History of the British canal system
The canal network of the United Kingdom played a vital role in the Industrial Revolution. The UK was the first country to develop a nationwide canal network which, at its peak, expanded to nearly 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometres) in length. The canals allowed raw materials to be transported to a place of manufacture, and finished goods to be transported to consumers, more quickly and cheaply than by a land based route. The canal network was extensive and included feats of civil engineering such as the Anderton Boat Lift, the Manchester Ship Canal, the Worsley Navigable Levels and the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
In the post-medieval period, some rivers were
Different types of boat used the canals: the most common was the traditional narrowboat, painted in the Roses and Castles design. At the outset the boats were towed by horses, but later they were driven by diesel engines. Some closed canals have been restored, and canal museums have opened.
History
Post-medieval transport systems
In the post-medieval period, some natural waterways were "canalised" or improved for boat traffic in the 16th century. The first Act of Parliament was obtained by the City of
were provided to regulate the flow of water and allow loaded boats to pass through shallow waters by admitting a rush of water, but these were not purpose-built canals as we understand them today.The transport system that existed before the canals were built consisted of coastal shipping and horses and carts struggling along mostly unsurfaced mud roads (although there were some surfaced turnpike roads). There was also a small amount of traffic carried along navigable rivers. In the 17th century, as early industry started to expand, this transport situation was highly unsatisfactory. The restrictions of coastal shipping and river transport were obvious, and horses and carts could only carry one or two tons of cargo at a time. The poor state of most of the roads meant that they could often become unusable after heavy rain. Because of the small loads that could be carried, supplies of essential commodities such as coal and iron ore were limited, and this kept prices high and restricted economic growth. One horse-drawn canal barge could carry about thirty tonnes at a time, faster than road transport and at half the cost.[3]
Some 29 river navigation improvements took place in the 16th and 17th centuries.
By the early 18th century, river navigations such as the
The Industrial Revolution
The UK was the first country to develop a nationwide canal network.
The Sankey Canal was the first British canal of the Industrial Revolution, opening in 1757. It connected St Helens with Spike Island in Widnes. The canal fuelled the growth of the chemical industry in Widnes, which subsequently became the centre of the industry in England.[11] In the mid-18th century the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater built the Bridgewater Canal. Its purpose was to transport coal from his mines to the industrialising city of Manchester. He commissioned the engineer James Brindley to build the canal; the design included an aqueduct carrying the canal over the River Irwell. The aqueduct was an engineering wonder which attracted tourists.[1][12] Its construction was funded entirely by the Duke. It opened in 1761 and was the longest canal constructed in Britain to that date. Canal boats could carry thirty tons at a time; one horse could tow more than ten times the amount of cargo that was possible with a cart.[3] The Bridgewater Canal reduced the price of coal in Manchester by nearly two-thirds within a year of its opening. The canal was a huge financial success and repaid the cost of its construction within just a few years.
The 19th century saw some major new canals such as the Caledonian Canal and the Manchester Ship Canal. The new canals proved highly successful. The boats on the canals were horse-drawn with a towpath alongside the canal for the horse to walk along. This horse-drawn system proved to be highly economical and became standard across the British canal network. Commercial horse-drawn canal boats could be seen on the UK's canals until as late as the 1950s, although by then diesel powered boats, often towing a second unpowered boat, had become standard. During the latter part of the 19th century the boat decoration of Roses and Castles began to appear. In this period, whole families lived aboard the boats.
The Golden Age
The period between the 1770s and the 1830s is often referred to as the "Golden Age" of British canals. During this period of canal mania, huge sums were invested in canal building. The canal system expanded to nearly 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometres) in length.[3]
At the start of this age, canals were built by groups of private individuals with an interest in improving communications. In Staffordshire the potter Josiah Wedgwood saw an opportunity to bring bulky cargoes of clay to his factory doors, and to minimise breakages of his fragile finished goods as they travelled to market. Within just a few years an embryonic national canal network came into being.[13]
Railway competition and decline
From about 1840, the railway network gained greater importance. With the transition from short-distance
Canal companies could not compete against the speed of the new railways, and in order to survive, they had to slash their prices. This put an end to the huge profits that canal companies had enjoyed before the coming of the railways, and also had an effect on the boatmen who faced a drop in wages. Flyboat working (see § Boats below) virtually ceased, as it could not compete with the railways on speed and the boatmen found they could only afford to keep their families by taking them with them on the boats. This became standard practice across the canal system, often with families with several children living in tiny boat cabins, creating a considerable community of boat people. Though this community ostensibly had much in common with Gypsies, both communities strongly resisted any such comparison, and surviving boat people feel deeply insulted if described as "water gypsies".
By the 1850s the railway system had become well established, and the amount of cargo carried on the canals had fallen by nearly two-thirds, lost mostly to railway competition. In many cases struggling canal companies were bought out by railway companies. Sometimes this was a tactical move by railway companies to gain ground in their competitors' territory, but sometimes canal companies were bought out either to close them down and remove competition, or to build a railway on the line of the canal. A notable example of this is the Croydon Canal. Some larger canal companies survived independently and continued to make profits. The canals survived through the 19th century largely by occupying the niches in the transport market that the railways had missed, or by supplying local markets such as the coal-hungry factories and mills of the big cities.
During the 19th century the canal systems of many European countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands were modernised and widened to take much larger boats. This did not happen on a large scale in the UK, mainly because of the power of the railway companies, who owned most of the canals and saw no reason to invest in a competing form of transport. The only significant exception to this was the modernisation carried out on the
Road competition and nationalisation
The 20th century brought competition from road haulage, and the network declined further. In the 1920s and 1930s many canals in rural areas were abandoned due to falling traffic. The main network saw brief surges in use during World War I and World War II. Most of the canal system and inland waterways were
During the 1950s and 1960s freight transport on the canals declined rapidly in the face of mass road transport. Coal was still being delivered to waterside factories that had no other convenient access. But many factories that had formerly used coal either switched to using other fuels, often because of the Clean Air Act 1956, or closed completely.
This period was the most destructive for former waterways. The rise in road transport, and enthusiasm for development of new urban
Under the Transport Act 1962, the surviving canals were transferred in 1963 to the British Waterways Board (BWB), which later became British Waterways. In the same year the BWB decided to formally[clarification needed] cease most of its narrowboat operations and transfer them to a private operator called Willow Wren Canal Transport Services. By then the canal network had shrunk to 2,000 miles (3,200 km), half the size it was at its peak in the early 19th century. However, the basic network was still intact; many of the closures were of duplicate routes or branches. By the mid-1960s only a token traffic was left.
The Transport Act 1968 required the British Waterways Board to keep commercial waterways fit for commercial use, and cruising waterways fit for cruising. However, these obligations were subject to the caveat of being by the most economical means.[clarification needed] There was no requirement to keep them in a navigable condition; they were to be treated in the most economic way possible, which could mean abandonment. British Waterways could also change the classification of an existing waterway. All or part of the canals could be transferred to local authorities; this allowed roads to be built over them, mitigating the need to build expensive bridges and aqueducts.[17] The last regular long distance narrowboat commercial contract, transporting coal from Atherstone to the Kearley and Tonge jam factory at Southall in west London, ended in 1971. Lime juice continued to be carried between Brentford and Boxmoor until 1981. Substantial tonnages of aggregates were carried by narrowboat on the Grand Union Canal until 1996.
Growth of the leisure industry
The establishment in 1946 of a group called the Inland Waterways Association by L. T. C. Rolt and Robert Aickman helped revive interest in the UK's canals to the point where they are a major leisure destination. In the 1960s the infant canal leisure industry was only just sufficient to prevent the closure of the remaining canals, but then the pressure to maintain canals for leisure purposes increased. Although out of commercial or leisure use, many canals survived because they formed part of local water supply and drainage networks. From the 1970s, increasing numbers of closed canals were restored by enthusiast volunteers.
The
- Standedge Tunnel, the longest, deepest, and highest canal tunnel in the United Kingdom.
- The Caen Hill Flightlock flight, one of the longest continuous lock flights in the country.
- Barton Swing Aqueduct, the world's only swinging aqueduct, on the Bridgewater canal.
- The Anderton Boat Lift, the world's first commercially successful boat lift and until the opening of the Falkirk Wheel the only boat lift in the United Kingdom.
- Bingley Five Rise Locks, a staircase lock that is the steepest in the country.
- Burnley Embankment, an innovative solution to a canal crossing a wide valley.
- The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the longest and highest aqueduct in the United Kingdom.[18]
Role in the slave trade
During the Atlantic Slave Trade, some canals were also used to carry cotton, tobacco and sugar produced by slaves. Moses Benson, a Liverpool slaver, invested in the Lancaster Canal, which subsequently had a dramatic effect on the economy of Preston.[19]
Other slavers like Lowbridge Bright sat on the board of Thames and Severn Canal Company. George Hyde Dyke was a shareholder in the Peak Forest Canal Company. William Carey owned shares in the Grand Junction Canal.[19]
Construction, features and maintenance
Where a large height difference has to be overcome, locks are built close together in a
Canal aqueducts are structures that carry a canal across a valley, road, railway, or another canal. Dundas Aqueduct is built of stone in a classical style. Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is an iron trough on tall stone piers. Barton Swing Aqueduct opens to let ships pass underneath on the Manchester Ship Canal. Three Bridges, London is a clever arrangement allowing the routes of the Grand Junction Canal, a road, and a railway line to cross each other.
Boat lifts are mechanical elevators that raise a canal boat vertically in one motion, rather than being raised by a series of locks. Examples are the Anderton Boat Lift, Falkirk Wheel and Combe Hay Caisson Lock. Inclined planes raise a canal boat up a hill on a track, powered by a pulley mechanism. Examples are the Hay Inclined Plane, Foxton Inclined Plane and Worsley Underground Incline. Tunnels take canal boats horizontally through a rock formation. In winter, special icebreaker boats with reinforced hulls would be used to break the ice.
The engineers who designed and built the canals included:
Boats
The boats used on canals were usually derived from local coasting or river craft, but on the narrow canals the 7-foot-wide (2.1 m) narrowboat was the standard. Their 72-foot (22 m) length came from the boats used on the Mersey estuary, with their width of 7 feet (2.1 m) chosen as half that of existing boats. Packet boats carried packages up to 112 pounds (51 kg) in weight as well as passengers at relatively high speed day and night. To compete with railways, the flyboat was introduced, cargo-carrying boats working day and night. These boats were crewed by three men, who operated a watch system whereby two men worked while the other slept. Horses were changed regularly. When steam boats were introduced in the late nineteenth century, crews were enlarged to four. The boats were owned and operated by individual carriers, or by carrying companies who would pay the captain a wage depending on the distance travelled, and the amount of cargo.
Many different varieties of boats were used on the canals. They included
.Restoration
Waterway restoration organisations have returned many hundreds of miles of abandoned and remainder canals to use, and work is still ongoing to save many more. Many restoration projects have been led by local canal societies or trusts, who were initially formed to fight the closure of a remainder waterway or to save an abandoned canal from further decay. They now work with local authorities and landowners to protect historic routes or proposed future diversions from being built over, develop restoration plans, and secure funding. The physical work is sometimes done by contractors, sometimes by volunteers. In 1970 the Waterway Recovery Group was formed to co-ordinate volunteer efforts on canals and river navigations throughout the United Kingdom.[20]
British Waterways began to see the economic and social potential of canalside development, and moved from hostility towards restoration, through neutrality, towards a supportive stance. While British Waterways was broadly supportive of restoration, its official policy was that it would not take on the support of newly restored navigations unless they came with a sufficient dowry to pay for their ongoing upkeep. In effect, this meant either reclassifying the Remainder Waterway as a Cruising Waterway or entering into an agreement for another body to maintain the waterway.[17] Today the great majority of canals in England and Wales are managed by the Canal & River Trust which, unlike its predecessor British Waterways, tries to have a more positive view of canal restoration and in some cases actively supports ongoing restoration projects such as the restoration projects on the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal and the Grantham Canal.
There has also been a movement to redevelop canals in inner city areas, such as Birmingham, Manchester,
Restoration projects by volunteer-led groups continue. There is now a substantial network of interconnecting, fully navigable canals across the country. In places, serious plans are in progress by the
Geographic locations
The bulk of the canal system was built in the industrial
The industrial revolution saw
London has a port, and as early as 1790 this was linked to the national network via the River Thames and the Oxford Canal. A more direct route between London and the national canal network, the Grand Junction Canal, opened in 1805. Relatively few canals were built in London itself.[24]
Within Scotland, the Forth and Clyde Canal and the Union Canal connected the major cities in the industrial Central Belt; they also provide a short cut for boats to cross between the west and the east without a sea voyage. The Caledonian Canal provided a similar function in the Highlands of Scotland.
Canal museums
- National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire
- Foxton Canal Museum, Harborough, Leicestershire
- Galton Valley Canal Heritage Centre, Smethwick, West Midlands
- Gloucester Waterways Museum, Gloucestershire
- Kennet & Avon Canal Museum, Devizes, Wiltshire
- Linlithgow Canal Centre, Scotland
- Llangollen Canal Museum, North Wales
- London Canal Museum, Kings Cross, London
- Portland Basin Museum, Manchester
- Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum, Northamptonshire
- Tapton Lock Visitor Centre, Chesterfield
- Yorkshire Waterways Museum, Goole, East Yorkshire
Canal archives
The Canals Collection at the Cadbury Research Library (University of Birmingham) contains archive materials relating to Midlands canals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[25]
See also
- Canals of the United Kingdom
- List of canals in Ireland
- Timeline of transportation technology
- List of canal tunnels in the United Kingdom
- List of canal aqueducts in the United Kingdom
- List of canal locks in the United Kingdom
References
- ^ a b Rolt, Inland Waterways
- ^ a b Burton, (1995). Chapter 2: The River Navigations
- ^ a b c d e Reader's Digest Library of Modern Knowledge. London: Reader's Digest. 1978. p. 990.
- ^ Fred. S. Thacker The Thames Highway: Volume I General History 1920 - republished 1968 David & Charles
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography - Sir Richard Weston
- ^ History of Burton from 'British History Online'
- ^ Fred. S. Thacker The Thames Highway: Volume II Locks and Weirs 1920 - republished 1968 David & Charles
- ^ L.T.C. Rolt (1969). Navigable Waterways. Longmans, London.
- ^ the-canal-age canalrivertrust.org.uk
- ^ "Canal Acts - UK Parliament". Parliament.uk. 21 April 2010. Retrieved 12 February 2017.
- ^ Deane 1965, p. 79.
- ^ a b c Burton, (1995). Chapter 3: Building the Canals
- ^ ISBN 0-7153-8079-6.
- ISBN 0-7153-4660-1.
- OCLC 316435676.
- ^ Palmer (chairman) 1955, pp. 68–70.
- ^ a b "Transport Act 1968". Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
- ^ the-seven-wonders-of-the-waterways canalrivertrust.org.uk
- ^ a b Doctor Jodie Mathews. "Canals and Transatlantic Slavery" (PDF). Canal and River Trust. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
- ^ Squires (2008), p.71
- ^ Guardian article on London waterways developments www.theguardian.com
- ^ See britishwaterways.co.uk www.britishwaterways.co.uk
- ^ ISBN 0-7509-1840-3
- ^ ISBN 0-7221-7562-0
- ^ "UoB Calmview5: Search results". calmview.bham.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
Bibliography
- Broadbridge, S.R. (1974). The Birmingham Canal Navigations. Volume 1: 1768-1846. Newton Abbot: ISBN 0-7153-6381-6.
- Burton, Anthony (1995). The Great Days of the Canals. London: Tiger Books International. ISBN 1-85501-695-8.
- Burton, Anthony (1983). The Waterways of Britain: A Guide to the Canals and Rivers of England, Scotland and Wales. London: Willow Books, William Collins and Sons & Co Ltd. ISBN 0-00-218047-2.
- Deane, Phyllis (1965). The First Industrial Revolution. Cambridge University Press.
- ISBN 0-7153-4660-1.
- Hadfield, Charles (1981). The Canal Age (Second ed.). David & Charles. ISBN 0-7153-8079-6.
- Palmer (chairman), Robert (1955). "Canals and Inland Waterways, Report of the Board of Survey". British Transport Commission.
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: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - "Reader's Digest Library of Modern Knowledge". Reader's Digest. London. 1978.
- ISBN 0-413-22000-1.
- ISBN 0-04-386003-6.
- Roger Squires (2008). Britain's restored canals. Landmark Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84306-331-5.
Further reading
- Blair, John (ed.) (2007). Waterways and Canal-building in Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-921715-1.
- ISBN 978-0-521-09418-4.
- Lindsay, Jean (1968). The Canals of Scotland. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. ISBN 0-7153-4240-1.
- Malet, Hugh (1961/1990). Bridgewater: The Canal Duke 1736-1803, 3rd rev ed, paperback. Nelson, UK: Henton Publishing Co. ISBN 0-86067-136-4.
- Paget-Tomlinson, E. (2006) The Illustrated History of Canal & River Navigations: Landmark Publishing Ltd ISBN 1-84306-207-0
- Thompson, Hubert Gordon (1904). . London: T. Fisher Unwin.