Crossing the Murk Esk and the Dream for a Canal

I have passed through Grosmont many times before, yet somehow missed this ford across the River Murk Esk. It sits quietly at the foot of Lease Rigg, one of a pair of crossings of the river that seem to defy both logic and geology. The cliff rising on the eastern side makes it clear why the post-medieval road took this strange route, fording the river twice in quick succession. There was no other option¹NYMNP HER Nos: 19654/5. Fords across Murk Esk at Grosmont..

Staring at the unstable wall of rock and considering the steep climbs out of Grosmont, I found myself marvelling at the sheer nerve of an 18th-century plan to build a canal by here. The aim was to link Whitby with Pickering by water, despite the obvious fact that this is no place for calm navigation. The land is all gorge and gradient, with the Murk Esk and Esk valleys converging in an untidy tangle²Naylor, Tamsyn. The Canal That Was Never Built. Esk Valley News Quarterly —Follow the Flow. 2024 Summer. Page 50..

This was forty-three years before the Whitby and Pickering Railway finally opened in 1836. The canal proposal had gone as far as a printed prospectus and costings. It came from Whitby’s civic leaders, desperate to revive a town in decline. They formed a committee, chaired by the local Collector of Customs, Francis Gibson. He hired a surveyor, William Crosley, who drew up a plan in 1793.

Crosley’s idea was to reuse an existing short canal from Whitby to Ruswarp, dug in the 1750s, then follow the River Esk to Grosmont. From there, the canal would climb along the southern side of the Murk Esk valley — no tunnelling through Lease Rigg, unlike the later railway — and reach the Vale of Goathland. I spent a while pondering its likely route on the map and concluded it would have run above Grosmont, skirting the 70-metre contour. Nearing Beck Hole it would then have taken the same course the railway would follow decades later.

The plan collapsed, as such things often do. Money was hard to raise, the engineering too ambitious, and the profit margins too hopeful. Fen Bog alone would have demanded major excavation to gain solid ground. The 20-mile route needed 44 locks to get up from Ruswarp and another 36 down to Pickering. Water shortages at the summit would have required back-pumping. The whole thing was priced at £3,300 per mile, cheaper than the railway’s final cost, but still a high price to dig a trench through rock and swamp.

In hindsight, the failure was probably inevitable. But it does leave one wondering what sort of minds looked at cliffs, bogs and winding valleys and thought: “Yes, a canal will do nicely.”

• 1
  NYMNP HER Nos: 19654/5. Fords across Murk Esk at Grosmont.
• 2
  Naylor, Tamsyn. The Canal That Was Never Built. Esk Valley News Quarterly —Follow the Flow. 2024 Summer. Page 50.