Peak Forest Canal

The Peak Forest Canal is a narrow (7-foot (2.13 m) gauge) locked artificial waterway in northern England. It is 14.8 miles (23.8 km) 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 209 feet (64 m) over the course of 1 mile (1.6 km).

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 (grid reference SJ934984) through Newton, Hyde, Woodley, Bredbury, Romiley, before crossing the River Goyt on Marple Aqueduct, alongside a railway viaduct, to the foot of Marple Locks, a distance of 6.9 miles (11.1 km). The environs are largely rural, passing woods and fields, with some industrial premises encroaching towards the Dukinfield end of the pound.

Peak Forest

Coordinates: 53°18′36″N 1°49′52″W / 53.310°N 1.831°W / 53.310; -1.831

Peak Forest is a small village on the main road the (A623) from Chapel-en-le-Frith to Chesterfield in Derbyshire.

The village grew from the earlier settlement of Dam (still inhabited, with a number of houses and farms) at the conjunction of Perrydale and Damdale. There is an inn, a church and a primary school. Its name probably derives from the Forest of High Peak.

Its church is dedicated to 'Charles, King & Martyr' (King Charles I of England, executed in 1649). First erected in 1657, it was replaced in 1878 as a gift from the Duke of Devonshire. Until an Act of Parliament was passed in 1804 its minister was able to perform marriages without the need for reading the banns, and the village was known as the Gretna Green of Derbyshire.

The Peak Forest Canal, although originally aiming for the limestone quarries in Great Rocks Dale just to the south of the village, never reached nearer than Buxworth, seven miles away, where it terminates at Bugsworth Basin. Instead, a horse-drawn tramway, the Peak Forest Tramway, was constructed in the late 18th century to connect the canal with the quarries between Dove Holes and Peak Forest.