Union Canal heritage gets a funding boost
LINLITHGOW Union Canal Society (LUCS) has been awarded a substantial grant to upgrade its online booking system, providing visitors with a modern, user-friendly and contactless system to access all the facilities at the popular tourist attraction and community facility.
The grant comes from Museums Galleries Scotland’s Recovery and Resilience Fund for independent museums to support recovery from the impact of the pandemic, build resilience and sustainability and protect the vital role that such organisations play in their local communities.
LUCS is based at the Canal Centre in the historic canal basin in Linlithgow on the Union Canal. Run entirely by volunteers, the society cares for and runs all the facilities at the basin, including Scotland’s only canal museum, housed in the former canal stable buildings.
The museum’s displays relate to the building, operation, decline and revival of Scotland’s Lowland canals and include photographs, model boats, original tools and equipment, objects from the working life of the canal and natural history information. The canal society also offers boat trips and boat hire, a tearoom and a fully equipped educational centre popular with schools.
LUCS has also recently launched a digital archive of images relating to the history of the canal, available free of charge online. In normal times the centre is open at weekends between April and September, and daily during school holidays. The listed buildings at the canal basin, now the museum and tearoom, were originally a cottage and stables, probably built soon after 1820. Constructed to transport coal and other minerals between Falkirk (and the Forth & Clyde Canal) and Edinburgh’s city centre, the canal itself was completed in 1822 but was soon overtaken by the railway, with transport of passengers ending by 1848.
After officially closing to navigation in 1965, the canal reopened in 2001 as part of the Millennium Link project. It is Scotland’s only contour canal (following a contour of 240ft which gave the canal its nickname of ‘the
Mathematical’) and was the last canal to be constructed north of the border. Its lock-free design allowed a construction time of only four years and meant that boats could travel quickly and efficiently along its entire route.
LUCS is planning to reopen the Canal Centre as soon as restrictions allow, and volunteers are already preparing to operate under whatever Covid restrictions are in place at the time. Find out more at lucs.org.uk