Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 20

As Britain moved into the age of industry, in the middle of the century, there was a desperate need to find some method of transporting bulky raw materials and finished products. The Toll Pike Trusts set up by Act of Parliament in 1706, with powers to collect road tolls for maintaining the principal highways in Britain, were still in their infancy. Most goods were transported by long trains of pack horses or great cumbersome wagons to the nearest port, on roads which in most places had scarcely improved since the Middle Ages. There had been some early attempts to improve inland river navigation in the seventeenth century; the government of King James established the Oxford-Burcot Commission in 1605 which began a system of locks and weirs on the River Thames and was opened between Oxford and Abingdon by 1635. Sir Richard Weston designed and built the Wey navigations in 1635, a canal running 25 kilometres from Weybridge to Guildford, allowing barges to transport heavy goods via the Thames to London. Timber, corn, flour, wood and gunpowder from the Chilworth Mills were moved up the canal to London whilst coal was brought back. The Aire & Calder Navigation, in West Yorkshire, was opened 1703, the Trent Navigation in 1712, the Kennet in 1723 and the Mersey and Irwell Navigation in 1734, which provided a navigable route to Salford and Manchester.