Why is all  money being spent on the leisure centre, when we have got a dried up canal bed which in its time was an engineering marvel, which was also a lifeline of the village in bygone days, and in this day and age would be an accet to the whole community to be used for fishing walking and most of all tourism which would bring much needed money to the village. I has been said in previous posts that it would be the most expensive to reinstate as a working canal. I would like to state that if it was not for the powers that be at the time, the selling off for housing and filling in of the canal, would not have been done and it would have been a simple task of just filling it up with water SIMPLE. How much longer do we have to listen to empty promises of it being reinstated. Chamberlain said let there be peace in our time I say let there be a canal in OUR TIME.

ROOSTER said:

Why is all  money being spent on the leisure centre, when we have got a dried up canal bed which in its time was an engineering marvel, which was also a lifeline of the village in bygone days, and in this day and age would be an accet to the whole community to be used for fishing walking and most of all tourism which would bring much needed money to the village. I has been said in previous posts that it would be the most expensive to reinstate as a working canal. I would like to state that if it was not for the powers that be at the time, the selling off for housing and filling in of the canal, would not have been done and it would have been a simple task of just filling it up with water SIMPLE. 

I'm sure the members of the Chesterfield Canal Trust would be happy to explain why it wouldnt have been as easy as you suggest – there are a few more (and expensive) problems that have occured since the canal became defunct in 1905 (after the collapse of The Norwood Tunnel) building of the M1, removal of road bridges (Bridge Street), new roads (Walford Road). 

Hindsight is a lovely thing to have but you have to be realistic about how it will be reinstated, how long it will take and how much it will cost.

As for the selling off bits for housing  – I believe that the canals in this country belong to British Waterways and presummably they would have received the money.  It must be over 20 years ago when this happened and if they were selling off the land I can't imagine that any one in a planning authority would have objected on the grounds that it was a lost asset – it handn't been in use for over 75 years by then. It will now be British Waterways who will be funding some of the cost of the restoration and they are spending billions in the whole country.

The projected cost to complete our bit – including new locks to take the canal up to Wales and Kiveton (originally there were 13 on this stretch) – is £10 to £20million  dependent on what are referred to as known and unknown risks (they unknowns have been costed but if they don't happen then its the lower figure.

I have walked the route  of the canal all the way to Chesterfield and there has been very little development on it's path from Killamarsh over to Chesterfield – some new housing in Renishaw and the the Trans Pennine footpath over at Stavely – a lot of the area is now open field with the canal having been filled in but as you suggest that would be the simple option to expose the original puddle clay lining and re-fill.  The route through Killamarsh was always the greatest engineered bit (roads, bridges, locks etc) and that is why it's the most expensive.

Some interesting reading from the Chesterfield Canal Trust about the history of the restoration, dates when the campaign was started and which specific authorities initially objected to the restoration.

"On the far side of the Norwood Tunnel in Derbyshire, the canal had been sold off by British Waterways to a variety of different owners. These included many private landowners, although small sections in Killamarsh were owned by North East Derbyshire District Council and Chesterfield Borough Council acquired a section near Staveley. More significanlty however, the four mile section between Chesterfield and Staveley, after years of negotiations, passed into the hands of Derbyshire County Council in 1987.

This section, unlike most of the section between Staveley and the Norwood Tunnel which was derelict at the best and filled in or built over at the worst, was still in water owing to the statutory duty of the canal's owners to supply water via the canal to Staveley Works. The County Council's motive in purchasing it in 1987 was more connected to preventing the canal interfering with the proposed Staveley-Brimington bypass than with any motive related to canal restoration. The bypass proposals intended to block the canal in five places by repeated crossings of the canal, supported by a Council decision in 1983 which stated that "the additional costs of restoring the Chesterfield Canal to a navigable waterway cannot be justified, and is, therefore, not promoted". The Canal Society's document 'A Future for the Chesterfield Canal', published in 1985, concurred with this with its vision of the canal as a truncated series of linear ponds.

After testing the strength of public feeling, the Society soon changed track, and began a long campaign to ensure that the bypass, if built, would accommodate navigation on a restored Chesterfield Canal. The first Seminar on the Future of the Chesterfield Canal, organised by the Canal Society in March 1988 at Worksop Town Hall, provided for the first time an occasion when representatives of all the local authorities, statutory and non-statutory bodies, voluntary groups and all concerend with the canal could begin to imagine the prospect of a restored canal, and see how the various pieces might fit together. It was a significant date in the history of the Chesterfield Canal, and over one hundred invited delegates left the seminar at the end of the day with a new vision of what opportunities a restored Chesterfield Canal offered.

Massive public support harnessed by the Canal Society to restore the canal to full navigation resulted in a 14000 signature petition which was presented to the County Council opposing the blocking of the canal by the Staveley-Brimington bypass, and gradually official opinions changed. The County Council allowed the Canal Society to begin work on the restoration of Tapton Lock in Chesterfield. This was a carefully chosen project, as the lock is in a clearly visible position from passing traffic on the busry A61, and was accessible to the public – a good 'shop window' for local people to see the enthusiasm of our volunteer workforce, and the transformation of this lock from dereliction to living heritage. The chamber, a grade 2 listed building was emptied of decades of silt and debris, the structure repaired and gated, and in the Society's greatest moment of triumph to date, the lock was formally opened on April 29th 1990. This achievement was recognised when in 1991 the Chesterfield Canal Society was the worthy recipient of Derbyshire County Council's major Greenwatch Award of £1000, together with the Christopher Power prize from the Inland Waterways Association. This was followed in 1992 by the Society jointly winning the Kenneth Goodwin Award from the Inland Waterways Association for the restoration achieved.

In Derbyshire the County Council was successful in its application for a similar Derelict Land Grant which culminated in the restoration of the first section of the canal from its junction with the River Rother in Chesterfield to Tapton Lock, completed in 1994. In the same year the County Council pulished its Recreational Strategy for the canal in its ownership, and the four councils to the west of the tunnel became signatories to the Strategy for the Protection and Restoration of the Chesterfield Canal.
Succeeding years brought a string of successes for the Canal Society in Derbyshire. 1995 saw the opening of a completely new Dixon Lock, designed by the Society to replace the original that was lost in opencasting, and financed largely by British Coal Opencast. The same year saw the completion of the engineering study, financed largely by English Partnerships and undertaken by Sir William Halcrow and Partners, which identified the cost of restoration between Chesterfield and the Norwood Tunnel at about £20m. The study also suggested engineering solutions of the main problem in Derbyshire, the passage of Killamarsh, where 22 houses had been built on the original line. This year the Christopher Powell Prize once again was awarded to the canal Society for its restoration work, and there was final confirmation from the County Council that the Staveley-Brimington bypass, if built, would not block the canal. The Society's volunteers achieved the opening of Bluebank Lock the next year, leaving only detailed work on Wheeldon Mill Lock to complete before all of Derbyshire's locks were restored – a magnificent achievement for a totally volunteer workforce. The contribution of the voolunteers of theWaterway Recovery Group in assisting on these works must be gratefully acknowledged. A Phase 2 grant to Derbyshire County Council permitted restoration of the canal from Tapton Lock in Chesterfield to Staveley and was completed in 1997, leaving only three road blockages awaiting removal before through navigation on this four mile section could commence.

Exciting though the achievements of these hectic years have been, substantial problems still remain to secure the finance for the restoration of the remaining ten miles of derelict canal in Derbyshire. While most of the restoration remaining is relatively straightforward there are significant problems – the collapsed Norwood Tunnel, the thirteen derelict locks of the Norwood Flight, the need to circumvent by substantial lock flights the blockages at Killamarsh, the lowered railway track at Staveley, substantial mining subsidence that has played havoc with the canal levels in Derbyshire, and negotiations with the many private owners of this section of canal. These are the problems that have been addressed by the Partnership Working Party since 1995, and which it is anticipated will culminate in a Heritage Lottery bid not only to complete the massive restoration task through to Chesterfield, but also to finance the imaginative link, proposed by the Chesterfield Canal Society, to make the River Rother navigable from Killamarsh to Rotherham. By providing a link from this new river navigation into the Chesterfield Canal at Killamarsh, a cruising ring of about 100 miles would be opened up using Yorkshire's waterway system"

It would appear that whilst it is taking time a lot of good work has been done by the various authorities involved and unless some one has a complete re-think on the whole canal through the village plan I would suggest that it will happen.

Post edited 7:40 am – October 20, 2009 by Manager

What has happened to the european funding that we supposed to have got for the restoration of the canal some people say it has been spent, now there's a surprise