River Trent - History of Navigation

History of Navigation

[ ] River Trent

Legend

River Ouse and Humber Estuary

The Island Sand

Stainforth and Keadby Canal

A18 Keadby Bridge(shares bridge with rly)

Doncaster - Scunthorpe Railway

M180 motorway bridge

River Idle (moveable sluice)

Chesterfield Canal, West Stockwith

A631 Trent Bridge, Gainsborough

Sheffield to Lincoln Railway

Fossdyke Navigation, Torksey Lock

A57 Dunham Toll Bridge

Cromwell Lock and weir

A1 Winthorpe Bridge

East Coast Main Line bridge

Newark Nether Lock

Nottingham - Lincoln Railway

A46 Newark Bypass Bridge

Newark Town Lock

A616 Bridge

A617 Bridge

Marina

A46 Newark Bypass Bridge

Nottingham - Lincoln Railway

Averham Weir

River Devon

Hazelford lock and weirs

Gunthorpe lock and weir

A6097 Gunthorpe Bridge

Stoke lock and weir

Rectory Junction Viaduct

Holme lock, National Watersports Centre

Grantham Canal

Meadow Lane Lock

Castle Lock

Nottingham

Nottingham Canal

Beeston Lock

Beeston Weir

Cranfleet Lock

Thrumpton Weir

Trent Viaducts

Flood Lock

Erewash Canal and River Soar

Railway bridges

Sawley Locks

Flood Lock

Sawley Weir

M1 motorway bridge

River Derwent

Trent and Mersey Canal

Cavendish Bridge (limit of navigation)

A50 Bridge

Railway bridge

King's Mills(site of mill and lock)

Disused railway bridge

A514/Swarkestone Bridge

B5008 Willington Bridge

River Dove

Burton Mill(site of mill and lock)

weir

A511 Burton Bridge

Bond End Branch(to Trent and Mersey)

A5189 St Peters Bridge

to source

Nottingham seems to have been the ancient head of navigation until the Restoration, due partly to the difficult navigation of the Trent Bridge. Navigation was then extended to Wilden Ferry, near to the more recent Cavendish Bridge, as a result of the efforts of the Fosbrooke family of Shardlow.

Later, in 1699, Lord Paget, who owned coal mines and land in the area, obtained an Act of Parliament to extend navigation up to Fleetstones Bridge, Burton, despite opposition from the people of Nottingham. Lord Paget seems to have funded the work privately, building locks at King's Mills and Burton Mills and several cuts and basins. The Act gave him absolute control over the building of any wharfs and warehouses above Nottingham Bridge. Lord Paget leased the navigation and the wharf at Burton to George Hayne, while the wharf and warehouses at Wilden were leased by Leonard Fosbrooke, who held the ferry rights and was a business partner of Hayne. The two men refused to allow any cargo to be landed which was not carried in their own boats, and so created a monopoly.

In 1748, the merchants from Nottingham attempted to break this monopoly by landing goods on the banks and into carts, but Fosbrooke used his ferry rope to block the river, and then created a bridge by mooring boats across the channel, and employing men to defend them. Hayne subsequently scuppered a barge in King's Lock, and for the next eight years goods had to be transhipped around it. Despite a Chancery injunction against them, the two men continued with their action. Hayne's lease ran out in 1762, and Lord Paget's son, the Earl of Uxbridge, gave the new lease to the Burton Boat Company.

The Trent and Mersey Canal was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1766, and construction from Shardlow to Preston Brook, where it joined the Bridgewater Canal, was completed by 1777. The canal ran parallel to the upper river to Burton on Trent, where new wharfs and warehouses at Horninglow served the town, and the Burton Boat Company were unable to repair the damaged reputation of the river created by their predecessors. Eventually in 1805, they reached an agreement with Henshall & Co., the leading canal carriers, for the closure of the river above Wilden Ferry. Though the river is no doubt legally still navigable above Shardlow, it is probable that the agreement marks the end of the use of that stretch of the river as a commercial navigation.