A towpath journey:
Huddersfield Narrow Canal
EVERY canal enthusiast’s pride shines through in every mile of this canal. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal is a restoration success, hailed as one of ‘the’ achievements of the canal restoration era. With 74 locks and a three-mile tunnel, it is a challenge for the boater.
Work on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal began in 1794, with a brave route planning to burrow under the Pennines. Two teams of navvies began hacking the tunnel from either end but the team at Diggle was unwittingly progressing several feet higher than at the Marsden end. The project was plagued with errors.
Attempts to correct mistakes led to collapses in the tunnel and water seeping through. Blame was aimed at Benjamin Outram, the official canal engineer commissioned for the job, but he was a busy man and had left much of the supervision to the less experienced surveyor, Nicholas Brown.
To add to the burdens of the mismanaged canal build, floods in 1799 washed away sections of canal. Outram resigned and the canal hero, Thomas Telford, was consulted to complete the tunnel. The tunnel now cut through the hard millstone grit of Marston Moor with the ease of Telford’s own grit and brilliance. By 1811 the tunnel was open for business and the disconnected Huddersfield Narrow Canal became a through route at last.
Dukinf ield Junction in Ashton- under- Lyne is where the Huddersfield Narrow, Ashton and Peak Forest Canals meet, overlooked by Portland Basin Museum. The Huddersfield shadows the River Tame and the railway as it leaves the excitement of Manchester behind, heading north- east towards the Pennines. The first of its many locks takes the canal through Stalybridge, an early textile town, and beyond through leafy surrounds to the short Scout Tunnel (205yd/187m).
Climbing relentlessly towards Saddleworth Moor, Uppermill and the Summit, warehouses line its banks and, beyond the former cotton town of Mossley, pretty stone-clad villages dot the way to Summit Lock at Diggle. The summit level offers little respite as the mighty Standedge Tunnel awaits. Gates at the tunnel’s entrance are sculpted with ironwork figures legging a narrowboat into the tunnel. Just as boat horses before them, walkers must follow signs for the Standedge Trail up over the tunnel on to the moor.
Standedge Tunnel is one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways and the crowning glory of the Huddersfield, being the longest, deepest, highest canal tunnel in Britain, charging 3¼ miles (5029m) from one side of the Pennines at Diggle to Marsden at the other. To save money, the tunnel was built without towpaths, leaving boat horses to trot over the moors above while boat crews lay on their backs on top of their boats and walked their laden boats through the darkness, pushing with boots along the low arched brickwork lining the tunnel.
Some parts were unlined, and the rock face would have menaced tired leggers, but endurance was vital as wages depended on the speedy carriage of cargo. In the heyday of Canal Mania, the route became ludicrously busy and crews were under increasing pressure to deliver their goods on time. Since the tunnel only fitted one boat width, fights inevitably broke out when boats met and both crews refused to back up.
The canal company stepped in and only allowed its official leggers to operate in the tunnels. Traffic congestion was controlled with a one-way rule on a fourhourly rota each way. Britain’s canal boats were forced to do what Britain does best and queue!
At Tunnel End, Standedge Tunnel Visitor Centre and cafe draw day trippers to peep at the wonder of the tunnel, a short walk from Marsden. Marsden is steeped in the history of weaving and has often been used for filming popular TV series Last of the Summer Wine and Where the Heart is. History shows locals of the past were a feisty bunch, with uprisings
in their bones (from the Suffragette Movement to the Marsden Luddites).
When the canal arrived in the late 1700s, it brought the Industrial Revolution with it. For good or bad, textile mills would be forever knitted into the area’s history; but by a twist of industrial-fate the green landscape now asks to be loved for its extreme natural beauty too.
A series of 18 locks take the canal down through glorious country towards Slaithwaite. The canal is mostly tree-lined but views ahead show hills and moorland and there are frequent reminders of weaving industry and mill heritage. Just beyond Sparth Reservoir, views open up before becoming more enclosed again as the canal passes Lingards Wood.
As the canal approaches Slaithwaite (pronounced ‘Slawit’), it seamlessly brings the country into the town. The only town in the UK with a canal along its main street, the canal trails straight through the town as if the water was the main street itself, giving Slaithwaite genuine, non-fussy, canal character. The guillotine lock, restored in 1998, is the only working example remaining on Britain’s canals, and a nearby former mill houses Empire Brewing. The huge Globe Worsted Mill, now newly redeveloped, dominates the town centre.
Leaving the town behind, the canal continues to drop past Linthwaite, home to the aptly named Titanic Mills, before ending where it meets the wider Huddersfield Broad Canal in Huddersfield.
The canal and its huge tunnel could have lived happily if the Huddersfield and Manchester Railway Company hadn’t bought them. A railway line was built to follow a similar route and the canal was doomed. The last commercial boat travelled through the tunnel in 1921 and the canal finally closed in 1944. The fairy-tale ending had to wait for another generation of canal enthusiasm.
The Huddersfield Narrow is a canal worth celebrating, not just because it was once a shockingly defiant canal that didn’t care if the Pennines got in the way, but also due to the triumph of its restoration. In May 2001, HRH Prince Charles turned up to cheering crowds. After a 20-year restoration programme, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and its tunnel were open for boats again.