Hollingwood Common Canal facts for kids
The Hollingwood Common Canal is a special kind of underground waterway. It's also known as the Hollingwood Common Canal Tunnel or just the Hollingwood Common Tunnel. This tunnel was once used to move coal from a mine. It's like a long, underground canal that connected a coal mine to the Chesterfield Canal in a place called Hollingwood, near Staveley, Derbyshire. Today, it's no longer used.
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What Was the Hollingwood Common Canal?
The Hollingwood Common Canal was a unique tunnel built for boats. It was a "navigable adit," which means it was a tunnel dug into the side of a hill or mine, specifically designed for boats to travel through. Its main job was to transport coal directly from deep inside a mine.
How Big Was the Tunnel?
This underground canal tunnel was quite long, stretching about 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers). Imagine a tunnel that's almost three kilometers long! It was 6 feet (1.8 meters) high and 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 meters) wide. Inside, there was about 2 feet (0.6 meters) of water for the boats to float on.
Connecting to the Chesterfield Canal
The Hollingwood Common Canal connected to the Chesterfield Canal. However, the water level inside the tunnel was about 1 foot (0.3 meters) lower than the Chesterfield Canal. This meant that coal couldn't just float directly from one canal to the other.
Transferring the Coal
Because of the different water levels, coal had to be moved from the mine boats to larger canal boats. This process is called "trans-shipment." A special loading area, called a "wharf," was built at the end of the tunnel. Here, workers would transfer the coal. This wharf was located on an older part of the Chesterfield Canal, before a new section was built in 1892.
The Boats Used Inside
The boats that traveled inside the Hollingwood Common Canal were specially designed for the tunnel's size. They were loaded with coal right inside the mine, underground! These boats were 21 feet (6.4 meters) long and 3 feet 6 inches (1.07 meters) wide. Each boat could carry seven large containers or boxes. Each box held about 20 to 22 hundredweight of coal. (A hundredweight is about 112 pounds or 50.8 kilograms).
Where is it Now?
Even though the tunnel is no longer used, you can still see its entrance today. It's usually closed off with a gate for safety. It stands as a reminder of the clever ways people used to transport coal a long time ago.
