Thanks to its location on the mighty River Trent, Nottingham was for centuries a significant inland port.
It’s status was augmented in this regard in 1796 when the Nottingham Canal opened.
Begun in 1792, the 14.7 mile long canal’s construction was tricky with the works taking longer than expected and going 77 percent over budget.
Running from Langley Mill in Derbyshire, the Nottingham Canal connected with the Cromford Canal, running down from the enphonymous textile village on the edge of the Peak District.
This enabled the transport of raw materials and finished cloth alike to the mills of the Derwent Valley, as well as the transportation of Peak District lead and limestone. However, the bulk of the canal’s freight was intended to be coal mined in the colliery towns a d villages along the Erewash Valley.
The canal itself ran along the side of the flat, wide River Erewash Valley. Despite its troubled gestation it proved profitable with a dividend being paid from 1804.
In the 1840s when the rail network began stretching its capillaries between the interconnecting towns and villages where Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire meet, the company sold up to a railway company. The rail company kept on operating the canal, albiet with steadily decline traffic, and less profitable cargoes.
From 1923 when the government forcibly restructured the British railway system into 4 gigantic regional monopoly companies, so as to stave off having the nationalise the creaking and perenially under invested in network, the Nottingham Canal fell under the purview of the Great Northern Railway.
They cut their loses in 1936, opting to lease the southern most section of the Nottingham Canal to the Trent Navigation Company, and abandoning the bulk of the waterway running from the Trent north of Nottingham city centre.
The southern section which was kept open, remains to this day as the 5 mile long Nottingham and Beeston Canal an attractive and popular, waterway and green lung, running from central Nottingham out to its western suburbs from wharfs in the city centre.
The northwards stretch of the Nottingham Canal from Nottingham into Derbyshire was abandoned and rapidly decayed.
In 1955 Nottingham City Council concerned about the potentially for the muddy remains of the canal in their north western suburbs to be a health and safety hazard, as well as an eyesore, purchased what remained of the canal within their boundary.
Having purchased their section of the Nottingham Canal, the city council back filled it, obliterating more or less every trace of the waterway within the city boundaries and constructing new housing where the water had once flowed.
The northern section of the canal from the edge of Nottingham up to Langley Mill was left to continue its decay.
At least until 1977 when Broxtowe Borough Council purchased the entirety of the Canal inside its boundary. Like Derbyshire County Council who at roughly the same time decided to buy the north western chunk of the equally abandoned Cromford Canal, Broxtowe’s plan was to convert the Canal into a public amenity. Part park, part nature reserve, part fishing club.
The far north of the canal has been severed by open cast mining during the Post War period, industrial estate and new housing construction.
However, along the section purchased by Broxtowe Borough Council, which was amongst the most scenic, winding through the countryside between the little towns of the Erewash Valley; it is possible to get a feel of what the waterway was like. Even if at one point the canal has been entirely obliterated by a garden centre.
In essence the project was akin to the New York High Line, and other linear parks making use of former transport infrastructure, a generation before New York’s High Line got off the ground.
Today some overgrown sections have a distinctive former canal feel to them.
Whilst others, especially near where the construction of the M1 in the late 1950s cut across the canal’s footprint, feel just like any suburban green corridor with a cycle track and footpath running across them.
Interestingly it is the sections that serve as a reserve for waterfowl, water plants and other wetland ecology which feel most like a canal today.
Inhabitants of the sections still in water, albiet allowed to fill up with mosses, bulrushes and all manner of other water plants, include moor hens, swans and herons.
Near the northern end of the retained section of the Nottingham Canal which has been transformed into a park you pass the majestic, arguably awe inspiring hulk of the Bennerley Viaduct. A rare surviving wrought iron lattice railway viaduct constructed in 1877 that stretches across the Erewash Valley.
Standing nearly 20 metres off the ground and stretching for several hundred metres the Viaduct stood derelict for well over 50 years. Stranded amidst coal yards in the centre of the Erewash Valley.
Now following a £1.4million Heritage Lottery grant the viaduct – nicknamed “the Iron Giant” has been brought back into use as a walking and cycling route. All thanks to the work of a campaign group called The Friends of Bennerley Viaduct.
Their campaign has enabled the former railway viaduct to join its neighbour the Nottingham Canal in being a successful example of a long discarded and abandoned means of transportation being transformed into a leisure amenity and a useful and sustainable piece of walking and cycling infrastructure.