hi everybody welcome to a video from the cromford canal the cromford wharf just back there
we want to tell you the story of this canal today because it has some weird and wonderful
and unique engineering feats largely born out of the geography and the landscape here
along its 14.5 mile route and this little video is sponsored by the wonderful people
really i haven't read the gags yet oh will it involve a banana
so before we get to the good stuff we've just appeared at
high peak junction the high peak junction is the start of the high peaking cromford railway
let's have a quick scout in there though because this is the bottom of the incline
before we carry on going down the canal and show you some of the wonderful quirky bits
so rebecca why didn't we come here when we made the video about cromford high peak railway because
we were warned that you shouldn't go down there in a full moon very good point we started our
bike right at the top of this hill this is the top of the middleton top or the incline before that
and he goes oh you don't want to be going down there at the full moon so we thought well okay
we're just going to walk under the road here and we're going to walk to where the
sort of escape hatch was so if a train came down here um out of control then they had a the points
they could divert into the middle and it would crash safely without hurting anyone at the bottom
of the incline so as i say anything coming down the incline which had sort of broken from its
release at the top they would have been a change of points and send it into this hole ahead of us
and there is still a truck there which looks like it's from perhaps the last accident that
occurred here because it's still there smashed a bit look at that people are going to be raging
right now rebecca what well we saw this as a canal video yeah we've accidentally done railways yeah
oh well two for one yeah right back down 36 years ago previous to the railway to the cromford canal
so when you look at the geography and the landscape around here as we mentioned
it's incredibly imposing so to try and build a canal through here had to take an enormous effort
now that's why joseph outrun his son benjamin called upon william jessop for a helping hand
so that looks like the wood pumping house
um another sort of wharf area just over there and that could possibly mean that we're just about to
come up to lee wood aqueduct, hoping i've got all that right rebecca that sounded about right
so in order to get this area in the industry the growing industry of this area in the late 1700s
connected to the canal network they had to
go via the airwash canal now there's a massive resistance to that and to get things going as
we said william jessup and joseph outram and his son benjamin decided to build the canal
themselves and just get on with it themselves um yeah and here is the aqueduct very beautiful
have some of your melons you mean these oh yeah no because this is the readly section our sponsors
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okay should we go and look at the rest of this canal including the really quirky bits yes
so they wanted to connect the peak districts industry with the rest of the canal
network the cotton mills the lead the the limestone the coal so they got involved a
number of local influentials and all of a sudden overnight the awash canal
resistance just disappeared only to be replaced by another threat to the canal's entire existence
okay rebecca let's talk tunnels because the main part of this video is about the really
unique feature on one of the tunnels that are on the canal we've yet to get to a tunnel hold on
hold on you haven't done the other bit you said about there being another threat to the tunnels
no canals the next threat was the age-old argument of water the resource that was the derwent because
when they drew up the plans for this they declared that the derwent would feed the canal the cromford
canal now you can imagine all the mill owners downstream on the derwent were they were getting a
bit antsy william jessup and benjamin outrun spent the best part of a year measuring water flows now
what they decided after that year is they would need a big feeder pond at least one feed upon
and they said what we'll do there's enough water coming from the derwent but we'll also top it up
every sunday thereafter using water from the servant we will top up the reservoir i guess
from the derwent every single sunday when the mills weren't working and they measured that
over the course of a year and that would become instrumental in getting parliamentary approval
through they showed all the science behind it which is great so success on with the canal
so the first tunnel on this route and it's surprising they didn't need more
was the gregory tunnel 76 yards long
so in we go the 76 yard gregory tunnel and it's not often we get a tow path within the tunnel but
this was built quite wide now looking at the roof and the structure is bowed in all kinds of places
um we're going to meet some people coming through it looks
yeah absolutely love that design really that epitomizes canal design when we looked at the
lapel tunnel on the dudley number two canal the lapel tunnel which is like two miles long had
exactly the same design it's very very classic uh canal design where you had a tunnel and then
above it you just had sheer kind of brickwork yeah brickwork above it
so if you saw that sketchy shot looking through the fence where the skip is
you'll see that's exactly the spot where the tunnel went in on this uh western side
right so we've come to the conclusion it's here under here but buried
well i think the portals here there's nothing else here other than vegetation
i think he's been buried on account that there's um obviously a industrial
state just the other side where the other portal would have been so they just buried
the whole lot um which is a bit of a shame but it happens onwards to the next tunnel
we didn't plan that very well did we was i supposed to walk
i don't know onwards to the next tunnel
so how's your day rebecca not as warm as it was but it's still warm and we've got trousers on
this bit yeah we underestimated today how was it 21 degrees it's been like 29 the last week
so we've put trousers on and leggings and stuff we're now near ripley and that is about today's
main event that's going to tell us the main event which is the buttery tunnel 2966 yards long
so nearly three kilometers which is massive that's huge um it's what's that
like 1.7 miles or something i'm not very good with that but either way very long
we carried on our journey towards the tunnel up and over the vast embankment carrying
the a38 slip road which obliterated any chance of a canal revival here
eventually the site of the portal it wasn't an easy walk on this last stretch i can tell you
but in trying to uncover some of the mysteries that lay ahead it was well worth it so we found
the western port or buttery tunnel just down there we're gonna have a look in a second
now behind me you'll note the massive embankment and that's the more recent dual carriageway the
a38 prior to that you had the midland railway company had built a railway on top of here too
so the tunnel has actually been extended twice since its closure which is very curious
subsequently the portal we're going to see just down here isn't the original but nevertheless
it's still a portal to that tunnel which is over 1.7 miles long let's go and have a look
as we walked down the steps to the portal we became aware that it was possibly one of the
most unpleasant sights we have visited on our travels biggest concern i've got waders in my
bag biggest concern is if you ever look at the colour of the water there's a sewage farm an
outlet just over there now i don't think they're allowed to go into courses like this but it's
probably not a river course but i don't want to go in there get my waders do you agree rebecca
no i wouldn't i mean look at the color of it that's really disappointing anyway the story goes
if you were to go in there and go another eight to 900 yards you'd find something which is
unique now that unique thing is a wharf a wharf inside a canal tunnel they carved out they built
addicts in different directions and those addicts went to shafts directly above buttery works so
we'll show you the buttery works in a bit and we'll show you where those shafts would have
come out and they directly lifted up and down now many of you will say that's not unique and
there is a good reason for that but it is actually unique in its design so there's four or five other
examples which you can give you where there is a wharf underneath but all those other examples
the canal tunnel was built for the purpose of the wharf this canal tunnel was built 3 000 yards long
not for the purpose of the wharf the wolf was added thereafter for the buttery works
then there was another quirk to try and look for here you will recall that we talked about
the reservoir being refilled every sunday from the derwent then throughout the week the canal could
be refilled from the reservoir without disturbing the derwent and the mills that used its water
we had read that there was a tunnel that did this job then it went from the buttery reservoir
down the hill underground towards the western portal of the tunnel where it fed the canal
so we spent quite a bit of time thinking that the brook or the elite adjacent to the tunnel here
was part of that system so this is it so the buttery reservoir at the top there was filled
every sunday and throughout the week the buttery reservoir would use this
leaks this add it and tunnel from the reservoir down to here to refill the canal and therefore not
upset the mill owners when we went up to the reservoir itself we found what
we thought was the upper workings of this system this tunnel down to the other tunnel
to feed the canal elite yet again coming from the back of the middle section of this reservoir
after much searching around here this didn't quite add up even with a weir here it didn't
seem to be much well it didn't seem to give much control over the water outlet it did indeed turn
out to just be an overflow for the reservoir so what of this mysterious tunnel this canal feeder
what of this system to help feed and fill the canal with water from this reservoir where was it
well by chance this happened so we came up from the western portal of the buttery tunnel
which kind of just goes across the south side of this uh reservoir just back there
now obviously this was built to whoa what's down there i don't know let's have a look here okay
this is what looks like some kind of underground tunnel underneath the reservoir almost
how curious is this
so as you gathered at the time we didn't know what we were looking at here trying to peek
in over the doorway as close to impossible so forgive the shots here but it turned out that
this was actually the doorway to the valve for the reservoir and this underground tunnel that fed the
canal learning this after we had found this secret room under the reservoir was really quite exciting
can't tell where that goes because it's so there's such a small gap trying to take it through it's at
least 20 or 30 feet and that's as far as you can see i'll have a look at the camera later
and see those photos so on our final stop of the day to the eastern portal we had no idea if it
was visible and what state it would be in a quick pick of a shaft along the top one of four or five
retained for ventilation and we arrived at the eastern portal last bit of last bit of the day
for us because we've shattered it's nearly five o'clock we started it nine o'clock half eight this
morning from the crompton wharf and we're now only just the other side of the buttery tunnel
and there's loads more to explore the southern branch carries on going to the airwash canal
if i say pronounce it but our journey is going to end at the eastern portal to the buttery
tunnel so this was my last chance to grab a decent picture from inside the buttery tunnel the famous
tunnel and we're now on the eastern portal could i make it could i get a picture on the inside
is a view from above now you can't go through the canal so i tried up and over the top
but the sluice gates here put pay to that route too sadly i think this is going to be a boat trip
if you ever could get to this maybe you could get across in the winter but for now it was beyond my
energy level after such a long day so um this has been the first arm the arm from cromford
wharf down to buttery tunnel and hopefully we've given you a little bit of a different
story as ever of a canal that had a wharf halfway through its tunnel and um you know the plight of
the usual bunch the benjamin out room and william jessup building these canals the height of their
technology big fish no duck lots of ducks today um it's been a pleasure having you along people so do
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