Flooding at Pinxton Wharf, showing the Erewash Club and houses on York Terrace in the background. The wharf was the terminus for the canal, which was built to link the collieries to the river Trent, and is very important to the area's heritage. Coal was mined on a small scale in Pinxton since Tudor times. With the arrival of a branch of the Cromford Canal in the 1790's a localised industrial revolution began. Within a decade or so of the canal's arrival several deep coal pits, four lime kilns and a china works were in operation near to the Wharf. The whole of the Cromford Canal, except for a 1/2 mile stretch at the southern end, was officially abandoned, and fell into disrepair.