Decline
With less traffic, lower profits, and little prospect of a growth in trade, maintenance standards fell. By 1937 the Locks and Bridges were in a poor state of repair. A report in 1939 records that the canal was weedy throughout its entire length. Water began to leak through the Banks between Whinhill and Snakeholme Lock and a real danger to the surrounding land drainage was evident. Some dredging was carried out during the early 1940s but this did little to improve the condition of the Canal. The last commercial craft to reach Driffield was the Keel Caroline loaded with 50 tons of wheat on 16 March 1945. The last commercial craft on the Navigation was the vessel Ousefleet, delivering coal to Frodingham Wharf during the period to December 1951.
With the demise of commercial navigation, the interest of the Commissioners waned. They failed to appoint their own successors, and by 1949, there were too few remaining to take legal decisions. In 1955, the swing bridge across the navigation at Whinhill was fixed, although the Inland Waterways Association received the assurance that, if at any future date the navigation was reopened to Driffield, the bridge would be removed. Another major obstruction to the renewal of the navigation to Driffield occurred in 1967, when the County Council replaced the bridge which carries the public right of way over the Navigation at Wansford with a fixed bridge. Since the Commissioners could not agree to this, as they were inquorate, the legality of this action is unknown.
Read more about this topic: Driffield Navigation
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“My opposition [to interviews] lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)