The Foss Dyke, or Fossdyke, connects the River Trent at Torksey to Lincoln, the county town of Lincolnshire, and may be the oldest canal in England that is still in use.

Improvements made in 1671 included a navigable sluice or lock at Torksey, and warehousing and wharves were built at Brayford Pool in the centre of Lincoln.

Connection to the River Witham at Brayford was hampered by the small bore and depth of High Bridge, a medieval structure just below the pool.

The River Till flows south and under the road to join the Foss Dyke, after which a new marina has been built at Burton Waters.

[6] Pointers include an inscribed statuette of the god Mars found in it at Torksey, which is now in the British Museum,[7] but there is a lack of consensus among authors writing on the subject.

Thus Kevin Leahy writes: Even if the Fossdyke had been built by the Romans it needs a high level of maintenance and after a few hundred years of neglect it would have been difficult to find, let alone navigate.

[9]Others, though, consider that Henry I merely scoured out an existing structure;[10] Mark Bennett, writing for the East Midlands Archaeological Research Framework says: The Foss Dyke is almost certainly Roman.

Work was carried out on the Foss Dyke, but only the first 100 yards (91 m) of the Witham, from Brayford Pool to High Bridge, received attention.

Coal traffic averaged 1,357 long tons (1,379 tonnes) per year, bound for Lincoln, but tolls were insufficient to finance repairs.

The city of Lincoln did not have the expertise to manage the waterway, and so leased it to Richard Ellison in 1741, who had experience with the River Don Navigation.

Sir Joseph Banks, when proposing the construction of the Horncastle Canal knew that the problem needed addressing, and William Jessop was commissioned to survey the Witham and the Foss Dyke in 1791, with particular reference to the junction between the two.

However, the city was keen to keep trade within its limits, and improvements to High Bridge, which were completed by 1795,[16] were authorised as part of the Horncastle Canal Act 1792 (32 Geo.

The Wakefield, Lincoln and Boston Railway had negotiated with the proprietors of the Witham and Foss Dyke in 1846, to guarantee them an income by leasing the waterways.

A series of takeovers and mergers resulted in its ownership changing several times, before it was nationalised, and became the responsibility of the British Waterways Board in 1948.

[19] Although its date of construction is unknown, the London and North Eastern Railway (successors of both the GNR and the GCR) built a small pumping station to the west of Torksey lock.

It contained a steam-powered beam engine, which was probably made by Davy Brothers of Sheffield, and drove a double-acting bucket pump.

[6] However, the demise of general commercial traffic had left Brayford Pool in the centre of Lincoln as a derelict body of water, full of debris such as rubbish and sunken boats.

They removed the wrecks from the pool, and have rebuilt the site, so that it offers facilities for visiting pleasure craft,[22] now the major users of the waterway.

[12] A former lift bridge, which crossed the western entrance to the pool, was replaced in August 1996 by a new concrete flyover, as part of the redevelopment of the south bank, which included the opening of the University of Lincoln in the same year.

For much of its route it runs along the top of the northern floodbank, but drops down to a new crossing of the A57 road and a new bridge across the River Till near Saxilby.