Horncastle Canal

By the 1790s, the Manor of Horncastle was leased by Sir Joseph Banks, a man of both local and national standing, with a keen interest in agriculture and trade.

Sir Joseph expected Jessop to oversee the work, but he was too busy and suggested William Cawley from Cheshire as engineer.

The lock at Tattershall collapsed when first filled with water, and Cawley was dismissed in October, to be followed by a series of other engineers, none of whom lasted for very long.

Pressure was put on the builders of the locks at Tattershall and Tumby and the bridge at Butts Road in Coningsby, and they agreed to rebuild them, rather than lose contracts for other parts of the canal.

The engineer John Rennie was consulted, and he suggested that a new cut from Dalderby to Horncastle would be better than trying to follow the winding course of the River Bain.

3. c. cix) was obtained on 9 July 1800, authorising the raising of a further £20,000, but very little money was attracted to the scheme, and the company eventually borrowed £20,600 from Lord Fortescue and Sir Joseph, mortgaged against the tolls of the canal.

A new cut, called the South Ings Drain, which ran from below the sluice to join the old course of the River Bain near Thornton, was made under the terms of the Horncastle Enclosure Award in 1805.

The secretary sold Kirkby Watermill, which had been used as the company workshops, to raise some capital with which to clear debts, and notified the Board that the canal was effectively defunct.

The first was made in 1975 by the Lincolnshire Branch of the Inland Waterways Association, who recognised that the volume of pleasure traffic on the River Witham would need to increase before the scheme would be viable.

[17] From 1989, the Horncastle and Tattershall Conningsby Canal Heritage group (HATCH) began working on plans for restoration, which were presented at a public meeting held on 18 November 2003.