Leicestershire & Northamptonshire Union Canal: Market Harborough to Northampton

Canals That Never Were: NarrowBoat, Summer 2006

Richard Dean

Originally conceived simply as an extension of the Leicester Navigation to Market Harborough, this project was caught up in the ‘Canal Mania’ and was rapidly extended south to the proposed Grand Junction Canal near Gayton, giving a potential barge canal link between London and the East Midlands. The surveys were prepared by John Varley senior and Christopher Staveley junior, and as finally enacted in 1793, the main line, over 43 miles long, terminated at Northampton by junctions with the River Nene and a proposed offshoot of the Grand Junction from Gayton, with a branch of nearly four miles from south of Foxton to Market Harborough (D–B on the map).…