Hay Inclined Plane was nearly Hay Boat Lift

It is said that the original scheme to connect the upper and lower levels of the Shropshire Canal at Blists Hill/Coalport was to build a boat lift to overcome the 207 feet difference in height. To this end William Reynolds, a local ironmaster, started to tunnel horizontally into the side of the hill in 1786. After 300 yards the workers hit a spring of bitumen, and work on the tunnel stopped while this valuable natural commodity was tapped, put into barrels and sold.


According to the Ironbridge Gorge Museums website the bitumen was boiled in cauldrons at the entrance to the tunnel to convert it into pitch for preserving timber; some was processed for use in lamps and as a varnish. At first they were collecting 4,500 gallons of bitumen a week. This slowed to 1,000 gallons a week, gradually dimishing over fifty years until the extraction stopped.

Now known as the Tar Tunnel, we donned our hard hats and walked at a stoop to the gate a hundred yards in. Bitumen still oozes through the brick walls and collects in pools in openings off the tunnel, looking like black water. (No photo, sorry!)


The tunnel is said to extend 1100 yards under Blists Hill, probably connecting up with the coal mine shafts. A plateway or railway runs the length of the bit we had access to, and there are some wagons near the entrance.

The bitumen was reckoned to be far more vauable than the boat lift, and so the inclined plane was built instead.