Tunnel under Belton
Belton, almost, hosted a canal tunnel 2 ½ miles long! It would have been the second longest in Britain and the seventh longest in the world.
The 1794, Sleaford Navigation canalised the River Slea to the River Witham linking Sleaford and the seaport of Boston. From 1797, the Grantham Canal transported coal from the River Trent and night soil from Nottingham used to fertilize fields. Between Grantham and Sleaford ran 14 miles of the worst road in England (Stamford Mercury 1843). This denied Staffordshire potteries easy access to European markets via Boston's seaport. The Ancaster stone quarries lacked water transport to the Midlands. Indeed, stone required for Jeffry Wyatville's 1830s work at Belton came from Mansfield via Grantham wharf. Additional costs arose from transferring goods betwixt road and canal such as corn. John Rofe & Sons, Birmingham civil engineers canal specialists planned in 1833 a 16-mile long junction canal to remedy the situation.
The swing bridge over the Grantham canal on Swingbridge Road.
The junction canal would have started just beyond this bridge.
Looking east along the Grantham Canal from the swing bridge site today on a 60 meter contour.
In order not to injure or annoy the residence of any landed proprietor, the canal plan follow a circuitous route avoiding Belton and Syston Parks.
The link arises from the Grantham Canal just east of today’s roundabout on Swingbridge Road. From 60 m above sea level, the waterway skirts around Alma Wood at 127 m. This would have made it the seventeenth highest summit of 159 English canals. At Londonthorpe, the canal tunnels 25 m beneath the Warren, adjacent to Bellmount Woods.
It emerges at 95 m just east of the embryonic River Slea between Honington Fort and Barkston Airfield. From there via Ancaster and Wilsford, it reaches Sleaford.
The canal in blue enters a tunnel in red just north of Londonthorpe. BT, Bellmount Tower. Elevation >110 meters, pink.
To build the junction canal as a contour canal (light blue) like the two canals to be connected would have bisected Belton Park just west of Old Wood.
Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos
Whoever owns the soil, holds title up to the heavens and down to the depths of hell.
That is, property rights extend volumetrically into the earth. Indeed, in 2010 the UK Supreme Court ruled that diagonal drilling down to 2,800 feet is still trespass below land. Therefore, we can guess that Rofe's plan had the 1st Earl Brownlow’s agreement. He and the Thorolds at Syston Hall could charge for construction of said tunnel on or under their land.
View looking east to the embryonic River Slea running right to left (south to north), with the site of the proposed tunnel exiting to the left from the high land in the background.
The River Slea itself at a few feet across at this point is unsuitable for navigation. View looking south.
The tunnel and an estimated 14 locks to cope with the rise and fall would have meant an expensive construction. But plans continued until the 1840s with an additional connection to Newark included. The arrival of the railways by the 1850s linking the three towns finally made the junction canal idea redundant.
1845 saw plans for the Boston, Newark and Sheffield Railway, but the company collapsed. In 1846 the Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway was authorised. Its intention, to connect the manufacturing districts of the north-west of England with the Nottinghamshire colliery districts and the seaport of Boston, in Lincolnshire. The route east to Ambergate Station, Grantham opened in 1853. The Boston, Sleaford and Midland Counties Railway arrived at Barkston in 1857 connecting to both Newark and Grantham.