Pocklington Canal

History

The Pocklington Canal was one of the last canals to be built. Canal & River Trust says prosperous local farmers promoted it as a better way of getting their goods to the growing towns of West Yorkshire, and its archive record says Earl Fitzwilliam, who owned the Derwent Navigation, had the route surveyed by George Leather the younger in 1813 and 1814. Leather was the engineer. The Act was passed in 1815 and the canal opened in 1818, running 9½ miles from the River Derwent at East Cottingwith to Canal Head near Pocklington, with branches to Melbourne and Bielby. It cost £32,695, less than the estimate. Coal, lime, fertiliser and industrial goods went in to Pocklington, and farm produce went out.

The York and North Midland Railway bought the canal in 1848. The last commercial craft, the keel Ebenezer, used it in 1932. A proposal in 1959 to fill the canal with sludge from a water treatment plant angered landowners, residents and the Inland Waterways Association, and the canal was saved. The Pocklington Canal Amenity Society was formed in 1969 to restore it, and Cottingwith lock reopened in 1972.

The Society has restored the section from the River Derwent to the Melbourne Arm, about half the length of the canal, and is working with Canal & River Trust to extend the navigation to Bielby Arm. Most of the canal is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and its lower reaches lie within the Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve.