BUGSWORTH BASIN VISITOR
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Location: When travelling from the south, leave the A6 north of Whaley Bridge and bear right onto the B6002 and follow it around to Buxworth. You take a sharp right turn along Brookside to reach your destination (SK022820). Bugsworth Basin is on the Pennine Cycleway, part of National Cycle Network Route 68, and it is also popular with boaters. There is limited parking at the site.
Visit: Housed in a cabin near Blackbrook House, there is a display of photographs, artefacts, and models, telling the history of the Peak Forest Canal and Tramway and Buxworth village. For more information and other visitor details, visit the Canal and River Trust/Bugsworth Basin website.
Refreshments: There is a welcome station at the Basin, which is open on Wednesdays, Fridays and at weekends between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (opening times are subject to change). It serves tea, coffee, cold drinks and a selection of snacks and ice-cream.
Lyme Park: On the northwest edge of the Peak District, off the A6, it offers a fantastic day out for all the family. It has been a National Trust since 1946. Some of the Elizabethan interior still survives and contrasts markedly with the later additions in the 18th and 19th centuries. The staterooms are adorned with beautiful Mortlake tapestries, with Grinling Gibbons intricate wood carvings in the dining room. The 17 acres of Victorian garden, with its impressive flower beds and appealing rose garden, together with the Wyatt Conservatory, are a delight. Surrounded by a medieval deer park, with miles of walks across moorland and through woodlands, this is a place where you can spend many enjoyable hours. The views are fantastic.
BUGSWORTH BASIN
Bugsworth Basin in its heyday was the largest inland port in the country, with 600 tons of lime being loaded onto 40 barges daily. The Navigation pub at Bugsworth provided stabling for the horses that hauled wagons along the tramway and towed narrow boats. At one time, Pat Phoenix, who starred in Coronation Street, and her husband Alan Brown, owned it. The pub closed permanently in 2025.
The Basin lies in a natural valley, through which the Black Brook flows from the south-west slope of Brown Knoll below Edale Moor to join the River Goyt near Bugsworth Basin. Famous canal and tramway engineer, Benjamin Outram, built the 14-mile-long Peak Forest Canal from Dukinfield to Bugsworth. The construction of the six-mile Peak Forest Tramway in 1795 joined Bugsworth Basin to the limestone and gritstone quarries in Derbyshire, and the canal linked Bugsworth to Manchester and the trans-Pennine canal network.
The arrival of the railways led to the decline of the canal business, and the Basin gradually fell out of use and started to deteriorate. However, in 1968, volunteers of the Inland Waterways Protection Society began restoring the canal and Basin, leading to its re-opening to navigation in 2005. Today, it is a popular spot for boaters, walkers and visitors who just come to admire the superb surroundings.
