Day 1 - Shackerstone to Ashby - 11 Miles

I didn’t fancy spending the whole of my weekend indoors doing website updates as I had been recently and so, on a whim, I decided to get out there and walking again after a winter of walking lethargy. I got up mid morning and rang mum to check that she’d pick me up from the end of my day’s walking before I set off.

I decided to start my walk at the official leaflet’s start in Shackerstone, though because it is a circular I could have started anywhere. I arrived in the village at just gone 11am after about half an hour’s drive and parked near The Rising Sun pub by the church. The village is probably most famous for its railway. ‘The Battlefield Line’ currently stretches between Shackerstone and Shenton. The track and stations between these villages have been restored by the Shackerstone Railway Society, who operate restored steam and diesel hauled trains on the line on a regular basis throughout the year. There is a museum at Shackerstone Station with many relics from the original line on show.

The line was originally a ‘joint venture’ arrangement between the London North Western Railway and the Midland Railway companies, and operated under the title ‘The Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway’ with its headquarters at Shackerstone Station. The staff had their own distinctive Uniform with its initials A.N.J.R, adorning their caps, coat lapels and buttons. Trains were operated by both the L.N.W.R. and There was a branch line at Shackerstone to Coalville Junction passing through Heather and Hugglescote to join the Midland line just south of Coalville and the Charnwood Forest Railway (worked by the L.N.W.R.) to Loughborough (Derby Road Station). The branch was used much more by the L.N.W.R. than the M.R.

The joint line never ran to Ashby, but terminated at Moira Junction, this being considered the centre of Ashby Wolds. Here it joined the Burton to Leicester line of the Midland Railway. The line was under construction by August 1869, the contractors being Barnes and Beckett of Rochdale, who tendered £171,900. However, labour troubles, bad weather resulting in landslips, waterlogged sand measures, unstable clay and shortage of materials caused the final cost to be £550,000. The line finally opened for goods traffic on 1st August 1873 and for passengers on 1st September the same year.

I didn’t have time to investigate the railway today, but instead walked from the pub to cross and join the towpath of the Ashby Canal. 1794 saw the passing of the Act of Parliament authorising the building of the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal, and the canal opened throughout by 1804. Constructed mainly to carry coal from the pits in Moira and Measham area, it enjoyed only limited success. The railway mania of the 1830’s and 40’s did little for its fortunes and in 1846 the canal was sold to the Midland Railway for £110,000, a considerable loss against construction costs of £184,000.

Existing in close proximity to active coal mines meant the Ashby Canal was constantly affected by mining subsidence. A major breach at Moira in 1918 nearly closed the canal permanently, only the strategic importance of the coal supplies during the 1st World War allowed it to survive. The 1920’s and 30’s were beset with subsidence damage and claims against local collieries, and by 1944, the L.M.S. Railway who had taken over the Midland interests in the 1923 grouping won Parliamentary approval to close the canal from the terminus north of Moira to Donisthorpe. Further closures followed, the canal being navigable only to its current terminus north of Snarestone by 1966.

As I looked across towards the houses of the village from the canal towpath’s first few hundred yards, the remains of a Motte and Bailey could be seen and then further along when Shackerstone itself was left behind the tall trees and a large cedar tree that once stood near Gopsall Hall could be seen in the distance off to the left across Gopsall Park. The estate is now owned by the Crown and the hall has long since gone. It was built by Charles Jennens in 1750. He was a great friend of the “Young Pretender” and also a close associate of Handel who is supposed to have written part of the Messiah in the stone temple in the Park, the ruins of which are still in existence today.

Charles Jennens died childless and left his estate to his niece, and it came by marriage to Penn Asheton Curzon whose son was created the First Lord Howe. The Second Lord Howe was MP for South Leicestershire from 1857 to 1870. The Lords Howe were close friends of the Royal family and King Edward VII visited the hall on numerous occasions, there being a full scale Royal visit in 1902. The Hall and its parkland was sold to Lord Waring in 1919 though he only held on to the estate for seven years. The 1930's saw various plans mooted for its use; a motor racing circuit, an airfield, a country club or all three, but none of these came to anything. During the Second World War the Army took over the Hall as a REME radar training base. From the end of the war onwards the Hall was empty and deteriorating. 1952 saw the end when the fixtures and fittings were auctioned off and the building demolished.

At Bridge number 54, Hills Bridge it was time for me to leave the Ashby Canal for a while, though a small bench with a plaque on it proclaimed that work on the canal began near this spot. Why they chose to start construction of the canal here in the middle of nowhere I’m not sure??

I took a path off to the right by the bridge and this soon came out on a narrow lane. I turned left along this for about half a mile until just after Shackerstone Fields Farm, where I took a path off to the left crossing numerous fields to eventually emerge at the village of Snarestone. The village is the northern terminus of the Ashby canal at present, but now that mining has ceased in the area many of the sections further north have been restored and the plan is to reopen the canal between these restored sections in the future.

I walked along the ‘main’ street of the village between a couple of lovely grand houses and decided to stop off for a drink and some lunch in The Globe pub. I had a basket meal of scampi and chips. There was very little choice on the menu and the food was less than exciting, but it filled a hole. Having finished my food I retraced my steps down the main street a short distance and took a lane off to the left which came to the village playing fields. I cut diagonally across these to join the main road by the side of Snarestone Lodge.

The next part of the walk was less than inspiring. A trudge up the grass verge of the quite busy and fast B4112 to the next road junction and then a further trudge around the perimeter of the brickworks on the edge of Measham.

When I got to the houses in Measham I walked through a housing estate to emerge at the old Measham Station, that had windows all breeze blocked up. A sorry looking sight, though apparently there are plans afoot to restore it to its former glory to house a Museum and also there are plans to have a canal wharf here if the Ashby canal is reopened throughout its entire length at some point in the future. I stopped off in the small co-op store I found here to buy some mini eggs to fuel my further journey.

I continued on my way out of Measham along the old railway trackbed until I reached the new A42. I had to leave the old line here and join the road down on my left to go under the A42 and then rejoined the old railway track on the other side. As I left the roar of the A42 gradually behind, this section of the walk became a little bit more pleasant, with fields and trees off to left and right. Half way between Measham and Donisthorpe there was what appeared to be a lake caused by mining subsidence off to the left. I rang Karen as I approached Donisthorpe to see if they were in and minded me dropping in for a visit. I found out that they had gone down to Dorset for the weekend on the spur of the moment. Oh well.

I carried on along my way, going across the main road in Donisthorpe and entering what was the area of the old spoil heaps of Donisthorpe Colliery. At the moment it’s a bit of a tree plantation, but give it twenty years or more and it will be a pleasant area of woodland.

The transformation of the Donisthorpe Colliery site into the present day woodland park meant overcoming many difficulties caused by the site's previous usage. The area to the west of the former Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway was used extensively for colliery waste tipping. In 1979, after the local collieries were connected underground, the tip became redundant. By that time approximately 2 million cubic meters of waste had been stockpiled on the site.

In the 1980s, British Coal let a tip washing contract to recover residual coal. A consequence of tip washing is the generation of waste in the form of silt and clay sized particles, in suspension in water. This slurry is a difficult material to handle and to dispose of. The disposal method employed here was lagooning, whereby slurry is pumped into a hole and the solids allowed to settle out. The first lagoon was created using the former railway cutting to the north of Church Street, however enormous amounts of slurry were produced which required more and more lagoon capacity.

In all six lagoons, that covered 50% of the tip site were created. Most had a surface area of over 2 hectares and were up to 15 meters deep. When the tip washing eventually ceased, the lagoons were capped with by a thin layer. This resulted in a steep sided plateau landscape, broken up by Bamborough Brook running in an artificial steep sided valley. Building would have been imnpossible on the site as the capped lagoons rarely tend to dry out and this would have presented insurmountable engineering difficulties. Instead some 300,000 cubic meters of colliery spoil has been redistributed to improve the featureless lagoon landscape. Capping has been increased and steep gradients regraded where possible. Paths and drainage systems have been added to the site, made from recycled waste produced by the demolition of the old colliery buildings.

I made my way through the new plantation all the way to the far side, where I rejoined a restored section of The Ashby Canal at Moira Lime kilns.

There are 7 limekilns on the site. It is thought that the first one was built in 1800 a few years before the Ashby Canal was completed, and its thought to have been used to produce quick lime for the building of Moira Furnace next door. Four more kilns were added in 1812 and then the last two were built between 1826 and 1837. The nearness of the canal after the first kiln was open was undoubtedly responsible for the rapid expansion of the site. Lime kilns were used to convert limestone, a naturally occurring rock, into 'Quicklime' which was used both as a fertiliser and as an ingredient of builders mortar. Chemically, the calcium carbonate of the limestone in the presence of heat, is converted to calcium oxide. This is an unstable compound that readily reacts with moisture generating corrosive heat and burns. It therefore had to be stored in dry conditions and kept away from the skin. Limestone and poor quality coal slack were loaded into the top of each kiln and a fire was lit at the base. Workers tended the fire and raked out the resulting limestone in the tunnels at the bases of the kilns.

The limestone burnt at Moira probably came from quarries to the north at Ticknall and Breedon and the canal was the most efficient way of transporting the bulky materials to the site. Between 1800 and 1850 the site would have been a hive of activity, warm clouds of carbon dioxide drifting out of the kiln tops that burnt day and night. Heaps of limestone and coal slack would be forever building up and being consumed by the hungry kilns. Narrowboats would have regularly stopped off to deliver loads of stone and cart off sacks of quicklime.

In the 1840's when all seven kilns were in full operation, the site could have produced over 5000 tonnes of lime a year. It is thought that the majority of this lime was used for fertilizer, as the heavy clay soils of the surrounding area are greatly improved by the addition of lime. At this rate of production a modest profit could be made because the coal used was nearby and virtually free.

During the 1850s, the economics of the site and a slump in the demand for quicklime meant that the kilns were abandoned.

I wandered around for a few minutes and then carried on along the canal towpath for a hundred yards or so to Moira Furnace itself.

The remains of Moira Furnace today, consist of the furnace stack (with its sloping sides and brick arches), the bridge loft, that links the furnace stack to the bridge, and the bridge itself with its canal side ramp.

The buildings were located next to the canal to make the transportation of raw materials and end product as convenient as possible. The raw materials for iron making, iron ore, limestone and coke were hauled up the ramp, over the bridge and into the bridge loft. These materials were tipped into the top of the furnace stack and, having been transformed by the intense heat of the blast furnace, emerged as molten iron at the base or 'hearth' of the furnace.

Two of the most important furnace buildings are no longer in existence. In front of the stack, there used to be a large, single storey casting shed. This is where the molten iron was poured into moulds and allowed to cool before being packed for transportation.

There was also an engine house next to the furnace stack at right angles to the casting shed. This was as tall as the furnace stack itself and housed a large steam engine that produced a very powerful blast of hot air that was delivered to the furnace through pipes. This blast of air made the fuel in the furnace burn more fiercely raising the temperatures inside sufficiently to produce the molten iron at the hearth of the furnace.

I wandered around the site for a while and used the toilets, while I was there and then set off along the canal towpath again. When I got around the corner a few hundred yards I realised I'd made a mistake and should have crossed over the canal on the small bridge by the furnace and walked along the opposite towpath to join a road. I retraced my steps and crossed the canal and found my way again.

Emerging at the road I should have been on, I crossed over and gradually climbed up through shrubby woodland towards the main centre of Moira Village.

I eventually emerged on the main road in Moira, after crossing a railway line, and turned right along the road, carrying straight on at a small roundabout until the next lane off to the right. Again, this was a bit of a trudge and a slightly uphill one at that. The village was not very beautiful and the traffic was less than inspiring.

The lane I turned left into was slightly less busy, with more of a view off to the right down to the railway track I’d crossed and beyond. A hundred yards or so along the lane I crossed it and turned left entering another large area of newly planted trees, still climbing to the summit of a low hill. In years to come this will again be a pleasant section of the walk, but at the moment the trees are too small to be pretty and it was also very squelchy underfoot.

I at last crested the rise and finally got quite a nice rural view out across the way ahead and Ashby in the middle distance… my destination for today at least! The remainder of the journey to the outskirts of Ashby was a pleasant enough one. I descended from the small rise to the valley bottom crossing large open fields with few edges, but all around on the low valley sides new tree plantations could be seen, so in the future it will again be an improving more natural landscape to be walking through. I rang mum as I reached the outskirts and told her I was ready to be picked up, so that by the time I’d walked into the centre of the town to meet her she could be almost there. I didn’t want to be standing around too long in the biting cold waiting for my lift back to the car. The half mile walk into town wasn’t very inspiring, but pleasant enough. I’d arranged to meet mum in the car park by the Royal Hotel and she arrived 10 minutes after I got there.