HAZELHURST
Rudyard reservoir
The Caldon Canal and the Uttoxeter Canal
Locks
Junction
Feeder (not navigable) Aqueduct
Norton Green Arm Planet Lock
Foxley Arm Bedford St Locks
LEEK
Hazelhurst Junction, locks and aqueduct
Leek Branch (last half-mile into Leek closed) Leek Tunnel Cheddleton
Endon
Cheddleton Locks Stockton Brook Woods Locks Lock Oakmeadow Ford Lock
Caldon Canal
STOKE ON TRENT
North Staffs Railway (LeekUttoxeter line) North of Oakamoor the line is now the Churnet Valley Railway operating a tourist service of steam trains; south of Oakamoor it is currently disused.
Consall Froghall Caldon Low Tunnel Froghall: current terminus Flint Mill Lock of Caldon Canal
Engine Lock FROGHALL Trent & Mersey Canal main line Canal
Tunnel Railway Disused canal and locks: restoration of top lock proposed
Oakamoor
Current terminus
Cheadle
Alton Towers leisure park Alton
From Froghall to Uttoxeter the canal was closed and much of it used for the route of the railway, however several sections of canal were bypassed.
JCB Factory Rocester
The Caldon Canal is a 17 mile, 17 lock branch of the Trent & Mersey Canal, opened around 1779 to serve the limesotone quarries at Caldon Low via a horse tramway from Froghall. A branch opened in 1801 ran for 2他 miles from Hazelhurst to Leek; its main purpose was to carry water via a feeder from the new Rudyard Reservoir. (for lovers of canal trivia: Rudyard is probably the only UTTOXETER canal reservoir in the world to have had a well-known author named after it!) Hazelhurst junction has been altered several times, resulting in the current layout where the Leek arm leaves the Caldon on the south side, the Caldon then drops through three locks, then the Leek arm crosses it on the Hazelhurst (or Denford) aqueduct. (Ask Alison for the full history of the junction - she lives right next to it and has part of an earlier flight of locks in her garden!) The Leek arm was abandoned in 1944, but remained unobstructed apart from the filling in of the final half-mile. The Caldon was never abandoned, but fell derelict beyond Hazelhurst junction in the early 1960s; it was restored and reopened in 1974 thanks to the efforts of the Caldon Canal Society and others. The Uttoxeter Canal was an extension of the Caldon from Froghall for a further 13 miles and 17 locks to Uttoxeter, opened in 1811. In 1847, after the Trent & Mersey and all its branches had been bought by the North Staffs Railway, the Uttoxeter Canal was closed and parts of its bed were used for the construction of the southern part of the Leek-Uttoxeter railway line; this was closed in the 1960s except for the part north of Oakamoor which survived until the 1980s for sand quarry traffic, and has since been preserved as the Churnet Valley steam railway.
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