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TIMESTAMPS

Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead.

Canals in the UK have a long history dating back to the Romans, who built several canals here including the Fossdyke, still navigable today. A long period elapsed after the Romans left Britain when no canals were built. Improvements to rivers were made although the aim of these was often to harness the waterpower, or for fishing, rather than for navigation purposes. It was in the reign of Elizabeth I that the next canal was built, at Exeter, this was also the first use in Britain of pound locks - the type of lock in common use today - all the navigable rivers at that time used flash locks. After this many schemes were introduced for the improvement of river navigations, often provoking strong opposition from water mill and fish weir owners. In 1660 there were 685 miles of river navigation, by 1724 another 475 miles had been added by improvements to many rivers including the Aire & Calder, Douglas, Idle, Irwell, Kennet and Weaver.

River improvements nearly always included cutting canals, or channels, if only for lock cuts. As experience of river engineering increased it was found that it was often better to build quite long artificial cuts rather than try to make the original course of the river into a navigation channel. In 1757 the Sankey Brook Navigation, later called the St Helen's Canal, was opened. The change of name reflects the change of intention of the proprietors, who started by wanting to make the Sankey Brook navigable and ended by constructing a wholly artificial channel running alongside, and giving it claim to be the first canal of the industrial era. It is a claim now largely overshadowed by the Duke of Bridgewater's canal opened in 1761.

In 1759 the Duke obtained an Act of Parliament authorising him to build a canal from his collieries in Worsley to supply coal to Manchester. The next year, following a dispute with the Mersey & Irwell Company over toll charges, he obtained a further act that allowed his canal to cross the river Irwell on an aqueduct. The Duke of Bridgewater's agent at Worsley was John Gilbert, a man of great ability who had a scheme for underground canals into the workings of the Dukes coal mines with inclined planes to transport boats on rails, a system that was successfully used for over 100 years. John Gilbert was not only the Duke's man of business in this scheme but also obtained the services of the engineering genius of the age when he introduced James Brindley to the Duke.

James Brindley was originally a millwright but in 1758 had done a survey for Earl Gower for a canal from Wilden Ferry on the River Trent to Stoke-on-Trent. This job had a double family connection to the Bridgewater Canal for not only was Earl Gower guardian to the Duke of Bridgewater but his agent Thomas Gilbert was the brother of the Duke's agent, John Gilbert. Perhaps the one thing above all that brought the Bridgewater Canal and the name of James Brindley to the attention of the public was the aqueduct across the River Irwell at Barton. This stone structure with a 63 foot wide arch carried the canal 38 feet above the river, opened in 1761, it captured the popular imagination and prompted the publication of admiring verses on this wonder of the age. The success of the canal was measured not only by the profits it brought to the Duke but also by the dramatic reduction in coal prices in Manchester. In latter years, as hundreds of canal schemes were proposed, it was often the reduction in local prices that proved as big an attraction to shareholders as the profits they hoped to receive.

Earl Gower's canal to the Trent, also promoted by the potter Josiah Wedgwood, became the Trent & Mersey Canal (completed in 1777) with Brindley as its engineer until his death in 1772. This was to be part of the Grand Cross, a scheme to link the four rivers Trent, Mersey, Severn and Thames. Another arm of the Grand Cross was Brindley's Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal (opened in 1772) which linked the Trent & Mersey Canal to the River Severn. In the last few years of his life Brindley was involved in an amazing number of canal projects including; the Birmingham, Oxford, Droitwich, Coventry, Rochdale, Salisbury & Southampton and Calder & Hebble. While he was surveying the Caldon Canal he caught a chill and died.

Brindley left behind a new profession, the canal engineer, and a number of able men that had seen service as his assistants and were now to build canals of their own including Hugh Henshall who completed the Trent & Mersey, Samuel Simcock who worked on the Oxford canal, Thomas Dadford head of a family responsible for building many the canals of South Wales, and Robert Whitworth builder of the Thames & Severn Canal, Forth & Clyde Canal and many more.

It was not until 1789 that Brindley's Grand Cross was completed with the linking of the Oxford Canal to the Thames. The next few years saw an increasing Canal Mania, when investors would chase from one part of the country to another on the rumour of a new canal being promoted, this peaked in the year 1793 when Acts of Parliament were passed to build 25 canals. Many fortunes were made and many lost with some of the companies failing before the canal was completed. Over the next thirty years most of the canal system was built and vastly improved transport in Britain, but railways were now starting to appear and by 1844 Railway Mania was attracting investors attention.

• British Canals: An Illustrated History by Charles Hadfield , 291 pages, Published by David & Charles Claims to be "the standard book" and covers the general history of canal navigation.

• Hadfield's British Canals by Charles Hadfield & Joseph Boughey , Edition: Eigth Edition ISBN 0 7509 0017 2 :345 pages, Published by Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd 1994 A new title for the 8th edition of "British Canals" originally written in 1950 by Charles Hadfield now extensively revised by Joseph Boughey. Order now from .