On Thursday 23 November 2017 at 7:45pm at the YMCA International Community Centre, Mansfield Road, Nottingham David Lyneham-Brown will talk about the Grantham canal.
Conceived during the ‘Canal Mania’ years at the end of the 18th century, the canal was a profitable enterprise up until the arrival of the railways in the 1850s. A gradual decline in traffic led to the canal being abandoned by the London & North Eastern Railway, its then owners, in 1936.
Much of the canal remained in water due to agreements for irrigating agriculture, although a section at Cropwell Bishop was allowed to dry out. The rural route of the canal meant that it escaped infilling, though a railway embankment was built across the canal at Woolthorpe in the 1950s and has had to be excavated.
Many hump-backed bridges were replaced with flat bridges over the years, and this has also created an obstacle to navigation.