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Ouse Navigation
The river Ouse had been navigable for small craft for some years, in
1724 records show that small boats used a tributary stream to the
powder mills and forge at Marsfield, just above Shortbridge, and there
seems to have been a flash lock where the stream joined the Ouse.
In
1788, William Jessop was commissioned to survey the river above Lewes.
As a result of his report, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1790 to
make the Ouse navigable from Lewes to Hammer Bridge in the parish of
Cuckfield via Barcombe Fletching and Lindfield. Also a Branch of the
river, to Shortbridge, in the parish of Fletching The contract for the
work was let to the Pinkertons, who were at that time also working
with Jessop on the Basingstoke Canal.
By
April 1793, the river was navigable as far upstream as Sheffield
Bridge, but the money had run out and the navigation was put in the
hands of the Receiver while the company set about raising funds. 1805
saw another 1.5 miles and two locks completed taking the navigation as
far as Freshfield Bridge. In 1806 the company obtained a further Act
of Parliament. Which enabled them to raise a further £30,000,
repealed the section of the 1790 Act which required them to continue
the navigation from Hammer Bridge to the far side of Cuckfield Parish,
and gave various landowners the right to use surplus water at Isfield
Lock and Barcombe Mill. Work commenced, and the navigation reached
Lindfield Mill in 1809 and finally Upper Rye-lands Bridge in 1812.
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The
navigation from Upper Ryelands Bridge was 22.5 miles long with
nineteen locks, and the 3/4 mile branch to Shortbridge. The locks were
built 52ft 6in by l3ft 6in to take barges carrying up to 18 tons. Like
most of the Sussex rivers, the Ouse was an agricultural waterway, with
an upstream traffic of bulk goods such as chalk, coal and stone, and a
return traffic of agricultural produce. The Ouse navigation was very
much concerned with local trade, and continued quite successfully in
this way until the railways came to the area. This time in the form of
the London and Brighton Railway and later in the mid 1840s, its south
coast section from Brighton to Lewes and Hastings. There then followed
a succession of toll reductions between 1844 and 1859. In 1858, the
railway between Lewes and Uckfield was opened, and it was this more
than anything else that finished the navigation. The section above
Lindfield became disused in 1861, and the rest of the navigation
followed by the end of the decade.
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