About our
Canals: (See also our above 'Wildlife' link)
It is often said that the Bridgewater Canal was the first proper canal to be made in the UK. It was a canal commissioned by the Duke of Bridgewater to get coal from his mines at Worsley into Manchester, some 10 miles away. The Duke's estate manager introduced him to a local millwright called James Brindley who had a reputation of being an ingenious engineer. Well that's an understatement if the ever was one - because it was Brindley's subsequent canal transport system that helped bring about the 'industrial revolution' in this country.
It is often said that the Bridgewater Canal was the first proper canal to be made in the UK. It was a canal commissioned by the Duke of Bridgewater to get coal from his mines at Worsley into Manchester, some 10 miles away. The Duke's estate manager introduced him to a local millwright called James Brindley who had a reputation of being an ingenious engineer. Well that's an understatement if the ever was one - because it was Brindley's subsequent canal transport system that helped bring about the 'industrial revolution' in this country.
Bridgewater's
relatively small venture of 17km was finished in 1761 and observed with
some approval by Josiah Wedgwood, of Potteries fame. As a potter,
Wedgwood had real transport problems in getting materials and products
to and from his factories at Stoke. Up to now much of inland freight
transportation was by pack horse which was tedious and limiting by it's
very nature. So Brindley was commissioned to engineer a far larger
canal scheme - the Trent & Mersey Canal. It started off as a
link between the R.Weaver (and therefore the Mersey and the sea) and
Stoke to import clay from Devon & Cornwall, but was then
extended in concept to become part of a much larger system.
In the UK there were several
important, largely navigable, rivers namely - the R.Thames; the
R.Severn; the R.Trent; and the R.Mersey (linked to the R.Weaver). The
Trent and Mersey canal was actually just part of a far more extensive
national transport system of canals which were to link those four main
river systems - this was known as Brindley's Great Cross (even though
he died before it came to full fruition).
The Brindley's Great Cross was
made up of the Trent & Mersey Canal which eventually linked the
navigable R.Trent near Nottingham to the Mersey. That made an inland
transport link between Hull on the east coast to Liverpool on the west
coast - and formed the northern and eastern arms of the cross. Secondly
the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal linked the R.Severn at Stourport
to the Trent & Mersey at Gt. Haywood - which linked Bristol in
the southwest into the rest of the system, forming the western arm of
the cross. Finally the Oxford and Coventry canals, together, made the
southern link from nearby Fradley Junction on the Trent &
Mersey canal to Oxford (and therefore London) on the R.Thames. All the
other canals came later (and there were many) and linked into the basic
great cross structure. One of the main centres of industry in the 1800s
was Birmingham, linked by canal and near to the centre of the cross of
the original canal system. Birmingham becoming Britain's 'second city'
was therefore no accident and resulted principally because of the
enhanced transport infrastructure of Brindley's canal system.
Birmingham and the Black Country is now interlaced with canals, forming
a generalised system called the 'BCN' (Birmingham Canal Navigation). It
is said that the BCN has more miles of canal than Venice (although that
claim is debateable) - and the BCN is apparently cleaner too.
As the main architect of our
main canal system, Brindley set the standards by which most of the
canal infrastructure is based. He designed the system around the
premise that lock chambers would be 7ft wide and 72ft long. In turn
that width had been governed by the available width within the
Harecastle Tunnel on the early T&M - in the early days the
tunnel width could not be made much wider or collapse would be likely.
So the 7ft by 72ft 'model' set the standard for maximum boat
dimensions, which in turn set engineering standards for bridge widths
and the whole nature of the navigable dimensions of the system.
To travel up and down hills,
the system used locks to lower or raise the boat from one level to
another. Most canals were actually a bit like a stream travelling
downhill from it's summit level. To use the locks meant a constant
supply of water was needed, principally from the summit level. The more
locks on the system, the more water would be required - so keeping
locks to a minimum meant that less water was needed and the cheaper the
canal was to build. Building a lock is expensive. So to keep locks to a
minimum, these early canals favoured following the natural contours of
the land to avoid going up and down hill. These early Brindley designed
canals are known collectively as 'Contour Canals'. Passage of goods
along these routes was relatively slow in the early days - but then
time wasn't a problem then. As the railway companies started to compete
with the canals, slow canal passage became a problem - and later canals
were designed differently (Telford). We on Willow like the
narrow contour canals - they're our favourites because of their narrow
intimacy with something different of interest around every bend.
As the years went on there
was demand on the canal engineers to try and reduce journey times of
canal transport, in an effort to compete with the speed and carrying
capacity of the railways. Canal engineer Thomas Telford approached the
building of subsequent canals in the mid 1800s quite differently to
Brindley. When possible Telford chose a direct straight route for his
canals. To overcome hills and valleys he would make cuttings through
high ground and then use the dug out material to construct embankments
over low ground - called 'cut & fill', it was a construction
method similar to methods used in building a railway. When locks were
necessary they tended to be in flights rather that singles spread out
over a distance. If necessary a tunnel was used to go through a hill
rather than around it. All of this meant that canal transport was
speeded up on Telford's canals, but they did tend to need a larger
water supply and were more expensive to build.
As time went on newer canals
were made 'wide beam'. As I understand it, this wasn't generally to
increase the size of each boat, but designed to allow two 70ft boats to
through locks together. Once boats could become motorised, a 'motorboat
& butty' (also known as a 'working pair') could pass through a
wide beam lock together 'breasted up'. These were two boats acting
together - a 70ft motorised narrowboat which towed a second unpowered
70ft boat (the butty boat - originally converted use of horse boats),
thus having almost double the carrying capacity. Out on the canal the
motor boat towed the butty boat behind it on long tow ropes, but on
arriving at a wide lock the two boats would 'breast up' and be worked
through the lock at the same time - saving time.
A classic example of the
difference between the later wide beam canals and the earlier
narrowbeam contour canals, is to compare two well known canals - the
Oxford compared with the Grand Union. The main route north from the
Thames was originally via the narrowbeam Oxford canal which followed
the natural contours of the land with tortuous bend after bend. Because
that route was so slow, trade eventually transferred almost entirely
off the Oxford and onto the much later, and more direct, wide beam
Grand Union route.
In modern day times virtually
all commercial goods carrying on the canals has ceased mainly due to
the size limitations of narrowboats (and therefore their carrying
capacity). The 'silver lining' to that 'cloud' is that our narrow
canals are now almost exclusively used for pleasure. They tend, by
their very narrowness, to be prettier, more quaint, more intimate in
nature (particularly the older 'contour canals'). We personally favour
the narrowbeam canals for those very reasons. Why not have another look
at our cruise map and use the links in the Map Key to discover more
about the individual canals we cruise.
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