Greasbrough Canal
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The Greasbrough Canal was a private canal built by the Marquess of Rockingham to serve his coal mining interests in and around the village of Greasbrough, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
The canal, which was opened in 1780, left the River Don Navigation, passing under the road to Rawmarsh, to reach a terminal from where the coal was loaded, on the eastern side of the village of Greasbrough. This section was just under 1 1/2 miles in length. A short branch, around 500 yards in length, left this canal and, travelling in a north-easterly direction, terminated by Taylors Lane at Parkgate where it met with tramways from New Park Colliery, Swallow Wood Colliery and other coal interests in and near Rawmarsh. From 1823 one side of the canal at this point faced on to the newly opened works of the Park Gate Iron Company.
The first nail in the coffin of the Greasbrough Canal came on 7th August 1839 when the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway opened a line which linked its main line at Holmes to the tramways serving the canal so making it possible to transport Earl Fitzwilliam's coal to Sheffield without the use of the canal system. This made it possible for the Earl to break the near monopoly of the Duke of Norfolk in the supply of coal to Sheffield.
The main line of the canal became disused and was filled in by the early 1840s, being built over to form what is known as the Coach Road; the Newbiggin Colliery branch closed in the late nineteenth century, whilst the lower portion, which still exists, fell into disuse during the First World War.
The entry to the canal, after the construction of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway line from Mexborough to Rotherham in the 1860s was contolled by, first of all a flagman and later a small almost square hipped roof signal box, named Parkgate, which was, itself replaced in the first decade of the 20th century by a new box a short distance further west named Rotherham Road.
[edit] References
- Records of the Fitzwilliam Estate
- "Forward": the journal of the Great Central Railway Society
- "Great Central Railway Signal Boxes" Compiled from the 1904 Appendix by Roger Milnes, published by the Sheffield (GCRS) Group, 1994
