BUGSWORTH

Bugsworth Basin opened in the early 1800s and for a hundred years it was a busy port for shipping stone and lime. A tramway system stretching many miles into the hills was constructed to bring the stone from the quarries at Doveholes and Barren Clough.
The stone would either go into boats or the Limekilns where it would be heated and the burnt lime would be used for adding to soil on farms or making mortar for building.

Other goods shipped into the basin would be coal to fire the kilns, raw materials for the Mills would be carried on the Tramway back up the hills.

When walking around the basin today with hardly a sound to be heard you can only imagine what it must have been like with smoke belching from the kilns the noise of the tramway trucks rolling in from the Quarries, the Tipplerhttp://www.brocross.com/iwps/pages/legacy.htm chains clanging as they tip the loaded wagons out, the stone crusher shed that produced ballast for the growing raiway network.

When the basin finally closed in 1927 the buildings were demolished for the stone to be used for other buildings, re-cycling is not a modern day invention.
Stables,wharehouses,blacksmith shop,lime sheds with undercover loading for boats all sadly gone. Worst three of the four bugsworth pubs gone with only the Navigation still in place to quench your thirst. The Navigation was once a farm and in the not so distant past was run by Pat Phoenix 0f Elsie Tanner/coronation St. fame.

The basin was the scene in 1898 of the murder aboard a narrowboat by John Cotton of his wife Hannah. Arrested in October and hanged in December at Derby justice was swift.