Huddersfield Narrow Canal
The Huddersfield Narrow Canal is an inland waterway in Northern England. It runs just under 20 miles (35 km) from the junction with the Huddersfield Broad Canal near Aspley Basin at Huddersfield to the junction with the Ashton Canal at Whitelands Basin in Ashton-under-Lyne. It crosses the Pennines by means of 74 locks and the Standedge Tunnel.
Although the canal uses 74 locks to climb and descend the Pennines, there would have had to be many more without the digging of a very long tunnel through the Tame/Colne watershed (the River Colne flowing down to Huddersfield and the River Calder, and the Tame flowing down to Stockport and the River Mersey). The canal tunnel is 3 miles 418 yd (5,209 m) long making it the longest canal tunnel in the United Kingdom. It is largely brick lined but in some places the tunnel has been left with a natural rock surface.
The canal operated for approximately 140 years and although moderately successful for a while its width (limited to boats less than 7 ft (2.1 m) wide), number of locks, and long tunnel made it much less profitable than its main rival, the Rochdale Canal, which had a similar number of locks, but was twice as wide, with no long tunnel. The Standedge tunnel proved to be a real bottleneck, having been constructed without an integral towpath. Narrowboats had to be 'legged' through, eventually by professionally employed leggers. A company employee would chain the tunnel entrance behind a convoy of boats, and walk over Boat Lane, accompanied by boat boys and girls, leading the boat horses, to unchain the opposite end of the tunnel before the boat convoy arrived. This journey was made at least twice per day, for over twenty years. The construction of a double railway tunnel parallel with its route affected the revenue that was brought in and the canal was abandoned in 1944.
In the late 20th century, after 27 years of campaigning and restoration by the Huddersfield Canal Society the canal was fully re-opened to navigation in 2001, when it again became one of three Pennine crossings, the others being the Rochdale and the Leeds and Liverpool (both broad canals). The canal is now entirely used by leisure boaters.
During the period of time when the canal was closed, several lengths were culverted and infilled, and in some cases built over. Over the course of the restoration project, the vast majority of the obliterated line became available to be opened out again, and the canal remains on a substantially identical alignment with some minor alterations.
The Huddersfield Narrow is part of the South Pennine Ring, which is a circular route crossing the Pennines twice - the other crossing is the Rochdale Canal. The canals are linked at the western (Lancashire) end by the Ashton Canal and at the eastern (Yorkshire) end by the Huddersfield Broad Canal and a length of the Calder and Hebble Navigation. The South Pennine Ring takes in Huddersfield, Golcar, Slaithwaite, Marsden, Saddleworth Diggle, Uppermill, Greenfield, Stalybridge, Ashton, Manchester, Failsworth, Rochdale, Littleborough, Todmorden, Hebden Bridge, Sowerby Bridge, Elland, and Brighouse.
The Huddersfield Canal area is also a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
