Standedge Tunnel Visitor Centre

Standedge Tunnel and its Visitor Centre are a short walk from the village of Marsden, not far from the rail station. The exhibition centre is housed in an old industrial building, originally thought to have been a warehouse, though recent research suggests it may have been an industrial works. There are display boards, photos and videos telling the story of the tunnel.  The top floor 'Loft Space' is a creative work space for designers and makers, where people can meet up to chat, knit, crochet, sew, weave and spin. There is a small shop selling attractive craft items. Further down, by the tunnel entrance, Tunnel End Cottages, where canal workers used to live, now houses a café.  There's a good children's play area too so it's a nice 'family day out' destination.

(I keep noticing that my photos, very crisp and sharp in my other programmes, look very soft - even blurry - on Blogger.. I hope it's not having another 'phase'! This one looks particularly terrible.)

Standedge Tunnel

This is the point where the Huddersfield Narrow Canal enters the 5.2 km long Standedge Tunnel underneath the Pennines. The boat - an electric tug-boat with an attached passenger barge - offers short tours inside the tunnel, so I took a ride. I couldn't hear the commentary (one of the trials of being deaf) but there are plenty of interesting facts about the tunnel on the internet (here). Its construction was initially so badly planned and executed that the excavations from each end were not going to meet up in the middle. In 1807, they had finally to involve the famous engineer Thomas Telford to sort it all out!

Inside the tunnel is very narrow, with only room for one boat to travel. It has a few wider passing places, but they had to have a system to control the barges travelling through. You can view the various different portions of the tunnel - rough rock, stone, original brickwork and more modern brickwork from when it was restored. You can also see shafts that connect the tunnel with the adjacent rail tunnel, built later. (The railway company bought the canal and used the canal tunnel to carry away the spoil from their excavations of the rail tunnel.) In my photo, you can see a train disappearing into the rail tunnel.

There is no towpath so boat-horses used to be walked up and over the moors, whilst the barges were 'legged through' by two men lying on their backs. With the tour boat's electric lights on, all seemed fine but when they switched them off it was pitch black and quite scary. I couldn't help but think of the weight of rock and earth above me! The 'leggers' would only have had candles for illumination. It took a good three hours to leg a loaded barge through, for which the professional 'leggers' were paid 1 shilling and 6 pence. (I photographed one of the pictures in the exhibition centre, as I thought it was so interesting. A bit naughty...I hope no-one minds!)                                                                                                                                                                                          

Inside the tunnel, photographed by me from the tour boat

'Legging' a barge through the tunnel - a photograph of a photograph in the Tunnel's exhibition centre

Huddersfield Narrow Canal

I had to go to Dewsbury the other day, to collect a new car-seat for my granddaughter to use when she visits. Never one to miss an opportunity, it seemed a good plan to travel a bit further to visit the Pennine village of Marsden, which I have long intended to explore. It is surrounded by the high Pennine moorlands and was a place from where lots of packhorse tracks crossed the moors to Manchester. The tracks were replaced in the 1700s by turnpike toll roads.

A boat, however, could carry the same load as 150 packhorses and so the trans-Pennine Huddersfield Narrow Canal was started around the end of the 18th century, part of a network of canals throughout the north of England. Its construction was beset by problems, related to the tough terrain and to lack of organisation. It took 17 years to build in the end, largely because it needed 74 locks along its 20 mile length, and because it required the longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel ever built in Britain, the Standedge Tunnel.

The canal eventually enjoyed a few boom years - though the narrow tunnel was a huge bottleneck as barges had to queue up to be 'legged through'. The tunnel has no towpath and the boat-horses had to be walked over the moors to the other side.

With the coming of the railways, the canals gradually ceased to be used. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal fell into disrepair, parts of it were covered over or filled in. In 1974 enthusiasts set about the enormous task of restoring it and in 2001 the whole canal became navigable again.