on the loan by 1813. The treasurer at the time stated that there was no money available to pay £60 for some work which had recently been completed, and there are no records that the loan was repaid. Soon after it opened, there were proposals to extend the canal to Market Rasen. In May 1801 the Canal Company announced their intentions to build a canal from the terminal basin at Moortown to Hambleton Hill in Tealby, on the Market Rasen to North Willingham turnpike road. The squire of Holton, William Dixon, paid for a survey of the route, and estimated that it would cost £6,500 to build. A meeting held at the White Hart Inn in Market Rasen was attended by 26 local gentlemen, and they agreed to proceed with the plans. They agreed to meet again in July, but there is no evidence that they did so, and no further action was taken. The canal appears to have become disused in the 1850s, a few years after the opening of the Market Rasen branch of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway, which came nearer to Caistor than the canal. However some traffic may have continued to South Kelsey, the village at its midpoint, until later in the century. The South Kesley estate was sold by Mr. Foljombe a few years after the canal opened. The new owner, Mr. Skipworth, and his descendants, were resident owners throughout the nineteenth century. Although the canal company continued to legally exist the canal appears latterly to have been managed as if part of the Skipworth estate, but the nature of the legal arrangement for this, if any, is not recorded. Following the cessation of traffic sometime in the latter half of the nineteenth century, parts of the canal were used for other purposes. Mill Lock, the fourth lock up was used as the site for a watermill, with the wheel occupying the lock chamber. It was built in the 1870s, and was no longer used by 1914. All traces of it have since been removed. The canal became dry above the fifth lock and the stonework of the sixth lock removed entirely before 1883. At some date after all traffic had ceased weirs were built across the locks below South Kelsey. Following the sale of the estate by the Skipworth family in the early years of the twentieth century the canal and its