Qualla: Nottingham Canal

Nottingham Canal: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roland Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 30 July 1792, the engineer William Jessop turned the first sod of a fourteen-mile cut between Langley Mill in Derbyshire and the River Trent below Trent Bridge in Nottingham. The Nottingham Canal would be finished in 1796, seventy-seven percent over budget, after fifty years of squabbling with the rival Erewash Canal Company. It would carry coal at a steady profit for a generation. It would then be ground down by railway competition, sold off in 1856, abandoned upstream of Lenton in 1937, and filled in piece by piece between 1955 and 1966. Most of it now lies under car parks and council estates. What survives is split between a working waterway in the centre of the city and a chain of nature reserves running up the Erewash valley toward Eastwood.

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Image: Roland Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Canal: Canal Mania

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NotFromUtrecht, CC BY-SA 3.0. The idea came up at a public meeting in the Nottingham Guildhall on 26 October 1790. Three local promoters — Thomas Oldknow, John Morris, and Henry Green — had become convinced that the Cromford and Erewash canals were about to give the upstream colliery owners a stranglehold on ...

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Image: NotFromUtrecht | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nottingham Canal: The Cost of Building

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roland Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. Jessop's original estimate was forty-five thousand pounds. By September 1794, every hundred-pound share had been called for an additional forty pounds. By March 1795, the call had reached fifty. In February 1795, seven weeks of severe frost gave way to a rapid thaw, and sections ...

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Image: Roland Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Canal: Coal, Gunpowder, and the Quiet Decades

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Sutton, CC BY-SA 2.0. For half a century, the canal worked. Tolls produced about £2,600 in 1798, £4,600 by 1800, £9,900 by 1830, £12,800 by 1840. The bulk of the traffic was coal — nearly 80 percent of the 114,000 tons carried in 1799-1800. Dividends ran at £12 per £150 share, paid twice a year. There...

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Image: John Sutton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Canal: The Railway Kills It

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smashman, Public domain. The Midland Counties Railway opened its Nottingham line in 1842 and the canal's income collapsed at a pace nobody had predicted — from £12,500 in 1841 to £6,000 by 1852. The company laid off staff, cut tolls, and finally concluded it would be better to sell out to a railway than ...

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Image: Smashman | Public domain

Nottingham Canal: What Survives

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris j wood, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two pieces remain. The main line from Trent Bridge to Lenton, plus the Beeston Cut back to the Trent at Beeston Weir, is still a working waterway — part of the navigation of the River Trent, used by boats and walkers. In the middle of Nottingham, Castle Lock and the Castle Wharf ...

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Image: Chris j wood | CC BY-SA 4.0