Stevenston Canal

[Penny Tray]

"In the 18th century a number of coal pits were operating in the Stevenston area and most of their production was being exported to Ireland. In 1770 Robert Reid Cunningham inherited the local estate and decided to dig a canal to facilitate these exports. The canal started from a basin 600 yards from Saltcoats harbour and travelled south for about two and a quarter miles ending near Ardeer. It was completed in 1772. It had no locks and so was quite a fast canal. Several side arms were dug to service new pits as they opened. It was abandoned in the 1830s."

Is there any trace of this canal in Stevenston today?

[morag]

Canal street, Saltcoats, running towards Stevenston?

[Scott McCallum]

I don't think that the canal actually ran along where Canal Street is. I think the canal ran along the side of Campbell Park, Blakely Road then the Esplanade Cottages (Auchenharvie Row) and finished at the end of Canal Street - where a railway line took the coal along the front to Saltcoats Harbour.

There used to be fishplates? for this line under the footbridge at the end of Canal Street but when the footbridge was moved fifteen yards towards Saltcoats Station they were destroyed. As far as I know there is no evidence - at least in sight on the surface - of the canal.

Scott McCallum - Glasgow

[down south]

According to an article I have that was published in the A&S Herald around the bicentenary of the canal in 1972, the whole idea of the canal at the beginning was to bypass Canal Street , then known as " the Coal Road "; because it was a turnpike road, and new tolls for coal carts had been brought in, with a toll house set up at No 64.

Scott has the details spot on at the Saltcoats end; it then ran to Ardeer Cottage, and via Canal Crescent and Portland Place to a point opposite the later gunpowder wagon sidings at ICI, where it split into several smaller canals connecting to the various coal pits.According to the article this was the only point where remains could be seen by 1972, a short stretch of weed-choked ditch.

The canal was described as very primitive; little more than an elongated ditch lined with puddled clay and filled by damming the Stevenston Burn; 4 feet deep and 13 feet wide in the main branch; only boats of 12-15 tons could operate. But it was still " the first canal in Scotland to be fully worked "; and thus another claim to fame for the Three Towns.

Susan

[Penny Tray]

Susan,

Thanks. Another amazing piece of information.

[morag]

Susan, thank goodness you don't throw anything away!

[arrangazer]

Thanks Susan really interesting information.

Arrangazer

[iain]

The only bit of the canal in question I know of is at Ardeer Quarry. Between the Ardeer Rec Pond's contributory ditch and the railway line, in the middle of this thin stretch of golf course is an overgrown wet scrubby area full of Willow etc. The canal can be seen running through this patch of wet scrub. It's most obvious in winter; in spring and summer it is overgrown with horsetails, bulrushes, etc.

The remains of the canal can also be seen further east, just over the cycle path. There's a lot less water in this bit and it's even more choked with vegetation (and iron oxide, or whatever that orange stuff is), but you can just make out the wall bordering the northern edge of the canal.

I think that Bobby McGuire of the Stevenston International, Historical, Cultural, and Geographical Agency (I hope I got that in the right order) hopes to erect a plaque nearby to inform visitors of the presence and significance of the canal.

I think that this stretch of canal at least was referred to as the Master Gott.

Iain

[Collenan]

I wonder if it would have connected with this Canal Plan I found. Is there any evidence of this around Ardrossan today?

Quote
Glasgow, Paisley and Johnstone Canal
(Glasgow, Paisley and Ardrossan Canal)

Little remains of the Glasgow, Paisley and Johnstone Canal, (originally named the Glasgow, Paisley and Ardrossan Canal) which extended for 11 miles (17 km) from Johnstone to Port Eglinton. Neither the Johnstone or Port Eglinton basins still exist; the former lay next to Canal Road, just northwest of Johnstone railway station while the latter lay close to Eglinton Street, a half-mile (1 km) south of Glasgow Bridge.

Opened in 1810, the canal was promoted and partially funded by Hugh Montgomerie of Coilsfield, the 12th Earl of Eglinton (1739 - 1819), and cost some £130,000 to build. Engineers John Rennie (1761 - 1821) and Thomas Telford (1757 - 1834) were involved in planning the canal, and John Ainslie (1745 - 1821) surveyed the route. Originally designed to reach the Ayrshire coast at Ardrossan, it was only built as far as Johnstone before funds ran out. This was a contour canal, which meant it was entirely level and needed no locks.

The canal transported a range of raw materials and finished good, such as coal, ironstone, bricks, slates timber, grain and textiles. Passenger traffic was also significant and novel express passenger boats were brought into service in 1830, pulled by six horses. This service carried up to 400,000 passengers each year and continued until the opening of the railways.

The canal was taken over by the Glasgow and South Western Railway Company in 1869 and was eventually closed by Act of Parliament in 1881. In that year a railway track was laid along the section between Glasgow and Paisley, a route now linking Glasgow Central to Paisley Canal station. The Blackhall Aqueduct survives as a railway bridge, but it is in the environs of the Ferguslie Thread Works in Paisley that the canal is best preserved.

Unquote

[Scott McCallum]

The Port Eglinton Flyover is the proposed name for the section of the new motorway from just south of the
Kingston Bridge in Glasgow crossing over the railway lines, West Street and Eglinton Street. The road continues to join up with the M74 in the east end.

Scott McCallum - Glasgow

[imajrk]

I'm just sitting here reading all this historical stuff that others are posting and thinking what a great resource this site is going to be in the future for people trying to find out about things past. There will be a host of photographs and information available with a click of the mouse. I hope this forum continues for many years. On a similar note, my grandparents travelled back & forth to Canada/USA several times in the very early 1900's and never kept any records of it. I have been able to track them and the ships they travelled on, but what a lot of history has been lost because my gran never spoke of it nor had any paperwork (my grampa died at the beg. of WW1). So, what might seem trivial and uninteresting now may mean a lot to someone in the future. Keep it up guys!

[down south]

Earlier in this topic I gave brief details from an article I had about the Stevenston Canal, and the tramway that in its later days connected it to Saltcoats Harbour. Since I'm about to follow the route of those rails up from the harbour on the Saltcoats Stroll, and with our visiting researchers too taking an interest in all aspects of Saltcoats history, I thought it was high time I added the complete article here.

It first appeared in the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald in 1972, the bicentenary year of the canal ; and it appears with full acknowledgements both to them, and especially to the author, who I'm sure won't mind its being reproduced here.

It was researched and written by Brian Hayton, a young man with a keen interest in local history, who was at the time the leader of the Junior Museum Association; he's pictured at some museum events here . I remember him from a few years ahead of me at Ardrossan Academy,and he must I think have been in his first year at university when he wrote this. And I've not been surprised to discover that he has gone on in later life to have quite a distinguished career in the museum world; Owen Kelly would have been delighted:

http://www.debretts.com/people/biograph ... +John.aspx

Little Plum posted an old map of the canal earlier in another topic we had on this subject : http://www.threetowners.net/forum/viewt ... 907#p90907

But an even better illustration for the article is this 1850s map, from not long after the canal fell out of use. You can still see the line of where it ran at the Saltcoats end quite well , and the rails to the harbour are still marked, though by this account they had just been removed. And it's certainly plain to understand now, why the first Saltcoats railway station was at the bottom of Kyleshill.

http://maps.nls.uk/os/25inch/view/?sid= ... &layers=BT

Susan


FIRST WORKING CANAL IN SCOTLAND : AT SALTCOATS!

The first canal in Scotland to be fully worked was one which ran between Saltcoats and Stevenston and which opened 200 years ago next Tuesday — September 19, 1772.

Towards the end of the 18th century about 30 coal pits of varying depths and importance were in operation in the Stevenston area. None of them was deeper than 100 fathoms and the majority were about 20 fathoms deep; nor was their production spectacular, each pit only producing an average of about 770 tons a year — although this was no worse than other places at the same period.

The coal, once mined, had to be sold and the most ready and lucrative market lay over the sea in Ireland. This necessitated a laborious land cartage through tracks made in the sand dunes to the then best harbour in the area, that of Saltcoats.

The Turnpike Act of 1751 did something to alleviate the situation by creating a reasonable road from Stevenston to Saltcoats as part of the Irvine-Greenock turnpike. Coal carts were exempt under this Act from payment but the 1768 Act was not as generous and a toll was set up in the premises at No. 64 Canal Street, formerly called simply the "Coal Road."

This toll seems to have been the last straw in the deteriorating state of the coal carriage for Robert Reid Cuninghame who in 1770 succeeded to the estate of Seabank (Auchenharvie). He began to investigate other modes of transport and thus his gaze settled, almost inevitably, on that latest wonder of the 18th century, the canal.
In partnership with Patrick Warner of Ardeer, who owned most of the pits, he built a canal from the coalfield to within 600 yards of the harbour whither the coal was conveyed by cart.

The Saltcoats canal, once constructed, was of an extremely primitive nature. It was little more than an elongated ditch lined with puddled clay and filled by damming the Stevenston burn at a point near Ardeer Cottage. There were no locks or reservoirs on the canal. It was four feet deep and 13 feet wide in the main branch, narrowing to nine feet in the smaller ones and thus boats of only 12-15 tons could operate on it.

It ran along where Esplanade Cottages and Blakely Road now stand, and half under where the later Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway ("Caley") embankment stands to Ardeer Cottage; then by Canal Crescent to Portland Place whence it went direct to a point opposite the gunpowder wagon sidings at the Nylon Plant.

At that point there was a Y-fork and the main canal terminated. Three short branches were made to serve pits in the area bounded by New Street, Ardeer House and the new access road to Ardeer. Two short canals (entirely separate from the main one) were built at the Misk field to carry coals into the River Garnock and thus to Ireland.
By this stratagem the turnpike was skilfully evaded and carriage costs reduced — that is until 1802 when, by the Ayrshire Roads Act of that year, a toll house was set up at McLachlan's Lane which effectively caught the coal carts and subjected them to a toll. This Act was particularly disastrous to the partnership for not only was the exemption of coal carts for toll ended, but bye-roads were suppressed, heavy carts charged more than light ones and 3d was levied on each beast in the team drawing the cart.

These prohibitive dues had to be evaded but, because of strife and litigation between the partners and difficulty in reclaiming the land now comprising Seaview Road (formerly called " Canal Street") from the sea, a new tramway to by-pass the toll house was not put to use until August 29, 1812.

Cuninghame, the builder, received 2d per ton, i.e. 4d per wagon, for coal carried upon it. Even with this imposition the saving over the previous costs will be seen as considerable and, as a measure of this, from its opening to October 24, 1812, he received £375 9s 10d. Thus it was that the canal/tramway combination had reached its economic zenith which was to continue until the late 1820s.

By this time coal production was beginning to increase rapidly owing to improved methods. Ardrossan harbour, begun in 1805, was becoming a commercial proposition and was taking trade away from the now cramped and shallowing one at Saltcoats. But the main reason for the decline of the canal was the new Ardrossan and Johnstone Railway, authorised on June 14, 1827, to connect the abortive Glasgow, Paisley and Ardrossan Canal with its proclaimed destination.

It is doubtful whether the Canal Company had ever any intention of making its railway to Johnstone to carry out the by then anachronistic function of connecting with a canal. Rather it should be seen as an attempt to capture the lucrative coal traffic from both coalfields to make the "white elephant" harbour at Ardrossan pay.

The railway was therefore run roughly parallel with and close to the line of the canal and branches were carried to the mouths of all operational pits — just as the canal had done. The Coal Company could run its coal carts on the horse-drawn railway on payment of a modest toll.

In 1840 the private railway which had been used by the Coal Company to transport its coal was abolished and the southern line of rails of the Ardrossan Railway given over for transport to Saltcoats harbour. The railway on to the harbour was lifted in 1852 due to the fact that most of the coal being shipped was now needed for the Stevenston Foundry. The wheel had now come full circle and Saltcoats harbour fell into commercial disuse.

Little now remains of the canal on this the bi-centenary of its opening on September 19, 1772, as the first canal to be fully worked in Scotland. A tiny weed-choked fraction can be seen beside the remains of the Hillside No. 1 pit opposite the gunpowder wagon sidings at the Nylon Plant.

Another vague depression exists in the seaward side of the disused Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway at Brewery Park but, it will be admitted, one must have good imagination to see both of these fragments as belonging to the bustling Saltcoats Canal.

BRIAN J. HAYTON