Lincolnshire Link

The Fenland waterways served a rich agricultural district but their isolation meant sending produce to the Midlands or south England, or receiving coal, involved inconvenient and expensive passages by road or sea. A tenuous link was made by the Grand Junction Canal in 1805 with a tramroad down to the head of the difficult Nene Navigation at Northampton, but a proper waterway connection was needed. Schemes at various locations were discussed and surveyed, with several focussing on the town of Stamford at the head of the ancient Welland Navigation.

In 1786 the intended canalisation of the River Soar from Loughborough to Leicester, and the Wreak to Melton Mowbray, prompted a contemporary proposal surveyed by Robert Whitworth to extend with a canal from Melton, via Oakham and Empingham, to the Welland Navigation below Stamford. This collapsed with the initial failure of the Soar scheme, but the rivers were opened up over the next decade, with a canal as far as Oakham completed in 1803. As trade developed, the proposed link to Stamford was revived in 1810 as the Stamford Junction Canal, now with Thomas Telford as engineer. He chose a more southerly route, nearly 16 miles long with 282ft of lockage, through Luffenham and Ketton to the head of the Stamford Navigation, with associated new Fenland links from the Welland to Peterborough and Boston, using lengths of a reopened Car Dyke, the ancient Roman canal.

A competing scheme, surveyed by Benjamin Bevan, took a longer route from the Market Harborough Branch of the Leicestershire & Northamptonshire Union Canal at Great Bowden and followed the Welland Valley down to Stamford, with a link to Peterborough similar to that of the Stamford Junction Canal.

Both schemes went to Parliament in 1811, the Stamford Junction with considerable landowner support. The Harborough line attracted much opposition from both landowners and the commissioners of the largely parallel Nene Navigation. Both failed to get their act. Over the next decades they were periodically reconsidered but the impetus was reduced in 1815 when the Grand Junction opened a branch canal to the Nene, replacing its Northampton tramroad.

The location map (bottom right) shows the isolation of the waterways around the Wash, with the Nene to Northampton. The competing schemes to Stamford are in red, and the proposed connections to Boston and Peterborough are in green.