Pennine Dreams:Huddersfield Narrow Canal

Twenty miles long, connecting Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal has by far the longest and deepest canal tunnel built in the British Isles at Standedge under the Pennines. It was built 200 years ago by people who dreamt an impossible dream - that they might profit from a canal taking a collision course with the backbone of England. Taking a long time to build, at a time when prices were rising dramatically to pay for war with France, it was thirty years before the canal paid a dividend. The canal prospered for only a short time before a parallel railway was built, but it soldiered on for another hundred years before abandonment in 1944.Thirty years later a group of enthusiasts dreamt another impossible dream: one of re-opening the canal. The world of officialdom thought that their dream of re-opening the canal was completely crazy, as the canal was closed and large parts of it were destroyed. The enthusiasts would have to restore seventy-four locks, rebuild one and a half miles that were filled in or even built over, and reinstate bridges all along the length of the canal. It would cost millions. But they persevered and on 3 September 2001 the canal was officially reopened by HRH The Prince of Wales.This is a story of two Pennine dreams. The first part, telling how and why the canal was built, the operating years and its decline, is set in the context of what was happening in the outside world away from the canal. The second part, that of the restoration of the canal, shows how the enthusiasts achieved respectability and were taken seriously by tackling the politics of restoring the canal, raising the money, and actually doing the work. How they developed a strategy and persuaded the powers that be that the canal should be restored as a catalyst for the economic and environmental regeneration of two Pennine valleys.

Author: Keith Gibson
Publisher: Tempus Publishing Ltd
Extra Details: Pictorial Card Covers 7 x 10 inches tall, lavishly illustrated with B&W photos and artworks throughout.