We're opening the doors of some of our Yorkshire & North East premises to the public throughout September, as part of this month’s heritage open days.
People can enjoy free behind-the-scenes tours of our lock gate workshop at Stanley Ferry, near Wakefield, on 13 September, and see what happens in the control room at Tees Barrage at Stockton-on-Tees on 19 September. And there is a free demonstration of a working blacksmith’s forge at Dobson’s Lock at Apperley Bridge on 17 and 18 September.
The heritage survey
We're also appealing for people interested in the history of canals to volunteer to map and record the heritage of Yorkshire’s 250-year-old canals.
The heritage survey will chart how our canals have changed over the past 30 years, by updating and augmenting a survey of canals completed in the early 1990s by British Waterways and Historic England.
Over the course of several weeks earlier this year, a pilot of the heritage survey took place on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Teams of volunteers used an app developed specially to survey an array of interesting heritage assets situated along the canal between Leeds and Liverpool. The project is now being rolled out across our 2,000-mile network of canals that span England and Wales.
Seeing the canals in a different way
Simon Hinchliffe, our heritage adviser, explains: “Our volunteers have already undertaken more than 700 surveys on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and have been really enthralled by what they have found. We’re now looking for volunteers to survey the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigations. In volunteering to survey our heritage, people can get to see the canals in a different way, enjoy their history and undertake some research.”
Carrying out the volunteer-led survey of our 2,000-mile network of canals and the historic setting around them is expected to take four years. The project is being made possible thanks to funds raised by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
The new survey will record buildings associated with the canal, locks and lock cottages, bridges, aqueducts, tunnels, wharfs, warehouses, and stables. It will also include important details such as mileposts, horse ramps and cobbles that make up the rich fabric of the Britain’s unique and much-loved canal network. Later features such as World War II pill boxes will also be recorded.
The latest study will also include around 200 miles of canal restored since the first survey was conducted.
Updating original records
As well as physically surveying and photographing what’s present along the ageing canal network, the team will also utilise historical maps, photos and archive text to chart as much as possible about what has been lost or changed over the canals’ 250-year history.
Simon explains: “Thirty years after the first survey was completed, our charity has secured the funding to be able to go out and update and add to those original records. Using the support of our wonderful volunteers and embracing modern mobile technology, it will be a project that celebrates this wonderful legacy from our industrial past and helps preserve it for the future.
“The historic structures on our inland waterways come in all shapes and sizes, from majestic aqueducts to humbler humpback bridges, marked by the ropes of thousands of passing boats, to locks and milestones. These historic structures are still in use today providing some of the world’s finest examples of living industrial heritage and providing much needed outdoor space for 10 million people that visit the canals each year.”
