An excellent new publication entitled "The Peak Forest Canal and Railway" written by Graham Boyes and Brian Lamb is now available. The book is well illustrated with old photographs and postcards, a good number of which were provided by our very own Virtual History Tour of Marple, and the Marple Website is extensively credited.
The book includes 200 pages, 130 illustrations and 19 coloured maps and plans.
It's available in hardback for £30 POST FREE.
Ordering details are included on the pdf flyer attached to this post.
The Peak Forest Canal and Railway - Grahame Boyes and Brian Lamb
This is is the history of the Canal Mania project on which its engineer, Benjamin Outram, perfected his professional skills.
Here he built the highest masonry-arch aqueduct, the tallest/ steepest lock flight, and the most sophisticated gravity-operated railway inclined plane in this country. Here too he demonstrated his standards for plateway construction that became the model for most industrial railways built south of County Durham for the next thirty years.
But this is more than a history of an engineering monument, for the canal and railway were part of a vertically-integrated business enterprise that opened up the Peak District’s enormous limestone deposits, establishing a major industry that continues to prosper, still in its original location, over two hundred years later.
This book therefore interprets not only the physical features of thecanal and railway and their geographical, industrial and transport context, but also the workings and fortunes of the business and itscontribution to the economy of the districts it served.
Although conceived as a purely local enterprise, in 1831 the Peak Forest Canal became part of not one, but two rival, trunk routes from Manchester to the Midlands and London. Today it forms part of the Cheshire Ring, a popular itinerary for waterway aficionados.
It owes its survival to a crucial, but little known, intervention by the Minister of Public Buildings & Works which ensured the repair of the Marple Aqueduct after its partial collapse in 1961. This provedto be a key event which helped to unlock obstructions to re-opening the Peak Forest and Ashton Canals, which in turn was the modelfor restoration schemes elsewhere on the narrow canal network.
The authors
In the early 1960s Brian Lamb was the first to make a special study of the Peak Forest Canal and Railway. He continued to research them for the rest of his life and became the acknowledged doyen of this corner of canal history. He was also much involved in recording the industrial heritage of Manchester and received an award from the Association of Industrial Archaeology for his outstanding work in this field.
As a native of Doncaster, Grahame Boyes received an early introduction to railways and railway history. Following an engineering degree at Cambridge, he then pursued a varied career with British Railways. His vision was widened to include canals – and later other modes of transport – through membership of the Railway & Canal Historical Society, which he has served successively as chairman, president and vice-president. He has written on a wide variety of themes in transport history.
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