The Pocklington Canal in East Yorkshire was opened throughout to navigation in 1818; it had a length of 14.8km and descended from Canal Head at 1.5km south of Pocklington through nine locks to join the River Derwent at Cottingwith. Commercial navigation came to an end in the 1930s and the whole canal fell into dereliction. The voluntary Pocklington Canal Amenity Society (PCAS), with support from diverse statutory bodies, has worked towards the restoration of the canal for leisure navigation since about 1970. By 1987 dredging and the restoration of locks and bridges allowed navigation from Cottingwith to Melbourne along 8.3km of canal. Beyond Melbourne the canal remains derelict, although four of the seven locks between Melbourne and Canal Head havebeen restored (Anon, 2008a). The 6.5km of derelict canal between Thornton Lock at Melbourne and Canal Head is regarded as having high nature conservation status. This length of canal was notified as a SSSI in 1987, in part because of its diverse aquaticflora that included several nationally scarce plants (Anon, 2013b) but by 2010 the condition of the SSSI was judged to be unfavourable and deteriorating, largely because of a decrease in plant diversity (Anon, 2013b).
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