Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation
Broad barge waterway of the River Don, climbing from the tidal Trent through Doncaster and Rotherham into Sheffield
The Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation is the through-route that carries the River Don and its associated canals from the tidal Trent at Keadby up into the heart of Sheffield. It runs about 43 miles in all and is really a chain of connected waterways — the Sheffield & Tinsley Canal, the River Don Navigation through Rotherham and Doncaster, and the Stainforth & Keadby Canal down to the Trent — worked together as one navigation with 27 locks.
It was built for industry, and built broad: these are wide barge locks, sized for the coal, steel and heavy goods of South Yorkshire rather than for narrowboats. The most striking feature is the Tinsley flight, eleven locks that lift the canal more than 90 feet up the last climb into Sheffield, ending at the basin of Victoria Quays in the city centre. At the other end, Keadby Lock drops onto the tidal Trent, a lock-keeper seeing boats out onto the tideway.
The navigation grew over two centuries from earlier river improvements on the Don, and it was still being enlarged for commercial traffic well into the 20th century, when barges brought coal and oil up to Rotherham and Sheffield. Some freight lingered longer here than on most English waterways.
Today it is a working leisure route through a landscape that is by turns industrial and green. The middle reaches around Doncaster run through open countryside and past reserves, while the ends are firmly urban. The New Junction Canal links it northward to the Aire & Calder Navigation, tying the Yorkshire waterways together.
