Description: Looking south-east along the former alignment of the Nottingham Canal showing its reinstatement as a drainage ditch following opencasting for coal. The culvert marks the position of a swing bridge, while in the distance a branch of the canal swung away to the left to serve Digby Colliery. The buildings at the junction are on the site of Giltbrook Chemical Works, behind which can be seen the truncated slope of the embankment that carried the Great Northern Railway's Derbyshire Extension line (closed 1968) linking Nottingham, Ilkeston, Derby and Burton upon Trent.
The Nottingham Canal extended from the River Trent at Nottingham in a generally north-westerly direction for 14.7 miles (23.6 kilometres) via Lenton, Radford, Wollaton, Trowell, Cossall, and Awsworth to Langley Mill where it connected with the Cromford and Erewash Canals. Its main purpose was the movement of coal from mines in the Erewash Valley to Nottingham. Opened in 1796, it was later acquired by the Great Northern Railway but, apart from the Nottingham-Lenton section (which was transferred to the Trent Navigation Company and, via its link with the Beeston Canal, remains in use today), it was abandoned in 1936.