From the wiggly to the straight – North Oxford canal Braunston to Hawkesbury Junction
I think my last few posts got a bit long. I will try and divide the posts up more, so they may become a bit more frequent. I am also grateful for any feedback on what you like or dislike (can be a comment for example, or you will know how to contact me anyway).
So what happened since you last heard from me? In Braunston I took the turn onto the North Oxford canal. The North Oxford is very different from the Southern part. Less charming perhaps, but very interesting for other reasons. This post covers the whole length of the North Oxford to where it meets the Coventry canal at Hawkesbury junction.
A bit of Northern Oxford canal history
When the Oxford canal was first built, the canal builders did not care much about speed. At the time the fastest transport was a horse and cart and people didn’t really think in terms of time to market. As I mentioned previously, the Oxford canal is a contour canal that kept costs low by following the contour of the landscape. In the Northern part this led to some very extravagant loops around the countryside. Just have a look at the original course here in green.
But when the Grand Union canal opened 30 years later and started taking its business transporting goods from and to London, the Oxford Canal Company decided to shorten the North Oxford substantially by cutting across all the loops (see the straightened course in blue). This must have come at a very high cost as they cut across hills and valleys by building cuttings, embankments and aqueducts while maintaining the same level throughout (there are no locks along the whole length of all the shortened loops).
As I am fascinated by this re-architecturing of the canal, I explored some evidence of this along the way. So this post is a bit nerdy in places perhaps, apologies!
Hillmorton lock flight
So on to the actual cruise: starting in Braunston the canal winds around the hills in much the same fashion as the South Oxford canal. A few miles in is the location of Hillmorton locks, the only three locks on the North Oxford canal and the busiest in the country as a sign informed me. The locks are doubled up to get more boats through.
The double locks also used to serve as side ponds for each other, though not anymore as far as I could see. Side ponds are a feature to conserve water (badly needed nowadays!) by storing it to reuse it when emptying a lock. In essence, when one lock is emptied the water is emptied into the lock next to it first until the level equalises (when the locks are both half full, it won’t flow anymore), only then is the rest let out to the canal below. Side ponds are still in operation at some lock flights today, but not here.
Some lock beams have words carved into them. The words are a bit mysterious until you read them in the right order. Here are the four lines carved onto the beams, part of a poem by Roy Fisher (2012):
WORKING WATER
CAPTIVE FOR A WHILE
CLIMBS CAREFULLY DOWN
THIS DOOR MAKES DEPTH
After Hillmorton it is lock-free cruising for more than 10 miles up to the junction with the Coventry canal.
The lost arms of the canal
In Rugby I started looking for the derelict arms of the canal. In the map above, you can see that the arm at Rugby is the longest of all. It goes 2 miles North before crossing the river Swift on an aqueduct, then comes back for 2 miles. Today the canal crosses the Swift on a pretty high aqueduct, so I assume that the original crossing must have been much lower to justify the massive detour. One side of the original arm is still in water and seems to serve as a canal feeder channel today. The other side is buried under an industrial estate. Sadly the original aqueduct seems to be hidden in some dense woodland and I couldn’t find it.
The old arms were not simply cut off and filled in, but elegant cast iron bridges made by Horseley Ironworks in Tipton were installed to take the towpath over the old arms. You have already seen this type of bridge in Braunston and they are also frequently found in Birmingham. They are beautiful!
Today many of the old arms have boat moorings in them.
My last excursion to see some bits of old canal took me to Newbold, which has the only tunnel on the North Oxford. Even though the canal was a contour canal, apparently in Newbold a tunnel was inevitable even then. The entrance to the old tunnel can still be seen behind the churchyard. The two holes are for bats to fly in and out. The old route of the canal is still visible for a while in the field, but there is no water in this one.
The Newbold tunnel was my first tunnel on this trip. Tunnels are never my favourite, but this one is pretty easy, only a few hundred metres long and high and wide even with towpath on both sides. It has a special place in my heart though, as it was the very first tunnel I ever did nine years ago, when I brought Willum down to London from his previous home in the Midlands.
Cruising the North Oxford
Cruising the North Oxford is an interesting experience, when you pay attention to your surroundings. One minute you cross an aqueduct or an embankment with the land falling away on both sides, the next minute you are in a deep cutting.
The canal is so straight in many places that it is tempting to speed a bit, but it is very shallow (a common story …) so the going is still always slow.
In one of the cuttings, near Brinklow, there was a massive landslip in 2024. 40,000 tons of soil and trees tumbled down blocking the canal completely. Here is a picture what it looked like at the time. The Canal and River Trust was quick on the case and the canal was reopened only two months later. The scar remains very visible and the towpath is still buried under the landslip.
The North Oxford canal ends at Hawkesbury junction, where it meets the Coventry canal. My route – going North – is turning right, but turning left takes you another 4 miles right into the middle of Coventry. I turned left and will tell you more about cruising the Coventry canal next time.
Social life in the linear village
A litte afterthought: I haven’t spoken much about people I have met so far. The canal system truly is a “linear village”. I have come across three of my ex-Helmsman students, two (a couple) have just bought a historic workboat and one is a Helmsman instructor himself now. I have also met friends in Banbury and in Braunston and am hoping to meet some more along the way.
Also a random man at a lock recognised me from my single-handed locking training video on youtube. This is not the first time this has happened. It’s a bit creepy to be recognised so out of the blue, but it’s also fascinating to see the reach of social media. I would never want to be a “canal celebrity” like the people who get filmed for the many canal programs that are so popular at the moment.
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I have a fascination with the disused arms. In my imagination, I’ll win the lottery, purchase a tiny arm and create a narrowboat haven.
Great Idea! Let me know when you are ready Anki! 🙂