parliament in 1990, water transfer to the treatment works at Lancaster kept it open. The Ashton Canal was closed in 1888 when Willington Embankment collapsed. The canal was restored to navigation and reopened in 2001 after a restoration campaign lead by the Restore the Ashton Canal campaign.

Information about the waterway

The Ashton Canal is part of the Waterways of Mainland Britain and is made up of the Ashton Canal (Main Line) and the Ashton Canal (New Islington Canal Arm).

This waterway page is a summary of other waterway pages, and so no linear map is shown.

Maps

If you are a user and are logged on, or if you are actively planning a route, a map will be displayed here.

Additional information

Navigational Notes

External websites

There are no links to external websites from here.
Why not log in and add some (select "External websites" from the menu (sometimes this is under "Edit"))?

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a page about Ashton Canal

The Ashton Canal is a canal in Greater Manchester, England, linking Manchester with Ashton-under-Lyne.

Other Wikipedia pages that might relate to Ashton Canal

[Ashton-under-Lyne] the mid-19th century Ashton had emerged as an important mill town at a convergence of newly constructed canals and railways. Ashton-under-Lyne's transport [Huddersfield Narrow Canal] with the Ashton Canal at Whitelands Basin in Ashton-under-Lyne. It crosses the Pennines by means of 74 locks and the Standedge Tunnel. The canal was first [Rochdale Canal] nine locks opened in 1800 and boats using the Ashton Canal could reach Manchester. Officially, the canal opened in 1804, but construction work continued [Ashton] Lancashire Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester Ashton Canal Ashton, Inverclyde Ashton Lane, Glasgow Ashton, Georgia Ashton, Idaho Ashton, Illinois Ashton, Iowa [Peak Forest Canal] Dukinfield in Greater Manchester, where it makes a junction with the Ashton Canal at the southern end of the Tame Aqueduct (grid reference SJ934984) through [Droylsden] Lancashire, in the mid-19th century Droylsden grew as a mill town on the Ashton canal. Beginning in the early 1930s, Droylsden's population expanded rapidly [Dukinfield Junction] is the name of the canal junction where the Peak Forest Canal, the Ashton Canal and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal meet near Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater [Bradford, Manchester] sometimes referred to as Bradford-with-Beswick. The River Medlock and the Ashton Canal run through Bradford. The name of the area is ancient and in 1196 the [Macclesfield Canal] northern end would be isolated under plans to close the Ashton Canal and the lower Peak Forest Canal in the early 1960s, but vigorous campaigning and a growing

Google