C is for Canal mile markers

If you know Loughborough at all, you might have expected me to write about our unique Carillon for the April Blogging A-Z Challenge, but I have written extensively about this on the blog, and the most recent post was only in February this year – but well worth a read if you missed it!! 

Or, I might have written about the Corcoran family – a local doctor, his son, and his two daughters, the latter being active Suffragettes – but again, I’ve already shared their story with you!

So, instead, I am writing about our canal! I could have shared a walk along the canal with you, or a trip on a narrow boat, but instead, I am sharing our canal markers …

A selection of mile markers from the canals across our region that I have seen

If you know our canals at all, you’ll know that we are lucky enough to have a fabulous stretch of canal running through our lovely town, but you’ll probably also have noticed that we don’t have any mile markers! So, why am I writing about them, you ask? Well, years ago, I’m supposing we did have some!

When our Grand Union canal towards the Trent was built in 1778, and called at the time the Loughborough Navigation after its founders, the Loughborough Navigation Company, it was apparently the most profitable waterway in Britain. At the time, the canal would not have been the tranquil place we know today, frequented only by holidaymakers and day trippers, walkers and cyclists, but would have been dirty, smelly, noisy, and a hive of activity. Barges would have been transporting goods like coal, from one place to another – the quickest and easiest way, before the coming of the railways, and the improved roads that we know today.

The Loughborough Navigation began in what is today called Loughborough Basin, close to the road junction of Bridge Street, and The Rushes. The Leicester Navigation came about 20 years later, and ran from the Chain Bridge, which is on the right-hand side just after you come out of the basin, to Leicester and beyond.

Rather like the turnpike roads that required a traveller to pay a toll to use them, some of which was used to maintain the routes, the people using the canal also had to pay a toll for their use. In order to help both the bargees and the toll keepers know what the charge would be, (which was based on distance travelled and weight of cargo), mile markers were installed along the routes. And this is why they show the distances between places, rather than being used for directional help.

The Chain Bridge was once a bridge with a chain across it. This was to ensure that bargees didn’t pass from the Loughborough to the Leicester Navigation (or vice versa) without first paying the toll, as these canals were maintained by different companies, so some of the money paid in tolls would go towards the upkeep of the canal.

The two tollhouses on the Loughborough Navigation were situated at what we now call Loughborough Lock (referred to by a local history expert as the Thorpe Fields or Town Lock), and just beyond the Chain Bridge. I would imagine (meaning, I don’t know for sure) that the properties that are still in those two locations are likely to be the original lock-and-tollkeepers cottages. So, there were sure to have been mile markers along our canal.

Of course, the term ‘mile markers’ is in some cases a misnomer as many existing mile markers that I’ve seen include quarter miles as well! There is a good example of this in the Melton Carnegie Museum. The marker came from the Melton Navigation at Ratcliffe-on-the-Wreak, which had been canalised in 1797, and is a branch off the Leicester Navigation.

During World War Two, the mile markers along the Melton Navigation were removed as part of the government’s plan to make it more difficult for any enemy invaders to find their way around the country, in a similar way that road signs were removed. It is also possible that as the mile markers were likely to be cast iron, they may have been melted down to aid the production of aeroplanes like Spitfires and Hurricanes, or to make parts for ships and submarines, or ammunition like ‘pineapple’ grenades and firearms.

One wonders if the mile markers on the Loughborough and Leicester Navigations were also of cast iron, and thus removed during World War two? However, it is known that concrete mile markers were installed in 1939, and were placed at half-mile intervals along the towpath, from the mouth of the River Soar, near Trent Lock. These markers were apparently made in Loughborough, so perhaps it is safe to assume that they were placed on the route into as well as out of Loughborough. Come to think of it, I believe I’ve seen one along our canal somewhere, possibly under the Great Central Railway bridge. The next time I walk along the canal I will take a photograph to share with you!

____________________________________

This post is part of a series in the 2024 ‘Blogging from A to Z April Challenge’.

 

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2024). Canal mile markers. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/04/canal-mile-markers.html [Accessed 3 April 2024]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne