This was the view from the canal as it approached Tallington, painted by John Mills of Market Deeping.
The Crooked Billet alehouse is to the centre left of the picture.
The alehouse was one of the few places that the workers on the canal could get a drink! The ale being served through the window in the back door! Below is a view of the front of the Crooked Billett, now a private house.
Lock 5, Tallington Village, was just a short distance away, lowering the water level so that the canal could cross the Bainton Road. This is what was found of the top lock pen when clearing a space for a car-park!
In 2020, a mural was painted to show the canal view as it would have been in 1670.
The usual flotilla of 4 barges would only have come up as far as Tallington with goods and coal with 2 then continuing to Stamford. These are those returning with goods from the town.
The 32ft wide x 8ft high mural was erected on a new framework in front of the old grey fence to give a pleasant view and help tell the story of the use of the canal for education trips from local schoolchildren and villagers.
It is hoped to be able to reinstate two old lock gates in-situ to give a real impression of how the lock itself looked back then! Watch this space!
A sluice above the lock diverted excess water away to the river while a barge board Flash Lock below helped hold back the water to allow road traffic to pass.
On the Millennium Green, a turning circle was found. This view after the snows melted one year clearly shows the depression in the side of the canal.
Actually a triangle, it helped turn coal barges to unload at the Ellis and Everards coal wharf at the rear of the Tallington reading room.
The local landowner’s sale documents confirmed the details regarding the coal yard ownership that had only been passed on by word of mouth.
This is the plan of the sale of plot 9, the Reading Room
and this the sale particulars.
It is very pleasing when one can corroborate the finer details like this.
Obviously at the time of the sale Ellis and Everard’s were already on the move to the goods yard at the rear of Tallington station.
The canal then crossed Mjll Lane, with a barge board to hold back water for when people wanted to go to Tallington Mill until some time after 1813 when a wooden bridge was built there.
Lock 6, in Horse Holmes field, is now under the railway which bends here to go round the low end of the lock. There was joint working with the railway for 10 years at the crane siding, with coals being hoisted up from barges and loaded into rail wagons and taken to the Ellis and Everards coal wharf behind the station.
The plan for a T-junction from the canal to behind the pub to get more barges in for unloading wasn’t completed but can be seen here.
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