Coalisland Canal

Coalisland Canal
Specifications
Locks	7
Status	derelict
History
Date of act	1732
Date completed	1787
Date closed	1946
Geography
Start point	Coalisland
End point	River Blackwater
Connects to	River Blackwater

Coalisland Canal (sometimes known as The Tyrone Navigation) is a canal in County Tyrone in Ulster and is about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) long. Construction of the canal began in 1733, but progress was slow and it was not officially opened until 1787. The canal was built to reduce the cost of transporting coal from the Tyrone coalfields to Dublin. An extension known as "Dukart's Canal" was built to link the coalfields of Drumglass with the head of navigation at Coalisland. It opened in 1777, but was an engineering failure, and closed when the main canal opened. After some difficulties with the infrastructure, traffic slowly increased, and did not reach its peak until 1931. Traffic then declined rapidly, and the canal was abandoned in 1954.

There has recently been some interest in restoring the remains, as most of the channel is still intact, and a group has been formed, which is now part of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland, to raise public awareness of the canal and investigate options for the future. A small boat rally was held on the canal in April 2008.

Coal deposits were discovered in East Tyrone at the end of the 17th century, but the coal could not be sold at Dublin, the obvious marketplace, as the cost of its transport made it considerably more expensive than coal imported from England or Scotland. The owners of the mines were mainly based in Dublin, and the first plans to build a canal to the coal-fields were made in 1709. Thomas Knox, a colliery owner, petitioned the Irish Parliament with a plan for a canal from Knock Bridge, near Gifford to Fathom Point, near Newry. The canal broadly followed the line of the later Newry Canal, but although a parliamentary committee liked the proposal, nothing came of it at the time.

By 1727, some 60,000 to 70,000 tons of coal were being imported into Dublin, and the idea of supplying that from Irish sources gained popularity. Thomas Prior wrote to support a canal from Dungannon, near Coalisland, in 1727, while two years later, Arthur Dobbs the Surveyor-General outlined the advantages of a canal to Lough Neagh, which he thought could be built relatively easily. In the same year, Francis Seymour, who owned a colliery at Brackaville, near Coalisland, published a pamphlet in Belfast, entitled Remarks on a Scheme for supplying Dublin with Coals. While it supported Knox's scheme from 1709, it also suggested that a canal could be cut across a bog from Drumglass, where many of the pits were located, to join the River Torrent, from where the coal could be transported to the River Blackwater and onwards to Newry.

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