Selby Canal, Lund Tunnel

Canal culvert, 1778, designed by William Jessop engineer for the Aire and Calder Navigation Company.

MATERIALS: limestone and gritstone headwalls, wing walls, waterway channel walls, and culverts, built on timber foundations.

PLAN: a pair of inverted horse-shoe plan walled sumps lined by headwalls with open backs, to either side of a parallel walled waterway channel, linked by four culvert tunnels beneath the canal bed. The west waterway channel walls have a gently curving depressed U-plan, while the eastern channel walls have an angled U-plan with straight lengths of wall. DESCRIPTION: each of the sump headwalls is capped by a course of gritstone blocks, into which recesses have been cut to receive timber railing posts that were retained by wrought-iron straps fixed in lead. Below the capstones are three courses of large ashlar limestone blocks laid on a band of four courses of smaller blocks, which run around the circumference of the structures. Below this level, the sumps are full of water and it is unclear what form the structure takes, but it is believed that there are two culvert tunnels, presumed to be constructed in similar manner to the 1.75m high segmental stone arch culvert used in the Brayton Tunnel. The upper surface of the west sump forms a grass surfaced towpath, and the upper surface of the east sump is also grassed. The opposing parallel waterway channel walls form a 5.77m wide passage through which the canal passes. The open rear of the west sump drains into a ditch that drains agricultural land south of Lund Farm and south-east of Gateforth village. The south sump is fed by a drainage ditch from the east that drains the land of Gateforth Grange.