Discovering Bath's Lost Canal – Somersetshire Coal Canal
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DISCOVERING BATH’S LOST CANAL Derrick Hunt and Liz Tuddenham Along the southern edge of the Bathscape area lies a lost canal waiting to be rediscovered. The Somersetshire Coal Canal was built at the same time as the Kennet & Avon Canal, but is far less well known. Although it closed over 100 years ago, the remains of it are still visible from public footpaths. THE PROBLEM PLANNING The coal mine owners of Somerset were staring Canals have to be built level, which makes them ruin in the face. The year was 1792 and the scene ideal for easy walking but gave the early was a meeting of the mine proprietors at the Old canal planners a major headache. Radstock and Down Inn near Chilcompton. There was plenty of Paulton were both much higher than Dundas coal in Somerset and there were ready markets Basin, so the canal level would normally have for it in Bath and all across southern England, but been brought down by a series of locks, which the problem was the transport. Welsh coal was lowered the boats by letting water out of a large flooding into Bath, via. Bristol and up the River masonry chamber. This meant wasting a lot of Avon by boat, far cheaper than Somerset coal could water which, at Paulton, would have to be taken be transported by pack horse through the rough from the Cam Brook. The millers along the Cam muddy lanes and byways that ran from Timsbury, had the legal rights to the water, which could not Paulton and Radstock to Bath. be taken away from them, so the canal engineers had to think again. Their ingenious solution was to keep the canal at ‘Paulton level’ until it had THE SOLUTION passed the last mill, then bring it down to Something had to be done to improve the trans- ’Dundas level’ at Combe Hay with a close-spaced port corridors of North Somerset and the buzzword flight of locks. The water to feed the locks would of the day was ‘Canals’. In contrast to modern have to be pumped up from the Cam, which at planning, it took only two years after that first that point was 135 feet below the canal. This meeting for the biggest transport link Bath had was to be done with a Boulton & Watt pumping ever known to be agreed, financed, passed through engine, the twin of the one now at Crofton on the Parliament and begin construction. The K&A Canal. ‘Somersetshire Coal Canal’ (the ‘Shire’ part of the name was intended to make it sound more appeal- WILLIAM SMITH ‘INVENTS’ GEOLOGY ing to investors) linked the coal pits of Paulton and There were no accurate maps showing contours Radstock to the Kennet and Avon Canal, which fed in those days, so the Canal company had to do the developing markets. The Paulton branch ran their own survey. A promising young surveyor through Camerton, Dunkerton and Combe Hay named William Smith was surveying coal mines in while the Radstock branch ran through Wellow; the area, so he was engaged to do a survey of the from a junction at Midford, they continued through canal under the guidance of the engineer, John Monkton Combe to meet the K&A Canal at Dundas Sutcliffe. One evening, Smith was writing up his Basin near the bottom of Brassknocker Hill. diary at the Swan Inn, Dunkerton, he had realised that fossils could be used to identify strata and his diary notes that evening formed the basis for the science we now know as Geology. THE CAISSON THE INCLINED PLANE & LOCK FUND Before the high-tech pumping engine could be Although Pickwick’s enterprise halved the price of installed at Combe Hay, an even more high-tech coal in Bath at a single stroke, there was still the solution was suggested in the form of Robert embarrassing gap in the canal at Combe Hay. A Weldon’s ‘Hydrostatick Caisson Lock’. This mongrel temporary gravity-operated railway, an ‘inclined cross between a lift and a submarine embodied a plane’, was laid down the hillside and boxes of principle which was so clever that it took a demon- coal were loaded on and off the boats at each end stration model to convince the Committee it could by cranes. This was one of the earliest known work. The boat was loaded through an airlock examples of containerisation. A separate into a watertight box which floated underwater in company was floated, with shareholders from a huge masonry tank built into the hillside; being both the K&A and the Somersetshire Coal Canal neutrally buoyant, like a submarine, it could carry companies to raise money for the ‘Lock Fund’. the boat to the bottom of the tank and release it Once again, Pickwick was prominent among the through another airlock. No water was wasted shareholders in this new company. The lock flight and the whole process was a lot quicker than the was built in great haste and the whole enterprise planned flight of locks, so they were put on hold opened for business in 1805. Trade rapidly whilst a Caisson Lock was built. increased and by the mid 1800s the Somersetshire Coal Canal was one of the most profitable canals in England. DISASTER Unfortunately the hillsides around the South of USING A RAILWAY TO BUILD A RAILWAY Bath contain layers of Fullers’ earth clay, which When the coal began to run out, the canal began contracts in dry weather and expands in wet to decline and the land was sold to the G.W.R. for weather, leading to slips and landslides which, even a railway. The roads in that area were so bad that nowadays, can quickly turn newly-resurfaced roads it was cheaper to build a temporary railway to into switchbacks. When pressure from the Fullers’ bring in the heavy equipment and materials that earth clay distorted the masonry tank of the were needed to build the main railway line. The Caisson, it jammed the mechanism and trapped the remains of this forgotten ‘contractor’s railway’ ‘submarine’ under water. True to the engineering puzzled historians for some while until they dictum that “If anything goes wrong, it will do so realised that they weren’t part of the canal. at the worst possible moment”, the Caisson went wrong on the day the Committee had agreed to REMAINS TO BE SEEN take a ride in it to demonstrate their faith in its The derelict canal from Dundas to Brassknocker safety. They escaped with their lives - but only just - Basin was rebuilt and connected to the Kennet & and went off the whole idea of Caissons. Avon Canal in the 1980s. It is used as boat moorings and is a valued amenity for boaters, PICKWICK TO THE RESCUE cyclists and walkers, with parking facilities and a With the failure of the Caisson, the canal could no café. The canal junction is adjacent to the longer afford to build the lock flight. Once again spectacular Dundas Aqueduct and has an unusual the mine owners were staring ruin in the face; the lifting bridge and a curious triple-gated entrance mines were producing coal in quantity and the K&A lock; if either canal is breached, this arrangement Canal was nearing completion, but there was still of gates will protect the other one from the ‘missing link’ of a 135 foot drop at Combe Hay. catastrophic water loss. The Canal Centre at Coal had to be unloaded at a wharf in Dunkerton Brassknocker has an exhibition which makes an and brought up the hill and into Bath by horse and excellent starting place for anyone who wants cart. The owner of the horse and cart, who, to begin an exploration of the canal, or who just incidentally, was also a shareholder in the canal, wants to stroll along and enjoy its picturesque was a Mr. Eleazer Pickwick. No doubt he did very boating atmosphere. well out of it, as he had done with his coaching enterprise and the inns he owned in Bath - and Yes, he was the very same Pickwick immortalised by Charles Dickens. Photographs, from top: Photographs, from top: Lock 15 after heavy Autumn rain The straggling lock flight Upper Midford bridge Midford Aqueduct The old Swan Inn, Dunkerton Dunkerton Big Aqueduct viewed from the A367 THE COAL CANAL WAY NOTHING LEFT OF THE CAISSON For the more enthusiastic walker, the ‘Coal Canal Sadly there are no remains of the caisson on the Way’ takes you the whole length of the Paulton surface or for some considerable depth, so please branch of the canal by easy stages. A booklet don’t trespass in search of them. When it failed, describing the walks is available or there is a free the caisson was dismantled and the stonework downloadable copy online www.coalcanal.org/ was probably used to help build the lock flight. books/CCW/ccw.php. The booklet describes each There is a trace of the Inclined Plane running up section of the walk in each direction and includes the hillside between Inner Meadow Cottage and maps and notes on the various features of the canal Caisson House, it can still be seen as a dip in the which still remain. land each side of the path which now follows the line of the railway. Just to the East of that is a MIDFORD mound jutting out of the hillside, which may be The canal company had its headquarters at Midford, the site where a second caisson was planned but next to the Hope & Anchor! One of the houses never built.