okay
good morning welcome to Somerset welcome to the camerton branch line that Archway
just there behind us is an old abandoned Railway but we're not treating it as an
abandoned Railway today it's actually a portal for us into a completely different
world the world of canal industrial archaeology and what remains behind
there is a site like nothing else including one of the most terrifying inventions you've
ever come across my name is Paul and I'm Rebecca welcome to today's Journey [Music]
so that really is a portal and seeing what's ahead of us now even from just this first point
of view really does feel like you're entering into a different world it's peaceful there's
trees everywhere and today's tale is what circles this field you know the head of us
is the first treat of the day which just so happens to be called lock number 15.
[Music]
now we have covered this canal before, we did the 10 Mile length of the somerset shire coal Canal
now one thing we didn't do was spend a lot of time here so we thought we'd give you a little bit more
from this one particular site it's coombe hay now go back to the late 1700s and have a look
at some of the old newspapers and you'll find a lot of adverts in those papers for stone masons
and people that would move Earthworks and navies of the time and you'll find adverts for people
to undertake up to 30 locks so something big was going to happen right here [Music]
thankfully that undertaking is here for everybody to see because the trust look after this canal
have really worked over the last couple of years on the vegetation and right now we're stood inside
uh 15 I want to say because 16 is where the Railway Bridge was and they've even cleared
deep down in the lock where the water would come out and yeah what a gorgeous site that is
to lock 14 just ahead of us now we can walk right into it um now although that advert that
I discussed appears in 1803 well that wasn't the first plan here and it wasn't the first advert
because locks were not even considered a few years earlier when this was being built what was being
considered as something completely terrified but we'll come to that when we get towards the top of
the hill look at this old wooden lock here nearly um sort of gone and yeah we can walk right inside
this chamber here it looks incredibly safe some of the ones we've seen on the wilts and
Barks quite terrifying in there a bit ropey brick construction but this is pure and masonry lined
um as per the adverts and the picture we've got just ahead of us is absolutely gorgeous
oh
[Music]
so as we walk alongside lock I think 13 there's a milestone just down there on
the floor unfortunately doesn't have his metal plaque on it so there's nothing to read it would
have been there stating probably the distance I suspect maybe the distance to the Kenneth canal
so it must be one of the most iconic and abandoned Canal images you'll ever see at least in this
country the site of the coom hey locks up ahead of us one after the other after the other masonry
blocks few feet wide and high just the most beautiful image 1767 I believe that coal was found
Portland Direction and the roads were the only way to transport that horse car that sort of thing
and they needed to deploy a canal they needed to engineer something to link up with the potential
markets for moving this around in a much better way than the roads allowed and of course canals
were just starting to take off in the country the industrial North so here we have the somerset coal
canal and uh 10 Mile route but they had a problem and the problem was right here in [ __ ] hey
[Music]
are you yeah it's weird because when the sun's out oh it's lovely lovely and warm
yeah and you know hat off get the vitamins in you get that back on there leave my hat
back on because the Sun goes behind the cloud look like goes dark but it's cold
then it's cold dark really weird isn't it when we're just walking in the lock earlier it goes
it's like an abandoned tunnel isn't it it goes really cold different atmosphere all together
so the problem those Canal Engineers had was classic Canal problem water doesn't flow very
well and hold a boat up and down a hill and this particular spot where we had 135 feet or
so to Traverse so the most obvious solution was locked but the problem with locks they use a lot
of water so at that period of time the late 1700s they were trying all sorts of weird and
wonderful things they really really needed to conserve water and they tried to do that here
before this beautiful sight before us was even considered we've reached the top of this first
section that lock there I think maybe like 11 is probably the the worst condition we've seen so far
lots of masonry blocks still inside it and we've reached what I think they're called the bull nose
so basically the canal now went back on itself and you can see the huge hill there in front of us we
still need to climb that and the locks here well here's a sort of a basin where you'd have to turn
right around and head back almost back on yourself up the hill and around the curve just there
foreign [Music] this way in terms of the downhill and flip over here now again here you've got the
hole here which would have housed a mechanism for pulling up and down for one of our word the sluice
and I'm sure people tell me the exact name and there once that sluice is pulled up the
water from the main part of the canal behind us would pour into there and it
would pour down some channels or some tunnels that were built into the lock
and they'd come out just down there and that would fill the entire look
so we've just left the first lock on this curve round the hill in our distance and we've probably
got one of the biggest distances between here and the next lock and in the next lock there's
quite a treat but before we show you that and while Rebecca and I continue to head this way
let's flip back to the studio and tell you why this was an afterthought why all these
locks went after sort of why five years before that there was another article in the newspaper
and it wasn't asking people to build locks it was asking them to build a castle and welcome
to the studio which also doubles up as our garden yeah very cold and wet damp
Studio it is actually raining it is right so first of all to show you this a little
experiment we're going to have to adapt an old fish tanks let's do that first [Music]
so fish tank now filled completely and this was this is here to represent what they use instead of
locks this is a cash on an enclosed system filled with water completely terrifying when I tell you
what's going to happen next so you need to imagine that this fish tank cash on is 30 to 40 feet deep
so we're saving ourselves a lot of locks over this period I've now drawn on each end an entrance to
this cash on I've drawn an in and I've drawn out now the in is the top and that was where you'd
enter the cash on but you wouldn't just enter it by just floating into it you'd have to enter into
one of these first this is a sealed unit a sealed trunk that would be in the water so in order to
enter this quite terrifying cash on your boat would come along at this top level and it would
line up with the in there now this watertight piping completely watertight as I said it would
be balanced and held by two rods that would be here now you have to imagine it's not filling with
water because I haven't done it quite watertight but a water-sealed gate would open here and you
would float on in to this heavily ballasted uh unit here but again airtight so now all of a
sudden you're in the cash on and you're submersed in water they ballasted it because it needed to be
flow it needed to act in the same way as a diver would not sink to the bottom and not float to the
top so a lot of ballast was in here to weigh it down and now the rods that would hold this would
just let it slowly slowly sink downwards like this now remember you're still inside this watertight
unit and you've now gone all the way to the bottom and all of a sudden here you are now you can open
the outdoor here like that then obviously you'll just be able to float your boat out assuming it
was at the right level so all this time you've got to remember that you're under water but inside an
airtight unit with masonry lined either side now it probably doesn't take an engineer probably take
someone like me to work out why this didn't work well they said it was because the Fuller clay the
Earth either side got wet and it basically pushed the sides in and they had a number of incidents in
trial in this and using it where it started to collapse and the actual unit here got stuck so
can you quite imagine now you're halfway down this Castle unit and it's stuck you're in there in your
barge just sat happily waiting and you realize the whole mechanisms got stuck I can't think
of anything more terrifying and yeah there are reports of people being stuck in those cash-ons
and as I stand here now in the next lock along Water Tree have a lot Rebecca that
is quite amazing see those locks there and let's assume they they might have
been replaced on one or two occasions but they could be up to 220 years old [Music]
so flipping back to the map the two initial cash-ons of the free envisaged were located
close to the now named Cash on house they would have meant the canal would have taken this route
instead of all the gorgeous locks that we see today clearly based on those 1803 adverts for
Canal locks they didn't work now whilst the locks were being constructed a temporary inclined plane
was in use to carry the vessels up and down now there is one more stretch of water in this
area that we found last time we had no idea what it was for this time would be different
okay we can't go any further along the canal this way walking back towards the bullnose
Corner because there's one more thing we want to show you um Again part of this wonderful
area that we're in this probably a square mile no more than that so many locks so many stories
and there's a One More Story to show you which we hope will find of Interest
[Music]
thank you
I took a bit of finding but we found the canal and you see just here on our left is a dip
um a good sized ditch probably not that big in terms of the traditional Canal size but
certainly in a lot of large enough to put a vessel on and this confused us a
lot because we thought well maybe there was another cast on at the end of here
it turns out that's not the case because as I said earlier when you build your 30 locks or however
many are down there certainly sort of 20 plus or you've still got to consider the lack of water so
this leet was built didn't turn out to be a canal although they did use it to move coal because at
the end of here was something that needed coal just up ahead we'll show you exactly what it was
and oh my goodness me how did we miss this last time I don't know what they've grown
yeah what they've uncovered they uncovered what is what that was built for the lack of water in
this canal because of all the locks that they'd used well that meant that they needed to pump
it back up again now remember when we mentioned the incline earlier well they used the the the
the elite or the bit of the incline the bottom of the incline and they pulled water up from
there to here so we're back at the height of the canal now the highest point and it would have fed
water all the way along there to the other side of castle house where it would have fed it back
into the canal so this site here was an extremely early pump house I assume steam driven because I
think they transported coal all the way along the canal or this leak here to power this here and I'm
so pleased they start to sort of restoration work or they try to uncover it look at this
have you not know this is here in fact this was called engine Woods for this reason
so from engine woods and the pumping house which we completely missed last time we
were here thanks for watching genuinely appreciate the privilege of being able to
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