The Nottingham Canal
The Nottingham canal is just under 15 miles in length and
runs from Langley Mill in Derbyshire to
Nottingham and was built largely to serve the local mines and iron
works, which were thriving at the beginning of the industrial revolution and
now desperately in need of a cheap and reliable transport solution to carry
ore, coal and finished goods.
The idea was first put forward about 1790, when concerns
were raised that the lack of a canal
serving the mines local to Nottingham was likely to leave them at a
disadvantage to mine with a better logistical support structure.
William Jessop was consulted in 1791, though it was
actually James green who did the survey, in event of Jessop’s poor health at
that time, though Jessop prepared the report and presentation to Parliament.
Bejamin Outram took over from Jessop in 1792 and the canal
was finished in 1796 in spite of a hard winter and flood damage in 1794-5,
which escalated both works and costs considerably.
The initial popularity of the canal faded as the result of
high tolls and then the competition from the railways, the combination of
which led to a swift decline of use in the nineteenth century, with final
abandonment in 1936. The abandoned canal then became a source of flooding
and sections were filled in and built over.
Today the section through Nottingam connecting to the
River Trent remains navigable and has become part of the Beeston and
Nottingham canal.
Upstream of this the sections from Wollaton to Langley
Mill are now a nature reserveunder the authority of Broxtowe Borough Council
since 1977. Quite a lot of the original route is still in water, but a two
mile section has been destroyed by opencast mining.
The area was declared a nature reserve in 1993 and
provides a rich natural habitat for many forms of wildlife.