Captain Clarke's Bridge
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Captain Clarke's Bridge by Gerald England as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Captain Clarke's Bridge
Image: © Gerald England Taken: 10 Apr 2011
Captain Clarke's Bridge on the Peak Forest Canal from the East. It is named after the naval officer, John Clarke who lived at Wood End in the 19th century. The towpath changes sides at this point. The horse, pulling a narrowboat along with a towline attached to its harness, would walk under the bridge then up around the curve, over the canal and down the other side. If the boat was going the other way, the horse would cross the bridge then curve down and go under the bridge. Because the towpath goes under the bridge before circling upwards, the towline could remain attached the whole time, which would save the boatmen time and fiddling about. See how it looked in 1900: http://oldhyde.blogspot.com/2007/12/captain-clarkes-bridge.html
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
53.445166
Longitude
-2.087585