I have offered to post the following on our board, to see if anyone knows any more:
Ivan Cane Secretary East Anglian Waterway Assoc. >From Peter Bendall: "I was moving a narrow boat from Autherley Junction by Bow Hauling, sometime in the 1959 timespan, to Rugby - don't ask! I met an elderly retired boatman at Birmingham, and hearing my home was in Barton Mills, (on the River Lark,) I had a good conversation with him. "He said he had moved from Birmingham to Bury St Edmunds and back again in ten years at the end of the 19th century, and worked on the River Lark - which he called the Coal River! "Sometime in the conversation, he mentioned the second canal to Bury! He said the canal age was over and they could not get it off the ground. The canal should connect the river Linnet and, presumably, the river Gipping - and was presumably called St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Navigation. "I remember the second "canal," I was in school at Bury St Edmunds, 57 years ago, and going to tea with my aunt, the path went along a stretch of water who had a towpath, and like a section of canal, about 50 or 100 yards long! The teacher at school said that was a trial to see if they could arrange funding! "The Linnet goes from the Lark beyond the school, and beyond the head of the Lark navigation. The Lark goes through Eastgate street and through an ancient bridge to the abbey gardens. At the end of the abbey, the river flows though waste ground, it was then, to the confluence of the Lark and Linnet! The Linnet flows westwards! The thing is, why does the "trial" stretch go from the roundabout at Southgate street / Sickesmere road, 500 yards from the bridge over the linnet? (Is it still there?) Anybody know if the canal reached a act of Parliament? or was it abandoned at the planning stage? I read-up the canal, then 40 years ago, but forgot about it until we remembered it with the anniversary of the East Anglian Waterways Association!" The roundabout is NOT the roundabout from the A road! The road was not built at the time, it went though the town! it is the second roundabout in the series, looking at the cycling map of Bury (!) It at the Sickesmere road & the road to Nowton road, where I was living at the time! Peter Bendall [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
