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April 2003

The 2nd Marquis of Rockingham and The Greasbrough Canal

During the last two decades the pits in the area were continuing to be developed along with significant increases in production. The transportation and distribution, and therefore sales, given the lack of development of the transport system, were severely restricted. It was the appalling state of the transport system that inspired the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham to consider making a major contribution to alleviate the transport problem.

The 2nd Marquis decided to re-consider constructing a canal to Greasbrough so as to do away with the already existing Wagon Road the Fentons had built across country from Bassingthorpe Pit to the Don Navigation Canal. The Fantod�s Wagon Way was quite busy just transporting the coal mined at Bassingthorpe Colliery. With the opening of more pits in the Squirrel Castle and Whitgates area of Greasbrough then the line became considerably busier and more expensive to maintain.

As early as 1764 the 2nd Marquis had considered the possibility of such a canal and had made his own drawings and calculations with regard to the length and fall of the canal. The distance from Cinder Bridge to the Don Navigation Canal was just over one-and-a-half-miles, and the fall of the land was forty-one-feet-one-and-three-quarter-inches. It was the 2nd Marquis�s intention to have a branch spur leading to Swallow Wood Pit that would terminate in what is today known as Greasbrough Park. However, for reasons that are not clear, his original plan conceived by the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham was shelved.

Some five years later, in about 1769, the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham commissioned John Varley to survey the land and estimate the cost of building a canal from Cinder Bridge to the Don Navigation Canal. John Varley�s plan would have provided a canal one-and-a-half-miles long and would have incorporated three locks along its route. For reasons which are again not clear, the plans of John Varley were not implemented at this time and the canal project was moth balled once again by the 2nd Marquis until 1775.

In 1775 the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham employed John Smeaton, a great civil engineer of his time, to re survey the line of the proposed canal and his own drawings, dating from 1764, were made available to Smeaton. Smeaton�s survey estimated the cost of the canal to be �3,952. 0s. 0d. and was to include �1,000 worth of the Marquis� own land. Once again this survey by Smeaton was not acted upon. It was not until 1778 that William Fairbank was commissioned to complete yet another survey and eventually this fourth survey was the one that finally was undertaken.

In 1779 negotiations were opened with the various landowners to acquire the necessary land. The thinking behind the negotiations to acquire the necessary land was to either swap or purchase sections of land that would enable the canal to be built as straight as possible.

Although John Smeaton had previously conducted a survey and produced an estimate, it was not his estimate and plan that was acted upon, and it was not Smeaton who eventually implemented Fairbanks plans. This task had been allocated to a pupil of Smeaton�s, a certain William Jessop. It was Jessop who eventually began to provide details of the additional land that would have to be acquired if the construction of the canal was to go ahead. At this time William Jessop was a young and up and coming engineer and was to become very famous and renowned as a canal engineer and consultant. It could be that the Greasbrough Canal might well have been one of the very first canals he was in charge of.

The plan of the Greasbrough Canal which was eventually drawn by William Fairbank of Sheffield in 1783. It is interesting to note that it was drawn after the canal was built and also after the death of the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham.

Although this plan does show the route of the canal, it was only intended to show the amount of land which had been acquired from owners and tenants for the construction of the Greasbrough Canal, it also shows the amount, if any, of compensation each tenant or landowner received. On careful examination the plan shows that Thomas Rhodes lost just over an acre of land, and a Peter Smith lost one perch of meadow. A Thomas Whiteley came off worst; he lost about six acres of land.

It is true to say that much of the land required to build the canal was owned by the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham and therefore these people, who were tenants of the Marquis, had very little or no say at all as to whether they lost land or not. There were other people who owned some of the required land, such as the Feoffes of Rotherham and Francis Ferrand Foljambe.

Foljambe was to prove difficult to deal with over the land exchange deal that he was offered. He owned land at Aldwarke and although he was a prominent member of the local community and was a political supporter of the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham, he had always been kept just on the outside of the inner most circle of Rockingham�s close friends and political allies.

Foljambe was not prepared to swap 30 perches of land (about 165 yards) he owned at Greasbrough Ings for a similar amount of land somewhere else. In order to try and resolve this disagreement, several weeks were spent in exchanging correspondence and various arguments. In May 1779, with the negotiations still in progress, Jessop did not want to be delayed any more; he started to cut through Foljambe�s land and said at the time:

"I thought it advisable to lose no more time but to cut through Foljambe�s bit of land before he was aware of it."

Jessop took this action without the knowledge of the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham, he wrote to the Marquis saying he was prepared to take the blame so:

"that they can look to your Lordship for nothing but an adequate satisfaction."

With this course of action taken by Jessop the negotiations that were ongoing with Foljambe and the 2nd Marquis were quickly resolved by fouler means rather than fairer. And so in May 1779 William Jessop began to build the Greasbrough Canal to the design of William Fairbank. It had four locks and a spurr terminating in a canal basin at what is now known as Greasbrough Park.

The Greasbrough Canal also had a dry dock that was situated just at the beginning of the spur leading to the canal basin, where the actual Cinder Bridge spans the stream. The dry dock facility was an essential part of the Greasbrough Canal into which barges in need of repair could be floated, the dock was then sealed, the water pumped out and the necessary repair or maintenance carried out. On completion of the repair the dry dock could be re flooded and the barge floated out back into service directly on to the canal.

From this spur and the Dry Dock the canal followed the path of the stream in an easterly direction, falling through a total of four locks, before reaching its junction with Rotherham cut of the Don Navigational Canal. The length of the Greasbrough Canal was about one-and -a-half-miles.

The Greasbrough Canal was completed in late 1780 and was probably opened in 1781. Records show the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham paid land tax on it for the first time in 1782 just before he died, so he personally did not derive much benefit out of his own original idea, the Greasbrough Canal.

The 2nd Marquis of Rockingham of course owned the Greasbrough Canal and as the owner and capital investor then he had to ensure that he recovered his financial investment. He was in a position of being able to lease the canal to local pit owners, the Fentons, so they could transport their coal. When the canal was completed it was well utilised and transported coal mined at Greasbrough and Rawmarsh to the Don Navigational Canal. In 1834 10,452 tons of coal was transported via the Greasbrough Canal down to The Don Navigational Canal for distribution to other parts of the country and abroad.

It was to the Cinder Bridge Basin at the end of the spur that a 22-inch gauge railway was laid from Sough Bridge at the side of Squirrel Castle Wood. The railway ran down Church Street and Harold Croft and terminated at the side of what is now called Willow Cottage on Rossiter Road. In this cottage used to live the man who was responsible for loading the barges with coal at the Cinder Bridge Basin. The total length of this railway was about one mile and tubs of coal were allowed to gently run down to the Cinder Bridge Basin taking full advantage of the natural slope. When the tubs were emptied into the waiting barges they were dragged back up the slope to Squirrel Castle Pit by a single wire rope which was attached to a steam winding engine situated in Squirrel Castle Wood. The remains of the 22inch-gauge railway are just a few feet below the surface and are quite visible even today when road repairs make it necessary to dig up Harold Croft.

The Greasbrough Canal was built for Don Keel barges and its most westerly point reached up to what was then called the main Wakefield Turnpike, today this turnpike is called The Whins. From The Whins the canal stretched eastwards past a row of stone cottages, a public house called The Ship Inn and a butchers shop. Local bargemen used to live in the cottages and, when work was done for the day enjoyed a drink in The Ship Inn. The Ship Inn also served another purpose by providing overnight accommodation for bargemen who had travelled up the Don Navigational Canal from Hull and Lincolnshire. The local bargemen no doubt bought their meat from the butcher�s shop too.

From just past the row of stone cottages ran the spur of the canal up to the Ochre Dyke; it is at this junction where the dry dock was situated. This spur terminated at a basin just inside what is now called Greasbrough Park. The basin was about 10 feet in depth and thirty yards long; the entrance to the basin was protected by a lock that also controlled the level of the water in the basin. The basin was fed by water that was pumped out of the colliery workings of the Old and Lower Engines. This source of water, while sufficient to maintain the water level in the canal basin, was not sufficient to maintain the water level of the canal proper. In order to ensure correct water levels were maintained in the whole of the canal it was necessary to allow water to flow into the canal from the recently built Mill Dam.

In the latter half of the 1830�s, when Greasbrough Colliery was shut down and the 22-inch gauge railway was closed, the Greasbrough Canal subsequently came to be of little value and barge traffic on this 19th century motorway diminished considerably.

As a consequence of the Greasbrough Canal�s usefulness declining Earl Fitzwilliam decided to have most of the canal filled in during the 1840�s. As a result of this action much of the canal�s original route was made into a private carriageway which enabled easy, direct access for Earl Fitzwilliam when travelling by coach from Wentworth Woodhouse to the newly opened Parkgate railway station, a distance of about four and a half miles.

The opening of Parkgate railway station ensured the frequently travelled fifteen or so mile train journey made by Earl Fitzwilliam to and from Doncaster racecourse was much less arduous than travelling the whole distance by horse drawn coach. With the Greasbrough Canal filled in and the route now being a new coach way for the Earl to travel to and from Rotherham and Parkgate station, Earl Fitzwilliam decided that it must become a private road for his own exclusive use.

Because members of the public would visit The Ship Inn and the butcher�s shop, it was decided that the Inn and the butcher�s shop would be closed down. The row of stone cottages continued to be occupied by employees of Earl Fitzwilliam, it was felt that as they were his employees they were not regarded as members of the general public and as such they would respect the Earl�s desire for privacy. These stone cottages continued to be occupied until they were demolished in about 1960.

Land was provided by Earl Fitzwilliam in Greasbrough for the building of a new Ship Inn and a butcher�s shop. Until quite recently, due to his retirement, the butcher�s shop was owned and ran by Jack Willey. Mr Willey is probably a distant relative, possibly a great, great grandson, of the owner of the original shop on Coach Road. The Ship Inn is on Main Street in Greasbrough opposite the butchers shop and until a few years ago was owned by Wards brewery.

Although The Greasbrough Canal had been in decline since the 1830s, towards the latter end of the 1830�s, at the bottom end of The Greasbrough Canal, an extension, The Fitzwilliam Canal, had been cut to serve the newly built and thriving Parkgate Ironworks. This section of the canal remained in regular commercial use up to the First World War; the last barge used it in 1928.

During the twenties this part of the canal served as a boat yard and there were a few houses built at the side of the canal. One of these houses, a two up and two down, was rented by Jack and Daisy Staves. This was their home in which they brought up a family of seven children. Six of the children were born there in the house. The house had no gas or electricity, was over run with rats and the rent was just four shillings a week!

 

 

 

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