eaw043844 ENGLAND (1952). The Staveley Iron Works and Barrow Hill, Staveley, from the south, 1952

Interesting! During the late 1950s opencast mining took place in Westwood and there was very deep brick built shaft at the edge of it - it took several seconds for a dropped stone to hit the bottom (none of us had watches!). It was obviously not a railway tunnel vent, but could it have been another vent for this canal?

"The Hollingwood Common Tunnel is a mile and three quarters long. It is not connected with the level of the canal, but is kept one foot lower, by means of a culvert under the canal. The whole of the length, except the first 300 yards, is driven in the “Deep end of Squire’s coal seam”, where it of service for draining the works. The southern end of the tunnel is about 80 yards beneath the surface; it is 6 feet high and 5 feet 9 inches wide. The depth of water within it is 2 feet, on which boats are used 21 feet long and 3 feet 6 inches wide, holding seven corves, which weigh together about twenty cwt. When these tunnel-boats arrived at the side of the canal, a crane was used to lift up the corves and empty their contents into a canal boat. Near the middle of the tunnel, there are 68 yards of its course driven through grit-stone, without the archway being bricked as it is in other places. The mine worked iron stone initially but was mining coal in 1800." Copied from a web site. The colliery was on the north side of the canal near where the offices and canteen were.