Grand Junction Canal Nene at Northampton, to the turnpike road at Old Stratford (north-west of the modern Milton Keynes), and to Watford in Hertfordshire: those to Daventry and Watford were not built. The branch to Old Stratford was amended before it was built (see below). The branch to Northampton was delayed as the plans of the Leicestershire and Northamptonshire Union Canal to reach Northampton and thus join with the Grand Junction came to nothing. The link to Northampton was made by a tramroad transferred from Blisworth Tunnel, with the 5-mile (8-kilometre) canal from Gayton being opened in 1815. The link to Leicester was
Paw Paw Tunnel expected completion date of July 1838. Lee Montgomery, a Methodist minister who had experience from building the canal tunnel for the Union Canal was awarded the contract on March 15, 1836. Construction on the tunnel began in 1836. Unfortunately for Montgomery, the Irish workers were not skilled at tunnel work, so he obtained English masons, English and Welsh miners, and some "Dutch" [i.e. German] labourers. More unfortunately, this caused ethnic tensions which exploded into violence in 1837 and 1838, specifically between the Irish and everyone else; rioters destroyed the tavern at Oldtown, burned shanties, and the like. There were more