The eyes of the posts

When the Macclesfield Canal was being built high embankments caused considerable difficulties to the engineers due to subsidence and slipping. Some of these banks have continued to cause problems and in these cases the normal hedgerow boundary was replaced by a fence comprising stone posts with holes cut in them to carry a tarred cable. It has been suggested that this may have been a re-use of the haulage cable from the Chapel Milton incline plane on the Peak Forest Tramway which was in the same ownership as the canal from the 1840s.

This view is looking through some of the fenceposts on Dane-in-Shaw bank at Congleton. The cable has long gone but the tar remains around the holes.