Sir Nigel Gresley's Canal

History

Sir Nigel Gresley inherited his baronetcy when his older brother Sir Thomas Gresley, the fifth baronet, died unexpectedly of smallpox on 23 December 1753. As Thomas had no children, the title passed to Sir Nigel, who became the sixth baronet. He thus inherited land near Apedale and Chesterton, where there were coal mines and ironstone mines. In 1752, he had employed the canal engineer James Brindley to build a water engine to drain some coal mines that he owned near Manchester.

With his son Nigel Bowyer Gresley, later the seventh baronet, he promoted the Sir Nigel Gresley's Canal Act 1775 (15 Geo. 3. c. 16), which gained royal assent on 13 April 1775. It authorised him to build 3 mi of level canal from the mines at Apedale to a wharf in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It opened on an unknown date in 1776 and was used to transport coal from the mines to the town. The act placed controls on the price at which coal transported via the canal to Newcastle could be sold for the following 42 years. The canal was transferred to the ownership of Robert Edensor Heathcote in 1827. It closed around 1857.

The canal joined the Newcastle-under-Lyme Junction Canal at a mill in Cross Heath, a site now occupied by a motorbike shop in Swift House on the A34 Liverpool Road. It then ran northwest to Milehouse, Chesterton and the Apedale mines. The Junction Canal was planned in turn to connect to the Newcastle-under-Lyme Canal via an inclined plane, but although approved in the Newcastle-under-Lyme Canal and Sir Nigel Bowyer Gresley's Canal Junction Act 1798 this was not built due to lack of money, thus the Sir Nigel Gresley's Canal remained severed from the main inland network and the Junction Canal became no more than an extension of the Gresley's Canal.

Notes

References

Bibliography

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• {{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304060434/http://www.jim-shead.com/waterways/sdoc.php?wpage=PNRC0341#PNRC324 |archive-date=4 March 2016 |url-status=dead

References

1. {{harvnb. Priestley. 1831
2. "Sir Nigel Gresley's Canal". Jim Shead.
3. "Newcastle Under Lyme Junction Canal Route".