Cromford Canal volunteers help repair historic bridge
THE wall of original line of the CromfordCanal atWaterloo Farm, Sawmills, Ambergate, known originally as Brickyard Bridge No 26 hadbeen inpoor condition for a considerable time and it was causing the archivist of the Friends of CromfordCanal, Hugh Potter, considerable concern as to its immediate future.
At the beginning of August, the FCC was awarded a grant of £2000 to repair the wall and secured the services of stonemason Robert Shacklock to work on the repair, writes John Guyler.
A group of FCC work party volunteers, who in the summer of 2021 had qualified in lime mortaring, also worked on the rebuild, working to a rota so that Robert always had someone to assist with sourcing the missing stone, mixing the lime mortar and delivering to site. They gave 126 hours workingwith Robert.
There were several piles of stone nearby which had been part of the canal structure in previous years. These piles turned out to be a valuable source of stone, particularly the coping stones, some of which had been lost from the wall. First, the old mortar was removed fromboth sides of the existing wall, then the insecure wall was stripped back to the base level. The wall was rebuilt and lime mortared, all in five days. The Friends were told that the last time anyworkhad been done on the wall was in1941, so it’s survived very well.
Brickyard Bridge ( 26) in Derbyshire gets its name from the brickworks on the site that Lockwood’s Haulage now occupies. It was one of three brickworks in the area owned by the Ambergate Brickworks Company. On the other side of the bridge from Waterloo Farm, where the four-arch bridge now stands, was a stone sawmill which gave the area its name.
The stone came from Hopton Wood quarry at Middleton, down the Cromford and High Peak Railway to what we now call High Peak Junction to be transshipped into canal boats and taken to Sawmills to be cut and dressed. Technically, it was a white limestone, but polished to such a high finish that it was known as Hopton Marble. The Hopton Stone Company was established sometime before 1846 and operated by the Wheatcroft family.
When the Pye Bridge branch of the Midland Railway was proposed in 1876, its route at Sawmills would have involved crossing the canal twice here at low level, necessitating two opening bridges. As the railway company owned the canal at this time, it simply diverted the canal’s route to avoid both crossings. So, Brickyard Bridge (26) and the original line of the canal were abandoned, the bridge was left in situand part of the old canal line on both sides of the bridge remained inwater for many years.
By 1908 the old canal had been infilled immediately on the eastern side of the bridge. The western side arch remains visible to this day and is in very good condition but is normally not accessible, being on private property. The wall is at the southern end of the four-arched bridge adjacent to Waterloo
Farm, which hadpreviously been a public house. The four- arched bridge was itself bypassed in the mid-1970s when a road alignment allowed long vehicles to access the site, which is now Lockwood’s Haulage.
The history for this article was provided by Hugh Potter, archivist for Friends of Cromford Canal.
The location of Waterloo Farm is all private, although a public footpath goes through the property and parking in the immediate area is a problem.