just ahead of us there is the mouth of the river  Ouse, now for those of you that might be thinking,  

yes paul and rebecca those famous youtubers that  explore old abandoned railways canals navigations  

and such have finally come to my area well it just  so turns out that there are Seven River Ouses in  

this country, now this particular one heads down  from the haywards heath type area right down here  

to the coast at new haven and today we're  exploring the old navigation that it was

so on our little channel we do love  exploring and telling you the story  

of old abandoned railways and canals and roadways  but they're often from post-industrial revolution  

well today's story is from the very early  industrial revolution and maybe even before that  

to a degree now people did move stuff up  and down route ways then but the biggest  

problem they had with this route way  was the fact it was actually a river  

so the river ooze certainly this river ooze here  in sussex was mentioned as far back as record  

sort of a lao 1086 the doomsday book and there on  after many times largely because of its inability  

to drain well and all the meadows here that we're  just walking past now used to flood a lot and  

there were continued efforts to try and stop that  so if you imagine back down at new haven where  

there is a huge breakwater well there didn't used  to be that breakwater and a shingle bars used to  

settle in front of the the entrance and  the entrance used to fluctuate all year  

round so there were various attempts in the last  thousand years to try and stop that from happening  

our first crossing of the day and uh still  inevitable on a uh using a car despite the  

fact it looks like it's made from planks but it's  got all sorts of weird and wonderful um rock all  

those red like peer-like structures i wonder if  this was a very different thing a few years back  

1422 1539 1731 1767 there were recorded attempts  did you like that recollection that was that was  

impressive there were recorded attempts to  sort all these problems out so the meadows out

yeah turns out that it was a swing bridge built in  1790 we'll come to the reason it was built in 1790  

very shortly because that's quite important  but i guess that's part of the mechanism  

if you just walk over to  the other side you can see  

that the central central pivot of the swing  bridge is just over there on that section

so it's 1767 and industry around the country  is starting to be taken a bit more seriously  

and in this area they had the river ooze and  they've been trying to manage it in in part for  

800 years or so perhaps more so 1767 john  smith and her engineer is tasked with  

trying to solve the problem certainly of  the meadows and it comes up with a number  

of different solutions but only one of them is  taken up which is basically just straightening  

out of large sections which we've already seen  back south of lewes we're now at barker mills  

which is very beautiful right it's very pretty  yeah there's probably a lot here we're not really  

understanding about what happened here we maybe  need to do a little bit more wandering in research

all right hi how you doing i'm doing fine how  you doing good well i'm i feel like there's a  

lot more at barcombe mills we haven't seen yet  I think there's a lot well i can hear water a  

lot that way over the bridge and it looks a bit  rickety to be fair the bridge is pinned about  

25 times got a massive crack down the  middle uh but looks quite connected

so maybe 1767 was a little bit too early  for john Smeaton's plans but within 20 years  

1788 in fact william jessop was tasked with trying  to work out if the ouse could be used as a proper  

navigation in perhaps a more canal-like sense  and he did within six months to a year or so  

william jessop has said that it could be  navigated right up to balcombe i think towards  

linford hayward's heath area and it could  be done four feet deep and up to 24 feet  

wide in places that is perfect to carry  vessels which could haul 30 tons or more

so we're just looking for a specific spot on the  ooze we're going to show you a cut and some locks  

just come across the lavender line um now i'd  heard of the lavender line but didn't really know  

where it was but just found it by all accounts  yeah oxford to uh lewes and i think their goal  

is to join the two but yeah really beautiful  this little station isfed, isfield is food  

yeah should have paid attention um it's quite  beautiful as close today as they always are  

when we turn up i think that's like a i think  this one might be closed for a while actually  

because there's another bigger sign that says  we are closed please check out our website  

so this is isfield church very picturesque  probably about half a kilometer maybe a  

kilometer away from any civilization which rings  a bell from the whole dorset lost villages video  

doesn't it where they moved church stayed  where it was and they moved the village

really picturesque church what we're  trying to find is the ooze as we've said  

and somewhere out the back here is a mott and  bailey is that the right pronunciation i believe  

it is ahead of us now i think you can see it both  works how we get there though i have no idea um  

because we really wanted to show you there's a cut  and locks and bits and we're going to talk about  

the next stages of this navigation and  what happened thereafter do you need a loop

um two things number one what's that  don't know back of a churchyard kind  

of right down in the nook and cranny number two

private private private private private private  private private private there's a mock and bailey  

there that's probably as old as the village itself  next to the churchyard there's the beautiful river  

oohs down there where there's a cut made 220  years ago there's a lock just over there there's  

pathways the other side of the river but you have  to go back 400 miles south or north to get to it  

there's an old what looks like  abandoned road beside this church  

which goes to nowhere well there's a  mystery in itself but you can't get there  

because you know what there's a landowner that  doesn't want you to get there despite the fact  

they're not using it for anything not even  categorizing no crops nothing just a lovely open  

green grass and left fallow but you  can't go there because it's private  

um you finish renting yeah okay should we  move on to what we're doing next yeah okay

so just below me is freshfield lock and it's in  quite a uh quite a state now you might not even  

notice here if you sort of walk past it and don't  look hard so come 1790 the navigation is underway  

william jessup chose pinkerton some contractors  he'd already worked with to make this navigable  

it's overseen by the commissioners and the the  people that would eventually charge tolls on here  

and by 1793 they decide that workers have  sub-standard it's not moving forward fast enough  

i suspect was their largest complaint and they'd  only made it to this point sheffield bridge which  

is around here somewhere we can't find where it  is because you can't walk anywhere because we're  

in sussex and england they'd only made it here  so three years of canal building some locks no  

tunnels no major earthworks and they'd only made  it to this point there's a lot more to be done  

now what to compound matters come 1795 they're  only taking in 230 pounds a year on tolls from the  

navigation now bear in mind it costs 20 000 pounds  to build that's nowhere near the kind of ratio of  

return you'd want on a profitable business so  1797 the canal is in the hands of the receivers  

it would take almost another  10 years to get things going  

the appointment of william smith a geologist  who worked on the summer set shire coal canal  

and a contractor willing to take part  payment and the rest in shares and bonds 1809  

and we are now at linford mill to the north of  hayward's heath things are finally moving forward

so we're nearing the end of today's journey we've  gone past hayward heath and linfield and i think  

that bit was abandoned from 1860 onwards we still  got some of the story to tell when we make these  

videos we try and do the research of where  all the bits are that you can still see today  

and despite the fact that there was something  like between 20 and 30 locks on this canal  

we couldn't find them i think we found  one haven't we that we can get to  

there's so many or so much of this is on private  land so much of this part of the country is just  

not for the likes of you and i unfortunately we  thought we'd see a lot more i guess is what i'm  

trying to say to we're now a good example of this  is we're now at ryeland's lock and we expected  

to see something maybe because it's quite a  remote little part of this uh this country  

and there's a nice cut of the of the navigation  there you can see the sides cut straight still  

but once again i don't know what that is perhaps  some kind of water utility building or something  

directly something similar to that and they've  just trashed it completely so there should be  

an old block basically it's just concrete sided  and it's a load of old it sums today up didn't  

really sums today up but on the upside it's  been lovely weather yeah we got good weather  

so the irony being that this navigation was said  to help uh bring 10 million bricks over from the  

netherlands up the navigation and help build the  balcombe viaduct and within 20 years of the london  

and brighton railway opening this section of the  canal canal the navigation had been abandoned

again this part of the the cut the navigation  we've got sort of steep cut in banks  

nothing elaborate about it no sort of  real toe path because everything is  

flat the other side of it um and yeah it's very  stupid cut and straight all the way down here  

which leads you to wonder where the original ooze  went and i wonder if it's this filled boundary  

here where it sort of meanders and curves  because this section ahead of us just goes  

straight as you can see right  up to the balcombe viaduct

so what became of this navigation well like so  many others or so many other canals their demise  

was in the form of the railway so  we've already mentioned the london and  

brighton railway but then there were two  or three more that came sort of replicated  

this navigation's journey so it largely became  pointless the lower end of it from lewes down to  

new new haven well that stayed open i think  until 1950 on account that there were some  

significant cement works there and even today  i think we saw a huge great ship didn't we  

oh god massive so i'm guessing it is  still a port in its own right very

important so ahead of us is the very beautiful  Balcombe video to the ooze valley viaduct or  

the ooze violet we're going to call it i have  to say if you ever in this area come and see it  

is amazing and the navigation ends almost  just before as far as we know in terms of  

its fur this navigable point i don't know if  there's a small wharf there or something but  

again there's nothing really here um rebecca  tells me i need to apologize today because  

I've been quite grumpy haven't i yeah it's been a  little bit underwhelming we thought we'd find more  

but we sort of tell you the story anyway  because it's been quite interesting but  

we thought we'd find more more locks there's  probably some out there we didn't find them  

in our research or our um meanderings  today but there you go we tried we did  

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