A Surprise for the Experts
by Andy Screen

Some years ago, the Institute of Civil Engineers' Panel for Historical Engineering Works (ICE-PHEW for short) produced a "definitive" list of canals and navigations in the UK and Eire. The 2001 listing, the last version I have seen, includes 449 names. Not bad considering only the principal navigations are shown; no branches and side-arms. Amongst those not-so-well-known names are the Cemlyn Canal, Billinghay Skirth, Ham Dock and Timberland Delph.

The challenge of course is to find a waterway that they have missed, and we seem to have done it. Canal historian Paul Sillitoe, a member of the Waterway History Research Group, read of the Inland Waterways Preservation Society's walk on the top end of the Sankey in February in the last issue of CUTTINGS, and realised that the "nameless" contour canal above the Stanley slitting mill was conspicuous by its absence from that list. A few enquiries with ICE followed, and they seem satisfied that the canal was not part of the Sankey and should be included in the next update of the list. We have sent Paul a copy of Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser of 5th February 1784 (right) which offers one of the few available bits of source material on the canal, and hopefully the Panel or the Railway & Canal Historical Society may be persuaded to do some additional research into it for us.

Peter Keen informs me that he has seen at least one instance of it having been historically called the Carr & Stanley Canal but it will be interesting to see if ICE-PHEW (or indeed any readers of Canal Cuttings) can uncover anything else about it.

Summer isn't the best time to photograph geographical features—the trees, and their foliage get in the way! However, it is possible to see that the canal was created in the common manner of contour canals by digging out the hillside, right, and piling the diggings on the left to create the downhill bank, where the footpath, once the towing-path, runs.

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