The Future Aqueduct of Chesterfield

The Future Aqueduct of Chesterfield

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Join me in Derbyshire as we follow the beautiful chesterfield canal as the restoration continues in the west, aiming to plug the gap and join the rest of the restored Chesterfield Canal as it winds its way down to the River Trent.

Today we are at Staveley looking at the second part of the Staveley town deal. Under the massive road bridges and away from the old open cast line which now holds the basin. Here several railways crossed the canal which are now abandoned and the planned HS2 depot was to cross. Now the trans pennine trail needs to cross the canal at a new footbridge that takes the cycle way across the canal. Then the canal follows down onto puddlebanks which is a fascinating area which we explore today, from interlocking clay blocks to a massive aqueduct as the canal goes high on an embankment winding it’s way through towards the Norbridge Arm, Renishaw. Killamarsh and towards the locks and Norwood Tunnel

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I’m on the Chesterfield canal and right behind us here is uh a valley and across here is going to have to be a massive Aqueduct it’s a million pound [Music] structure so we’re walking away now from the current part of the restoration of the chesfield canal across there is going to be a big bridge which is part of the uh Trail which comes through here it’s old railway tracks which are now cycleways hs2 was going to come through here but that no longer is cuz they’ve canceled the northern sections and we’re going on to the second part of the stavely Town deal which we discussed on that last video and the first thing you’re going to be able to see beside me here is the canal so the canal does still exist it’s very overgrown it’s very I mean there’s dragon flies and stuff in there but you haven’t got much else in there it’s too choked up to be useful so one this is is eventually dug out which should hopefully be in the next year or so this will become a much better wildli Corridor than what it currently is and then you got some Narrows here I believe that’s what this is anyway you can see the wall there there don’t know where I can stand here you never see me again I died but yeah so that’s an old wall there narrow this section of canal down as it runs up through into the pedal Banks so this is the next stage in 9 mies of canal restoration for the trust which from what I’ve heard they want to get done this decade which is incredible let’s be honest wherever they do that I have no idea but but we do hope they will because it’s going to give me a lot of content to bring you over the next few years so from my waterway route Maps there’s a slight uh change in the the running of the canal here it’s moving across obviously slightly uh I believe that’s probably just landowner issues but this is then going up into the bank that runs all the way around here now this is basically just a big clay bank with the canal in the top and it’s a way of running this canal more as a contour Canal rather than than locks meant you could get over this Valley without you know having to drop down come back up through and climb back up embankments on canals are a bit of an issue it’s not like a railway embankment you’re carrying not just the weight of the boats on it you’re carrying the weight of the water so they’ve got to be quite chunky to be able to hold it there’s a really good one on the Grand Union which goes up to the iron trunk Aqueduct which I’ve covered before and that embankment is impressive just because the weight of that thing must be especially the fact that it’s a wide Canal now I’m not sure what side the canal was on here so I’m making this up as I go along but this to me looks to be the side and I would probably say that’s right actually cuz you look at it’s readed you can see damp soil where it’s in the clay and there’s a bit of a drop off here as well so I would say the topa is on the left and the canal is on the right so um the P Bank we we know basically we know it was built out of a whole load of sort of interlocking clay blocks we don’t know a huge amount more um it’s one of the early clay embankments that was built on the canal Network and I think people know they know more about what was built sort of 20 years later um but this was the late’ 70s late 1770s and we don’t really know so actually one of the most interesting things for us about the puddle Bank project is going to be getting in there cuz we will have to remove some of the old sections of puddle Bank in order to um just in order to get to do the engineering CU a lot of it subsided so we’re going to have to rebuild a lot of it up one of the most interesting things is going to be getting in when we do that to understand and try and see whether we can work out how it was built cuz I say we really don’t know and it’s and and it’s quite fascinating cuz it’s it’s a big structure in those days so far 12 miles of this Canal been restored and when you consider there’s 9 miles left uh it’s shows that they know what they’re doing that started in 1988 I think the first section was done and has taken a canal into Chesterfield with other projects that way for like a town Basin and stuff and brought it all the way up here as well as I think some bits down on the other end of the canal as well although it’s taken them what’s that 36 years to get where they are it’s gotten to that point where it’s snowboard so where the project started at first it would have been slow hard to get members hard to get funding and all that lot the Canal Trust now have the experience and the power and they’ve got some really good people in charge now who who are running the trust uh the former chairman who unfortunately passed away did loads for the canal and his legacy is continuing along this route now and with that experience things can be done a lot quicker so if the tunnel can be done and the locks can be done that go um around kiler Marsh I think it’s called where the canal was built on there’s a very real possibility that this could be done in the time period they’re looking at which would be incredible the tunnel is the one for me that’s going to hold things up I don’t know where they are in that at the moment so we’re at that sharp right corner now and this is where the canal is currently funded to so we’ve come quite far from where we were before you can still see where the canal is going to go they’ve they’re going to need a lot of clay to redo this so if you stand on the if you stand on the end of the poal bank where it meets the river there some of it Still Remains um but because of all the subsidence if you stand there now your head is probably just about grazing the underside of the of the bed so you’re just about getting your head wet so we’ve got quite a lot of rebuilding today and the trust were donated a lot of clay by seen I think limited they’re called they’re a local company and I think they donated us all that’s needed to do this so that’s a massive part of the money gone that they they needed to spend which means they can get a lot further along this route with with what they have here we go you can kind of see the canal in here now so this is then the next project to go on there’s a project further on rewatering renisha which is a section which was uh previously restored but is uh kind of not in water it’s drained itself out so I think they’re getting that ready and then they just got connect these sections up together but we’re coming across the Valley now this is the uh River do Le Valley and this comes towards uh what will be the aqueduct so it’s going to be 37 M long and stand 10 m above this Valley so you can see what sort of Bank we’re on now it’s quite a high bank it’s going to cost about 91,000 for the actual design stage which Chesterfield bur Council are paying they still need to raise sort of a million or more to actually build it so please do keep an eye I’ll share posts when they start fundraising for this they’ve just done a lot of fundraising for a lock and Gates and stuff further down which will be on my previous video but I’m sure this will be the next bit done the stavely town deal and the canal restoration as part of it they think will bring s 20% more tourists into the area which is always good you see a big hole in the embankment here expect that was dug out for the farmer to get through years ago and that’s part of the problem when these canals were abandoned and handed back they would just bulldo through where they needed to be really I know we’re close cuz he pylons right across it I’ve seen uh there’s wobbly Runner who does videos down here which are very good while wor is up if you see him the problem they’ve got here is when they come to do this because of the overhead power lines and the lack of roads they can’t really use any cranes to lift the bridge in place and it’s going to be a big steel uh trunk going across and it would be over here it’s going to be supported by two buttresses which are going to have to be pretty big and dug quite far down I think about 40 50t deep they need to be into the ground to support the weight of it so when this was originally in place and the canal closed the environment agency had issues with flooding there were literally just two CTS so two little tunnels running underneath to take the water running through and it created serious flood issues um further down the the river when the canal closed they just dug this all out and this new Aqueduct will just be one big giant span it’ll be really fantastic to see and should draw people to the area actually and that will alleviate all those issues because there won’t be just a C through like before it will be a proper sort of high up Aqueduct and uh just on the other side here we’re going to have a walk cut to where there was a junction and end the video there it’s just a nice place to end it to be honest with you cuz when I do some more further down we can get to the junction and I’m walk down the branch and see what’s still there there is up here somewhere a mile poost I know there is we’ve seen it on some other videos so it’s right here somewhere it’s actually really overgrown I don’t think you can see anything you got nb’s arm would have come off here and gone through the trees on the other side of the canal here so there’s a plan for a bridge here to join on to uh that section uh there’s a bit of an open over there so I think we might be it might be here actually I think that’s it down there this then carries on up towards renisha killer Marsh and then comes around goes under I think there’s a Motorway there through a tunnel that’s going to have to be rebuilt and then off to join the rest of the line so there’s quite a a lot to cover on this canal uh not a huge amount of miles but a huge amount of structure to get through it’s a whole bunch of locks that going to have to be built tunnels and everything so join up if you can the link will be in the description but thanks for watching have a great day [Music]