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Standedge Tunnels
The Standedge Tunnels () are four parallel tunnels through the Pennine hills at the Standedge crossing between Marsden in Kirklees, West Yorkshire and Diggle in Oldham, Greater Manchester in northern England. Three are railway tunnels (containing the Huddersfield line) and the other is a canal tunnel. Before boundary changes in 1974, both ends of the tunnels were in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The canal tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal was authorised by an Act of Parliament on 4 April 1794. Construction of a tunnel began months later. Within two years, cost-saving measures pushed back its completion date and progress was slowed by water levels much greater than had been expected. It proved difficult to secure skilled help, some tenders went unanswered and Benjamin Outram withdrew from the venture. In 1807, Thomas Telford drew up a new plan for its completion. In 1811, the tunnel opened. It is the longest and oldest of the four Standedge tunnels and is the longest ...
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Huddersfield Narrow Canal
The Huddersfield Narrow Canal is an inland waterway in northern England. It runs just under from Lock 1E at the rear of the University of Huddersfield campus, near Aspley Basin in Huddersfield, to the junction with the Ashton Canal at Whitelands Basin in Ashton-under-Lyne. It crosses the Pennines by means of 74 locks and the Standedge Tunnel. Building the Canal Planning The canal was first proposed in 1793 at a meeting in the George Hotel, Huddersfield. Its engineer was Benjamin Outram on the recommendation of William Jessop. His plan was to start from the Huddersfield Broad Canal and follow the River Colne with a climb of to its summit where it would pass through a tunnel at Standedge before descending through Saddleworth and the Tame valley to the Ashton Canal near Ashton-under-Lyne. There were many woollen, worsted and cotton mills along its route which promised ample trade. However, there was the possible problem of the loss of their water supplies and so Outram pro ...
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Thomas Telford
Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE, (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and related bridges, he was dubbed ''The Colossus of Roads'' (a pun on the Colossus of Rhodes), and, reflecting his command of all types of civil engineering in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a post he held for 14 years until his death. The town of Telford in Shropshire was named after him. Early career Telford was born on 9 August 1757, at Glendinning, a hill farm east of Eskdalemuir Kirk, in the rural parish of Westerkirk, in Eskdale, Dumfriesshire. His father John Telford, a shepherd, died soon after Thomas was born. Thomas was raised in poverty by his mother Janet Jac ...
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Cromford Canal
The Cromford Canal ran from Cromford to the Erewash Canal in Derbyshire, England with a branch to Pinxton. Built by William Jessop with the assistance of Benjamin Outram, its alignment included four tunnels and 14 locks. From Cromford it ran south following the contour line along the east side of the valley of the Derwent to Ambergate, where it turned eastwards along the Amber valley. It turned sharply to cross the valley, crossing the river and the Ambergate to Nottingham road, by means of an aqueduct at Bullbridge, before turning towards Ripley. From there the Butterley Tunnel took it through to the Erewash Valley. From the tunnel it continued to Ironville, the junction for the branch to Pinxton, and then descended through fourteen locks to meet the Erewash Canal at Langley Mill. The Pinxton Branch became important as a route for Nottinghamshire coal, via the Erewash, to the River Trent and Leicester and was a terminus of the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway. A long sect ...
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Butterley Tunnel
Butterley Tunnel is a disused canal tunnel on the Cromford Canal below Ripley, in Derbyshire, England, opened to traffic in 1794. Along with Butterley Works blast furnaces, part of the canal tunnel and its underground wharf were declared a scheduled monument in 2013. Origins The tunnel was 2,966 yard (2712m) long, wide at water level, and from water to soffit (depending on the water level). At the time of building it was the third longest canal tunnel in the World after Sapperton and Dudley. Thirty-three shafts were sunk during construction with the workings dewatered using a Woodhouse steam engine. Water was provided for the Cromford Canal from the Butterley Reservoir situated on the hill above the tunnel. The Butterley Reservoir is itself crossed by a stone railway embankment currently used by the locomotives of the Midland Railway - Butterley's preserved steam railway. Water flowed from the reservoir directly into the tunnel via an adit along the tunnel from the weste ...
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Trent And Mersey Canal
The Trent and Mersey Canal is a canal in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire in north-central England. It is a "narrow canal" for the vast majority of its length, but at the extremities to the east of Burton upon Trent and north of Middlewich, it is a wide canal. The narrow locks and bridges are big enough for a single narrowboat wide by long, while the wide locks can accommodate boats wide, or two narrowboats next to each other. History The Trent and Mersey Canal (T&M) was built to link the River Trent at Derwent Mouth in Derbyshire to the River Mersey, and thereby provide an inland route between the major ports of Hull and Liverpool. The Mersey connection is made via the Bridgewater Canal, which it joins at Preston Brook in Cheshire. Although mileposts measure the distance to Preston Brook and Shardlow, Derwent Mouth is about beyond Shardlow. The plan of a canal connection from the Mersey to the Trent ("The Grand Trunk") came from canal engineer James Brindley ...
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Harecastle Tunnel
Harecastle Tunnel is a canal tunnel on the Trent and Mersey Canal in Staffordshire between Kidsgrove and Tunstall. The tunnel, which is long, was once one of the longest in the country. Its industrial purpose was for the transport of coal to the kilns in the Staffordshire Potteries. The canal runs under the Harecastle Hill near Goldenhill, the highest district in Stoke-on-Trent.'Tunstall', in'' A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 8'', ed. J G Jenkins (London, 1963), pp. 81-104.
British History Online, accessed 21 September 2016.
Although described singularly as a tunnel, Harecastle is actually two separate but parallel tunnels built almost 50 years apart. The first was constructed by



Matthew Fletcher (mine Owner And Engineer)
Matthew Fletcher (1731 or 1733 – 24 August 1808) was a mine owner and mining engineer in Lancashire, England. Family Jacob Fletcher lived in Bolton and owned small coal mines in Harwood and Breightmet, Bolton. He had four sons. Matthew was the second eldest. John the eldest, sank a pit in Atherton that led in the 1870s to the formation of Fletcher, Burrows and Company. Jacob became a colliery owner at Darcy Lever and had two sons, Ellis (Matthew Fletcher's heir who died in 1834) and Adam (died 1799). Adam, was a collier at Crompton Fold and had three sons, Matthew (died 1823), Jacob (died circa 1800), and Peter who died in infancy. Wet Earth Colliery Matthew Fletcher came from a family of mine owners and his first notable work was on the property of another mine owner, John Heathcote. During the 1740s, Heathcote had attempted to sink Wet Earth Colliery, the first deep coal mine in the Irwell Valley at Clifton. The workings were plagued with water from the River Irwell via ...
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John Varley (canal Engineer)
John Varley (8 June 1740 – 16 February 1809) was an England, English engineer. He was born in Heanor, Derbyshire, Heanor, Derbyshire, and was responsible for the construction of the Chesterfield Canal. He died in 1809 and is buried at All Saints Church, Harthill, Derbyshire, Harthill, Derbyshire. Early life John Varley was born on 8 June 1740 to Francis Varley (1719–1789) and Rebekah Varley in Heanor, Derbyshire. He married Hannah Pattern (1752 – ) on 13 March 1770. Early canal engineering James Brindley appointed John Varley as an assistant. The proposed canal from the River Don, South Yorkshire, River Don to Cinderbridge was surveyed by John Varley. Chesterfield Canal The route of the canal was surveyed by James Brindley and John Varley, who estimated the cost at £94,908 17Shilling, s. Brindley presented his proposals to a meeting in Worksop on 24 August 1769. An application was made to Parliament and the Act of Parliament received the Royal Assent on 28 Mar ...
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Peak Forest Canal
The Peak Forest Canal is a narrow ( gauge) locked artificial waterway in northern England. It is long and forms part of the connected English/Welsh inland waterway network. Route and features General description The canal consists of two level pounds, separated by a flight of 16 locks that raise the canal by over the course of . The two pounds of the canal are generally known as the Upper Peak Forest Canal and Lower Peak Forest Canal. Whilst there is no evidence that these names were used historically, the designation Lower Peak Forest Canal was used in the British Waterways Act 1983, which redesignated the lower part of the canal as a cruising waterway. Route The Lower Peak Forest Canal heads south from Dukinfield Junction at Dukinfield in Greater Manchester, where it makes a junction with the Ashton Canal at the southern end of the Tame Aqueduct () through Newton, Hyde, Woodley, Bredbury and Romiley, before crossing the River Goyt on Marple Aqueduct, alongside the rai ...
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Steam Engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed, by a connecting rod and crank, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is generally applied only to reciprocating engines as just described, not to the steam turbine. Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term ''steam engine'' can refer to either complete steam plants (including boilers etc.), such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. Although steam-driven devices were known as early as the aeolipile in the f ...
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Gritstone
Gritstone or grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for paper and for grindstones to sharpen blades. "Grit" is often applied to sandstones composed of angular sand grains. It may commonly contain small pebbles. " Millstone Grit" is an informal term for a succession of gritstones which are to be found in the Pennines (including the Peak District) of northern England. These sediments were laid down in the late (upper) Paleozoic era, in the Carboniferous period, in deltaic conditions. The Millstone Grit Group is a formal stratigraphic term for this sequence of rocks. The gritstone edges of the Peak District are an important climbing area and the rock is much relished by English climbers, among whom it has almost cult status and is often referred to as "God's own rock". The rough surface provide ...
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Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into the similar-sized Colne to the south of the town centre which then flows into the Calder in the north eastern outskirts of the town. The rivers around the town provided soft water required for textile treatment in large weaving sheds, this made it a prominent mill town with an economic boom in the early part of the Victorian era Industrial Revolution. The town centre has much neoclassical Victorian architecture, one example is which is a Grade I listed building – described by John Betjeman as "the most splendid station façade in England" – and won the Europa Nostra award for architecture. It hosts the University of Huddersfield and three colleges: Greenhead College, Kirklees College and Huddersfield New College. The town ...
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