Sir Nigel Gresley's Canal was a 3 miles (4.8 km) private canal

Canal

Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

 between Apedale

Apedale

Apedale is a village in Staffordshire, England. The village is home to the Apedale Community Country Park. The park is unusual for the area as it was previously as an opencast mine....

 and Newcastle-under-Lyme

Newcastle-under-Lyme

Newcastle-under-Lyme is a market town in Staffordshire, England, and is the principal town of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is part of The Potteries Urban Area and North Staffordshire. In the 2001 census the town had a population of 73,944...

 both in Staffordshire

Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It was used to transport coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 from Sir Nigel Gresley

Sir Nigel Gresley, 6th Baronet

Sir Nigel Gresley, 6th Baronet was an English land-owner, mine-owner and the builder of Sir Nigel Gresley's Canal.Gresley was the son of Sir Thomas Gresley, 4th Baronet and his first wife Dorothy Bowyer, daughter of Sir William Bowyer, 4th Baronet. He succeeded his brother who died of smallpox...

's mines

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

. It opened in 1776 after being approved by Act of Parliament in 1775. The act placed controls on the price at which coal transported via the canal to Newcastle could be sold for the following 42 years. The canal was transferred to the ownership of Robert Edensor Heathcote in 1827.
It closed around 1857.

The canal joined the Junction Canal at a mill in Cross Heath, a site now occupied by a motorbike shop in Swift House on the A34 Liverpool Road. It then ran northwest to Milehouse, Chesterton and the Apedale mines.

See also

• Canals of Great Britain
• History of the British canal system
  History of the British canal system
  The British canal system of water transport played a vital role in the United Kingdom's Industrial Revolution at a time when roads were only just emerging from the medieval mud and long trains of pack horses were the only means of "mass" transit by road of raw materials and finished products The...
  
  

External links

• "Tracing a canal via blackberries" - exploring the route in 2008