Features
The Hollinwood Branch Canal at Waterhouses is unique among Britain’s canals and it is now part of the Daisy Nook Country Park owned by the National Trust. In 1,320 yards (1,207 m) it included every type of canal feature, as well as some more unusual ones as well. Over this length these features were once to be found, starting and ending with road bridges over the canal:
- A road bridge (Waterhouses Bridge)
- A tunnel (Waterhouses, Boodle or Dark Tunnel). This was opened out in the 1920s.
- A single-arched stone aqueduct over the River Medlock (Waterhouses Aqueduct)
- A flight of four locks (19–22), the inner pair of which were staircase locks in that the top gates of the lower lock were also the bottom gates of the upper lock (Waterhouses Locks)
- A small brick-built hut by lock 21 that is believed to have been used for the payment of wages
- A canal junction where the Fairbottom Branch Canal started (Waterhouses Junction)
- The towpath of the Fairbottom Branch Canal crossed the Hollinwood Branch Canal on a swivel bridge located across the head of lock 22.
- An overspill weir crossed by the towpath on a low pier of stone blocks
- A lock-keeper’s cottage, which doubled as an office for the collection of tolls
- A pumping engine (beam engine) used to back pump water from the canal below lock 19 to the canal above lock 22
- A wooden flume over the pump house yard used to carry the water from the pump house back to the canal
- A footbridge over the canal having a wrought-iron balustrade (Occupation Bridge)
- A cast-iron aqueduct over Crime Lane (Crime Aqueduct)
- A lake at the side of the canal that resulted from canal works at the time construction. As built, the canal severed the course of a brook and a culvert was made below the canal to accommodate this. A landslip blocked this and the waters were impounded on the offside of the canal. The new lake and canal became one and the lake was officially known as Crime Bank Reservoir but it is far better known by its later name of Crime Lake.
- A road bridge (Crime Bridge)
Mention must be made of a neighbour of the pumping engine known as ‘Fairbottom Bobs’. This was a Newcomen steam engine (more accurately a Newcomen atmospheric engine) used to pump water from a coal mine. The water was pumped along a wooden flume for a distance of about 219 yards (200 m) and then discharged into the Fairbottom Branch Canal at Fenny Fields Bridge.
In 1929 this engine was dismantled and taken to the USA by Henry Ford who had it completely restored. It was then placed at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
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