Lightning Strikes at Canal Camp

Lightning Strikes at Canal Camp. . Navvies , The most concentrated number of features belonging to the Canal Camp are located in this area beneath the trees and along the roadway. You can still make out the remains of several stone foundations. A plan of this area prepared in 1826 shows a line of small cottages or huts. Approximately three hundred navvies (from the word “navigator” or canal labourer) worked and lived here with their families from 1826 to 1831. A newspaper article of the time reports that on one Sunday morning in September, 1827 a bolt of lightning ”ripped through the roof of the most northerly shed, which housed twenty people. Three were asleep in an upper bunk, in such close condition that Timothy Kannady, squeezed into the middle of the trio, reportedly had his head resting on his neighbour’s arm. The bolt killed him instantly much to the incredulity of his housemates, who were certain that he must have just slept through the calamity. Two other men, a woman and a child were all severely burned in the incident, while one man, who was enjoying a cup of tea, had the bowl blown apart in his hands.”