Foxton Inclined Plane remains vandalised

IT HAS been reported in Harborough Mail that vandals have been ripping out bricks from the remains of the Foxton Inclined Plane.

These it states have been taken out and hurtled towards the locks as told by a spokesman from Canal & River Trust, but there are no bricks in the remains of the Inclined Plane, it being constructed of stone as our photograph shows.

Scheduled Ancient Monument

Over the past few years trees and vegetation were damaging part of the remains the structure so had been removed, allowing people to see what is listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

The plane had two caissons containing water, each capable of holding two narrowboats and balanced each other with one caisson going up as the other came down, driven by a stationary steam engine.

Taking a time of 12 minutes for two boats up and two down it greatly increased the time it took for boats to work up and down the hill against it taking over an hour through the flight.

Abandoned

But the sheer weight of two boats plus water in the caissons proved too much for their tracks and though there were plans to rebuild the tracks it never happened and so after only 10 years of use the plane was abandoned.

There were suggestions of it being rebuilt under British Waterways at the time when so many waterways were being restored in the early part of this century, but this never came to fruition, and in the present climate there is no chance.