The History and Future of the Idle/Bycarrsdyke Waterway and Its Catchment:, An Artery of the Industrial Revolution and a Birthplace of British Drainage Engineering

This paper presents an account of the Idle navigation in northern England, now an obscure waterway but one which was fundamental to the success of the first steps of the industrial revolution which were being taken in north Derbyshire and south Yorkshire during the late 17th and early 18th century. It was also involved in an important part of American history, the exodus of the Mayflower Pilgrims and formation of the Plymouth Colony, and has an important place in the heritage of civil engineering, having been widely modified and controlled by pioneering drainage works initiated by Vermuyden in the 1620s. Competition from the Chesterfield Canal was partly responsible for its decline as a commercial waterway, with the canal benefitting from the labour force displaced from the Idle and many of the markets that it had established. Today navigation activity on the waterway is very scant, the legal rights to navigation have been under threat and there are physical, financial and bureaucratic barriers to vessels entering the waterway from the River Trent. A combination of a tidal sluice across the confluence with the Trent and a large pumping station barrage just upstream is the main issue. There is, however, some hope that proposed changes to jurisdiction over navigation on the Idle may result in improvements to access and, in the long term, tentative proposals to return the Idle to gravity drainage may remove one of the physical and financial barriers to access.