Bycarrsdyke – West Stockwith, England - Atlas Obscura

Bycarrsdyke

West Stockwith, England

This ancient canal may have been dug by the Romans for navigation but was used for drainage by James I's engineer 

1
0

A botched attempt to drain a massive area of marsh by diverting a river along an ancient  Roman canal has caused complications for the drainage authorities in north Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire since the 17th century.

At the behest of King James I, in the 1620s Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden drained the marshy area of South Yorkshire called Hadfield Chase. Part of his works involved diverting (at a point called Idle Stop) the entire flow of the River Idle along the canal that had been dug by the Romans 1400 years earlier.  All its waters now flowed into the River Trent rather than taking its northward course to the Don. This involved deepening and widening the Bycarrsdyke channel, allowing the tidal river Trent to have a much greater effect.

The river has been flowing along its highly modified route for so long that the name of Bycarrsdyke has largely been forgotten and many do not realise that this is not the natural course of the Idle. Even before Vermuyden’s work the Idle and Bycarrsdyke were an important transportation route. The town of  Bawtry, upstream on the Idle was once the second largest inland port in the country and the waterway carried lead, grindstones and edge tools for export and imported steel from Spain and Northern Europe  for Sheffield’s cuttlers before the city had its own steel manufacturing capability. In 1608 it was the route by which the families of many of the Mayflower Pilgrims set off on their journey to Massachusetts (via Holland). A local school, the Mayflower Primary School, is one of very few in England that regularly celebrates Thanksgiving.

Vermuyden’s modification of the catchment set in train a series of conditions which exposed the south side of the River Idle and Bycarrsdyke to flooding, where the land had previously been flood free. 

In the 17th century a simple wooden sluice was used to overcome this, Manually operated at high tide on the Trent, it was called Misterton Soss. The original Soss was installed, on the orders of the “Court of Sewers”, by Vermuyden’s nephew. By the end of the 19th century the Soss had evolved to become a complex structure which closed automatically when waters flowed upstream along Bycarrsdyke. In the 1930s this was augmented by a mechanically operated steel sluice at the point where Bycarrsdyke meets the Trent. 

The sluice was still found to be insufficient defence at times of high flow in the River Idle and in the 1980s the largest electrically powered outfall pumping station in the UK was installed just upstream of the sluice gate so that when the gate was closed excess water could be pumped into the Trent.

Vermuyden’s drainage effort has required considerable and continual enhancement throughout the area and could not be considered a real success. However the legacy of Bycarrsdyke as a flowing stream rather than a silting up Roman canal has left a waterway of great beauty and historic importance.

Know Before You Go

Do not park in the West Stockwith Canal basin parking lot, even if the gates are open. You are likely to get locked in. Boat trips and canoe rental are available on Bycarrsdyke at Haxey Gate.

Community Contributors