Bufferies Basin Arm, Bumblehole

Bufferies Basin Arm

Bumblehole, BCN

23 October 2010

If I were Jimmy Saville I would be going "aye aye pop pickers, I'll take five points from you for this one" and waggle my cigar between my ring encrusted fingers. This is obscurity built on obscurity.

The junction basin containing a new folly

 

 Bufferies Basin junction

The far end of the Bumblehole Turn contained a further half mile arm heading north and leading out of what is now the winding hole. The name is obscure but the best I can offer is The Bufferies Basin but it was so long it really represented an arm in its own right .

The state of play in 1902 - with the top end already infilled

The plan had been to build it right up to Baptistend but in the event it  progressed a few hundred metres beyond a feeder stream before petering out in a wide basin linked by tramways to the nearby collieries.

Canal channel

Feeder stream from Baptistend

Today very little remains of the line, a hump in the road at the junction, a linear depression in the parkland and finally a valley in which the terminus was located, a site abandoned even in 1902.

Bufferies Basin Terminus

This hunt was to gain an idea of the old line without any expectation of tangible remains. The best clue to it's location is the feeder stream which continues to flow in its old course before being fed into a duct which defines the line and level of the canal. This is the one firm location on the entire line. 

Possibly one best appreciated by the die hard fanatics among us!