Selby Canal, Lund Tunnel

The Selby Canal Lund Tunnel is a canal culvert built in 1778, designed by engineer William Jessop for the Aire and Calder Navigation Company.

The structure features limestone and gritstone headwalls, wing walls, waterway channel walls, and culverts, all constructed on timber foundations. It consists of a pair of inverted horse-shoe shaped walled sumps, each lined by headwalls with open backs, situated on either side of a parallel walled waterway channel. These sumps are connected by four culvert tunnels beneath the canal bed. The walls of the west waterway channel have a gently curving depressed U-plan, while the eastern channel walls are designed with an angled U-plan and straight lengths of wall.

Each sump headwall is topped with a course of gritstone blocks, which have recesses cut into them to hold timber railing posts secured by wrought-iron straps fixed in lead. Below these capstones, there are three courses of large ashlar limestone blocks, resting on a band of four courses of smaller blocks that encircle the structures. Below this level, the sumps are filled with water, and while the exact form of the structure is unclear, it is believed that there are two culvert tunnels, likely constructed similarly to the 1.75-meter high segmental stone arch culvert found in the Brayton Tunnel. The upper surface of the west sump serves as a grass-covered towpath, while the east sump is also grassed. The parallel waterway channel walls create a 5.77-meter wide passage for the canal. The open rear of the west sump drains into a ditch that serves agricultural land south of Lund Farm and southeast of Gateforth village, while the south sump is fed by a drainage ditch from the east that drains the land of Gateforth Grange.