Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 21

These were all improvements to existing rivers; but the first artificial canal, a waterway designed on the basis of where goods needed to go rather than where a river happened to be, was built by the Duke of Bridgewater. The Duke commissioned the engineer James Brindley to build a canal which would transport coal quickly and efficiently from his mines in Worsley to the rapidly industrialising city of Manchester. Brindley’s design included an aqueduct carrying the canal over the River Irwell, and this engineering wonder immediately attracted tourists when it opened in 1761. The Duke’s canal proved to be highly successful; barges carrying thirty tonnes of coal were easily pulled by one horse walking along a tow path – more than ten times the amount of cargo per horse than was possible with a cart. Time spent moving goods was cut to a fraction and, because of the massive increase in supply, the Bridgewater canal reduced the price of coal in Manchester by nearly two-thirds within a year of its opening. It was a huge financial success, earning what had been spent on its construction within just a few years – which was a relief to the Duke, who had funded the whole venture himself.

THE BRIDGEWATER CANAL STARTED A FEVER OF CANAL BUILDING ACROSS THE ENTIRE COUNTRY UNTIL THERE WAS A NATIONWIDE NETWORK OF TRANSPORT COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ENGLAND AND WALES, AND IN SCOTLAND, FROM THE SEA PORTS ON THE EAST AND WEST COASTS. IT WAS AN INCREDIBLE UNDERTAKING.

The Bridgewater canal started a fever of canal building across the entire country until there was a nationwide network of transport communication between England and Wales, and in Scotland, from the sea ports on the east and west coasts. It was an incredible undertaking. Armies of ‘navvies’ (as in navigators) laboured under engineering geniuses such as Telford, Brindley, Rennie or Dadford, creating aqueducts, boat lifts, tunnels, inclined planes and caisson lifts.

The new canal system enabled both goods and people to move around the country in a manner that must have seemed incredible compared with the methods of the recent past. Fast ‘Flyboats’, crewed by four men with two working while the other two slept and a system of changing horses, carried urgent cargo and passengers at relatively high speed day and night. Raw materials, fuel and produce could now be moved internally round the country with ease. Heavy cargoes for export, transported along the network linking the coastal port cities such as London, Liverpool, and Bristol, could be exchanged with sea-going ships and imported goods brought back on the return journey. The canals fell into decline as the rail network developed in the mid-nineteenth century, leaving us a legacy of 4,000 miles of waterways, both for recreational use and as a habitat for urban and rural wildlife.