Upper Foot, Luddenden Foot

View of the Rochdale Canal and Upper Foot Farm, Luddenden Foot, West Yorkshire.

Upper Foot Farm is a 'Hall and Cross Wing' house built around 1659. It lies between the Burnley Road and the Rochdale Canal just a little up the Calder valley from Luddenden Foot. The farmhouse, cottages and adjacent buildings are Grade II listed buildings.

The Rochdale Canal was opened in sections between 1798 and 1804, and, with the Calder & Hebble Navigation, linked the area to ports and industry in both east and west. The first water route across the Pennine stretched 32 miles from Sowerby Bridge to Rochdale via the Todmorden Gap.

There was a reaction from local mill-owners, whose mills were water-powered, when the canal planners wanted to use all adjacent streams to feed the canal; finally reservoirs were built and a small number of streams were used.

Only 36 years after the opening of the canal, the completion of the summit railway tunnel in 1840 revolutionised transport once again.

A boat took about 28 hours to cover the entire length. The last boat to make the whole journey was in June 1939 and the last commercial craft in September 1937. In 1951, the canal was closed to navigation along its entire length, and in 1952 the Rochdale Canal Act made the Rochdale Canal Company no longer responsible for maintenance of navigation. Over the next twenty years the canal fell into disrepair and some parts were culverted.

In 1974, the Rochdale Canal Society started a campaign to restore the canal, and in 1986 renovation began with a £1m grant from English Heritage to restore stretches of the canal and clear blocked sections.

Since May 1996 the Rochdale Canal has been open to navigation from the Calder & Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge to Littleborough - a distance of about 16 miles.

The canal overflow ford approx. 30 metres to north-west of Canal Bridge, and an overflow culvert on the north side of the culvert are Grade II listed buildings.

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