Cymraeg ar gael isod!
Gauge unknown
Museum objects:
In 1803 a meeting was held in Tavistock, Devon to promote the connection of the town by canal to the navigable parts of the River Tamar. Devonshire and Cornwall were mining 25% of the world's copper but Tavistock was losing out due to poor access by road to the coast.
The proposal was to use the River Tavy out of Tavistock to Lumburn Valley. From there a canal would run, via an inclined plane (the longest in Britain), down to Morwellham where it would join the River Tamar which entered the sea to the south at Plymouth. A "collateral cut" (branch canal) would be run to serve the slate quarries at Mill Hill and included a haulway on which barges could be transferred between pounds via a horse-drawn trolley. The canal used wrought iron barges 30ft long by 4ft 6in beam, three being hauled along at a time, but poled through the 1.5 mile long Morwelldown Tunnel.
In June 1817 the full 4½ miles of the Tavistock Canal main line opened after fourteen years of construction. The Collateral Cut to Mill Hill was completed in 1819. Despite the recession in the copper industry after 1815, the canal made a small profit for over 40 years. As well as copper, lead, tin and manganese ore, slate and timber leaving for the River Tamar via the canal, there was also a good intake of products for the people of Tavistock. This included limestone and coal to be burnt in limekilns to improve the land, iron and coke for the town's three foundries, building materials and sand.
The Collateral Cut however, had hardly been used since it was built in 1817. In 1844 it was decided to convert it into a tramway some two miles long.
By this time though, the canal company was losing out to railway competition. It soldiered on until 1873 when it was forced to sell out for just £3,200, some £59,000 less than the cost of building some 60 years earlier.
Plateways were used in several places along the canal, at Tavistock Wharf, in the Mill Hill slate quarries and at Wheal Crebor copper mine, which lay alongside the canal. The majority however were to be found at the canal's southern terminus, where a double-track inclined plane connected the canal terminus high on the Tamar valley-side above, with the port of Morwellham below. Several sidings radiated out from the incline foot, serving three docks and several wharfs, a manganese mill and a limekiln; the latter having a water-powered plateway incline of its own. Many of the plate and bar rails, wagon parts and other remains known from this site were discovered during eight years of archaeological excavations and surveys by the Morwellham Archaeological Group (now disbanded) under the guidance of Robert Waterhouse FSA.
See the Links page for deatils of a website which is being developed to showcase this work.
