page_title: Thorne and Hatfield Moors Peat Canals
section_title: Second phase
hierarchical_section_title: Thorne and Hatfield Moors Peat Canals / History / Second phase
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the peat canals on Thorne Moors circa 1907, based on Ordnance Survey 1:10,560 map (1907)
context_page_description: Thorne and Hatfield Moors Peat Canals were a series of canals in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, England, which were used to carry cut peat from Thorne and Hatfield Moors to points where it could be processed or exported. There were two phases to the canals, the first of which lasted from the 1630s until the 1830s, when coal imported on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal reduced the demand for peat as a fuel. The second started in the 1890s, when peat found a new use as bedding for working horses, and lasted until 1922, when Moorends Mill which processed the peat was destroyed by fire.
context_section_description: Following the demise of the canals, the emphasis was on improving the moors for agriculture by warping, a process which involved spreading silt over the peat to produce a soil which could sustain agriculture. The Thorne Moor (Waste) Improvement Act was passed in 1848, which created the Thorne Moor Improvement Company, who were responsible for draining, warping or otherwise improving Thorne Waste, the southern section of the moors. The plans were tied into those for a railway link between Gainsborough, Thorne and Doncaster, authorised in the same year, but the Great Northern Railway Company failed to build the line, and little improvement was achieved. 
  Two other schemes deserve mention. The first was for Swinefleet Warping Drain, to the east of the moors, the first part of which opened in 1821. It had been promoted by Ralph Creyke and T.H.S. Sotheron, who had obtained an Act of Parliament, and they succeeded in using the silt-rich water to flood the land and gradually improve it over the next forty years. Makin Durham built the Durham Warping Drain on the western edge of the moors, but although it opened in 1856, very little reclamation took place. He died in 1882, just as ideas for using the peat, rather than improving it for agriculture, were developing. The change occurred because there was an agricultural depression, and a need for an alternative to straw bedding for the large number of working horses in the country.
  Sections of both Hatfield Moors and Thorne Moors were leased to companies for peat cutting. The Hatfield Chase Moss Litter Company began cutting on Hatfield Moors in 1888. The Dutch Griendtsveen Moss Litter Company was formed in 1893 and started to acquire various peat businesses. They took over the works at Moorends, to the north of Thorne, and imported workers from the Netherlands. They brought their own tools and methods of working with them, and by 1899, there was a colony of around 300 Dutch people at Moorends, of which 120 were men working on the moors. They rebuilt the Moorends mill, and built around 14 miles (23 km) of canals to carry the peat from the moors to the mill. Ledgers in the offices were kept in Dutch and English, and there was some tension with the local population, who feared that such a large influx of foreigners might result in them losing their own jobs.
  The boats used on the system were about 40 feet (12 m) long, with a flat bottom and, like the earlier wooden boats, were pointed at both ends, so that they did not have to be turned. They were made of iron in the Netherlands, and then transported to Thorne. There were twelve boats on the system, which were manhandled on the side arms, where the peat was cut, and pulled by two horses on the longer sections back to the mill. Towpaths beside the canals were made from limestone. From the cutting fields, the main canal headed north-west, and then turned to the west to reach Moorends Works. It crossed Durham's Warping Drain on an iron aqueduct, which required large amounts of brickwork to support it. It was completed at great cost in 1895, and also carried the 3 ft (914 mm) gauge tramway which served the northern part of the moors.
  In 1896, the British Peat Moss Litter company was formed by the amalgamation of the Hatfield Chase Peat Moss Litter Company and most of the companies working on Thorne Moors. They paid £58,000 for Griendtsveen's Moorends Works. The mill, which had been used for the production of paraffin since the late 1860s until it rebuilding in the 1880s, was damaged by a fire in 1898. The wooden baling presses were destroyed, but were replaced with steel presses, which were powered by a 40-horsepower (30 kW) stationary steam engine which burned peat as its fuel. Besides the canals and the aqueduct, the 1906 Ordnance Survey maps show two swing bridges, one on the northern section just beyond the junction where the line for the southern section turned off, and another where that line crossed the Cottage Dike. There was also a wind pump between the Cottage Dike and the southern canals, towards the eastern end of the canals. 
caption: The Peat Canals circa 1907, which supplied peat to Moorends Works. The access land boundary is recent. Blackwater Dike, Mill Drain and Cottage Dike still exist and are named on the 2006 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map.
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