Water Supply
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The Leeds & Liverpool Canal Historical Information Water Supply 1 The Increasing Need for Water Any canal relies upon its water supply. The L&LC Act allowed the company to take water from within one mile of the canal generally, and from within five miles of the summit level. Some supplies for water mills were protected, though it was not until the Acts after 1790 that such supplies were noted in any number. The graph below shows the development of water supplies compared to the increase in traffic. 50,000 Total cargo carried by the canal compared with the increase in reservoir capacity. 40,000 Total figures not available 14788 lockfulls for the railway lease of the general cargo traffic, 1850-73 1891 Winterburn 30,000 s 11268 n o t 10000 lockfulls 1885 Barrowford 0 5 f 1865 Foulridge Upper 20,000 o 8600 7903 lockfulls 1854 Rishton raised s d a 1840 White Moor o l 6083 t a Capacity of reservoirs 1834 Foulridge raised o 5283 10,000 B 4283 lockfulls 1828 Rishton 3483 lockfulls 1814 Foulridge raised 1796 Foulridge and Slipper Hill Current lock usage times two: circa 5,000 boats per annum or approx. 1790 usage 0 1780 1850 1870 1910 Locks and water supply 15 Liverpool Summit Leeds Level 10 Bingley eet F 5 Wigan Flight Variation in Lock Depth Lancashire 1887 Yorkshire 0 When designing a canal, the engineer should have locks which become slightly less deep the further they are from the summit. In theory, this allows a boat travelling up or down to use just one lock of water from the reservoir, the difference in fall of the locks supplying water lost from leakage, etc. In practise, locks were built with a fall to suit the location, thus in Yorkshire, there are deep locks at Bingley and Apperley Bridge which require more water than elsewhere. In Lancashire, Wigan flight suffered from subsidence which created a top lock with over 15 feet fall. On three occasions Wigan locks were ‘equalised’ to reduce the variation in fall between individual locks. 2 Produced by Mike Clarke for the L&LC Society Reservoirs were not the only water supply to the canal, as many small water courses were intercepted, and Foulridge Tunnel was calculated to provide the equivalent of 10 lockfulls per day from ground water. Pumping was expensive, which is why the 1937 scheme mentioned below was not introduced. 7 Leeds & Liverpool Canal Gargrave 6 Main Water Supply Sources 8 Skipton 4 P P 9 10 PP P 5 3 Keighley 11 P Bingley 2 Colne Nelson Blackburn Shipley P Tarleton Burnley Accrington P Leeds Bradford Burscough Chorley 13 12 15 1 14 16 ‘P’ indicates the aproximate location of the artesian well 20 19 Wigan pumping sites proposed in 1937 at Calverley, Apperley 17 18 Bridge, Keighley, Silsden, Kildwick, East Marton, Salterforth Leigh and White Moor Reservoir. Liverpool 1 Leeds Basin was supplied with additional water by pumping from the River Aire above the weir. The basin level was slightly higher than the river above the weir. The water was needed to compensate for boats from the Aire & Calder Navigation using the basin for loading and unloading. 2 Feeder above Dowley Gap Locks. 3 Morton Beck Feeder. Stockbridge Colliery shaft was also considered as a suitable source in the 1920s, though pumping was too expensive. 4 Brunthwaite and Howden Beck Feeder. The 1790 Act stopped the use of Howden Beck after the summit level was opened. 5 Bradley Feeder. 6 Eller Beck Feeder. 7 Holme Bridge feeder from Eshton Beck and Winterburn Reservoir. There is also a feeder from Chew Lane Beck below Higherland Lock. 8 Feeder from the High Ground Beck into the canal below Bank Newton bottom lock, now disused. 9 Several streams feed the Marton Pool, and there is a feed at Trenet from the Winterburn pipeline. 10 Greenberfield Feeder from the Winterburn pipeline. 11 The main water supply to the canal from the Foulridge and Slipper Hill Reservoirs and the County Brook feeder from White Moor Reservoir. Several streams also feed the Summit Pool, with additional ground water flows into the tunnel. Excess water feeds into Barrowford Reservoir. 12 Various collieries fed water into Burnley Pool, as did Accrington & Church sewage works. 13 Rishton Reservoir. 14 Feeder from Blackburn Corporation reservoirs in the 1880s and 1890s. 15 Feeder from stream near Finnington. 16 Various collieries fed water into the Lancaster southern section. 17 River Douglas feeder at Henhurst Bridge. This had previously fed into the head of the canal basin at Wigan. 18 Gathurst feeder from the River Douglas using the regulating lock below Dean Locks. This was subsequently moved to near Appley Bridge. 19 River Tawd Feeder. 20 Back pumping at Stanley Locks introduced in the 1930s. 3 The water supply to the Leeds & Liverpool Canal The Leeds & Liverpool Canal was built under its 1770 Act, which gave powers for the company to take water from streams, etc, up to 1000 yards from the canal, or five miles from the summit level, and to make reservoirs up to the same distance from the canal. The route from Leeds to Foulridge was as today, but at Foulridge the canal was to rise by a further three locks to the summit level where the canal passed through a large reservoir. It was then to descend, passing through Padiham and Whalley, down the Ribble Valley and then close to Leyland to rejoin the canal as built at Parbold. The water supply to several mills were protected: Armley Mills and Marton Mill (East Marton) in Yorkshire, and Padiham Mill, Chew Mill, Carr Mill (Barrowford), Braidley Mill (Marsden), and Lostock Mill in Lancashire. That only seven mills were mentioned on a route of over 100 miles suggests that there was little industrial development on the route. Streams mentioned by John Riley after he had surveyed the summit level water supplies were at Langrigstone Bridge, Salterforth Shoots Sough, Acringley, Foulridge, Ball Bridge and Slipper Hill. The canal was opened in sections, with work proceeding initially on both sides of the Pennines. By 1777, it was open in Yorkshire from Leeds to Ray Bridge, Gargrave, and in Lancashire from Liverpool to Parbold where a branch to the older Douglas Navigation had been built up the Douglas Valley to Gathurst. Water for this section came from the River Douglas at Gathurst, and from a feeder from the River Tawd near Lathom. Longbotham, the canal’s engineer, had also looked at using Hindley and Ince Brooks for supplying the Douglas at Wigan. In Yorkshire there were several feeders: the main ones were at Rushworth Swivel Bridge from the Morton Beck, the Breemfit (Brunthwaite) and Holden Feeder between the first two bridges on the Leeds side of Silsden, the Bradley Feeder, and two Holme Bridge Feeders, above and below the lock. Several small streams were also turned into the canal on the Skipton Pool and lower down the canal, such as near Dowley Gap Locks. Water may also have been taken from the Eller Beck by Lord Thanet’s Canal which would then supply the Leeds & Liverpool. Construction of the canal ceased in 1777 as the company had run out of money and at that time the American War of Independence made raising further finance difficult. Me work did continue, and the old Douglas Navigation was closed in 1781 when the branch canals from Burscough down to Sollom, and from Gathurst to Wigan opened. The terminus at Wigan used the old Douglas Navigation basin, water for the new canal section being drawn from the original supply from the River Douglas at Wigan. A second Act for the canal was passed in 1783 to give retrospective permission for the purchase of the Douglas Navigation by the canal company. The only water clauses concerned the water level between Spark Lane and Ferns Brook, between Rufford and Sollom, which was to be six inches below the average level of the land to prevent flooding. No water was to be discharged from the canal between Briers Mill (Burscough) and Sollom. This was because the Martin Mere land drainage scheme had resulted in subsidence, leaving parts of the Rufford branch higher than the surrounding land. There had been some flooding cause by a breach of the canal, and land owners also wanted permission to build culverts under the canal to allow their lands to drain into the Douglas. The Tawd feeder was still in use, and was repaired in 1785. Construction of the main canal restarted in 1790, and an Act was obtained to allow for a deviation of the line in Lancashire. The canal was now to pass to the south of the River Calder between Barrowford and Whalley, thus avoiding the construction of a large aqueduct at Whalley. Several clauses related to water supply, principally because of the increase in the use of water power by mills. Water was not to be taken out of the River Aire, or streams flowing into the river, above Gargrave Bridge in order to protect fulling mills above Gargrave. This was probably unnecessary as the canal’s water did not come from this area of the watershed. A second clause required that after the summit level was open, the water from Howden Brook was to be turned back into the River Aire and not to supply the canal. The supply from Brunthwaite Beck seems to have continued as it was mentioned in a list of 1834, and although the feeder channels are still surviving, it does not seem to be used today. Water was also not to be taken from the River Ribble or the Hyndburn, nor water supplying Martholme Mill (Gt Harwood).