1. The Pontcysyllte Aquaduct
The Pontcysyllte aquaduct was built as part of the Ellesmere Canal by the legendary civil engineer Thomas Telford with the supervision and assistance of William Jessop, who was a more experienced canal builder, with intention of linking Wrexham and Chester. Some elements of this scheme were completed, but the gaps which remained rather compromised the canal’s effectiveness. The original plan was to build a flight of locks near Cefn Mawr to bring the limestone quarried there for processing in kilns at Froncysyllte, so that the resulting quicklime could be used for plaster and cement in construction and also as fertiliser in agriculture. When Telford was brought onto the project he abandoned the lock flight in favour of an 18 arch aqueduct constructed of huge hollow sandstone piers (using stone quarried close by) up to 126’ (38m) high. These piers supported a cast iron trough that was 336 yards or 307m long, with a width of 12 feet or 3.7 metres and a depth of 5’3” feet or 1.6 metres and carried what is now known as the Llangollen Canal high over the River Dee. Think of the scale of that achievement! The aqueduct took ten years to design and build and was finished in 1805 at a cost £47,000, which is Just under £4 million at today’s value.
This section of canal together with the aqueduct was taken over by the Shropshire Union Canal in 1844 and formally closed 100 years later as freight traffic was poached by the railways. The reason the aqueduct survived at all was because it was required as a feeder for the Shropshire Union.
When UNESCO Listed this as a World Heritage site in 2009 it is no wonder that they described it as, ‘…a masterpiece of creative genius’. Pontcysyllte Aquaduct is also a Grade One listed building, a Scheduled Ancient Monument of National Importance and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – and merits every one of these accolades.
2. The Standedge Tunnel
The Standedge tunnel has the distinction of being the longest, deepest and highest canal tunnel in the United Kingdom, taking the Huddersfield Narrow Canal beneath the Pennine hills from Huddersfield to Oldham. At the start of the project in 1793, the engineering was carried out by Benjamin Outram, but cost savings slowed the progress of the necessary excavations. One of the economy measures was to reduce the amount of water pumping, which meant that the level of the water table kept rising making it harder and harder to work. The frustration was too much for Outram who was replaced by Thomas Telford in 1807. The tunnel was completed four years later at a cost of £160,000 and during its early life from 1811 – 43 as many as forty boats a day used it. Another cost cutting measure was the decision not to include a towpath, so these 19th century narrow boats were legged through by professional leggers lying on their backs on top of the cargo and walking the length of the tunnel. It took three hours with a full load and cost one shilling and sixpence. Nowadays, with modern motorised narrow boats, the passage takes two hours. This proved to be a fatally false economy because the nearby Rochdale Cana did have a tow path, which meant that it was more competitive, and traffic through the Standedge declined. The Huddersfield Canal was eventually bought by a local railway company and in the early 20th century it fell into dereliction.
You can learn all about its miraculous restoration in the excellent Visitors Centre which is at the Marston end of the tunnel and offers many interactive, hands on experiences, as well as tasty refreshments at the Watersedge Coffee House.
3. The Caen Hill Lock Flight
The Caen Hill Lock Flight can be found between Rowde and Devizes and was the final stretch of the Kennet and Avon canal to be completed, in 1810. Perhaps the reason it was finished last is because a staggering twenty nine locks had to be constructed and they even had to build a special brickyard nearby to supply the materials needed for building the lock chambers. In fact, the brickyard remained a going commercial concern until the middle of the 20th century. The locks rise along a 1 in 44 gradient and were built in three sections: a group of seven, a steeper group of sixteen and then a final group of six leading into the town of Devizes – largest middle section is now a scheduled monument. The arrival of the railways sounded a death knell for Caen Locks and the final load of freight passed through the flight in 1948. However, as leisure boating grew in popularity during the 1960s, the required renovations became an attractive proposition and the reopening of the flight was celebrated by a visit from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 1990, since when it has been filling the hearts of pleasure boaters with awe and fear in equal measure, as the mighty Caen Locks Flight takes an exhausting six hours to traverse.
4. The Barton Swing Aqueduct
In 1761 the Duke of Bridgewater realised his ambition to open a canal which would transport coal from his mines at Worsley into the heart of Manchester to provide fuel for the industrial revolution which was progressing at full throttle. It was one of the landmark achievements that signified the beginning of the golden age of canal building, which reached its peak with the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal In the late 1890s. The greatest engineering challenge facing the builders of this canal was to enable the Bridgewater canal to cross over the top of it, a conundrum which Sir Edward Leader Williams solved by designing a swing aqueduct. Andrew Handyside did the hard work, which involved diverting the course of the River Irwell so that a central island could be built to house the main pivot on which the aqueduct would rotate through an angle of 90 degrees. This central pivot supported a 100 metre long iron tank weighing a whopping 1450 tonnes. This feat of engineering genius was completed in 1894.
There have been some modifications over the years – In 1928 the iron rollers on which the tank sat and which were a key part of its ability to rotate were replaced by tougher steel ones, but even today with all the competition from rail transport and road freight, the Barton Swing Aqueduct still opens as often as fourteen times a day to allow shipping to pass through.
5. The Anderson Boat Lift
In the days before refrigeration, salt was a key commodity for preserving food and much of it was extracted in Cheshire and needed to be transported from source to the marketplace. The river Weaver and the Trent and Mersey canal played a key role in this, despite the fact that there was a fifty foot drop between the two. For many years the river was connected to the canal by means of three double incline plain lifts and there were four salt chutes to help move this precious cargo. As technology became more advanced, engineer Sir Edward Leader Williams was brought in to explore the possibility of using a boat lift. He came up with a design that used two caissons which would operate in opposition to one another – as one moved down the other moved up, a system of counterbalancing which used relatively little power. These caissons were made of wrought iron and were 75 foot long, 15 foot six wide and 9 foot 6 deep ( 22.9m x 4.72m x 2.9m) and filled with water could transport two narrow boats simultaneously, or a single wide beam barge. The official opening was in July 1875 and the total cost a handsome £48,428 or £4,664,000 in today’s money. The operation of the boat lift was by no means trouble free. In 1882 one of the hydraulic cylinders bursts and both of them had to be replaced as a precaution, but even so there were ongoing problems with piston corrosion. In 1904 it was decided to switch to an electric lift system with stronger foundations to support the added weight. This change enabled the boat lift to operate successfully for seventy five years, but in 1983 really serious corrosion was discovered, the lift was declared structurally unsafe and shut down forthwith. Owners and operators British Waterways undertook extensive research and did a considerable amount of fund raising and eventually came up with a scheme that would return the lift to its original hydraulic system, but with modern modifications and materials. The money was raised with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the work started in 2000 and the lift reopened in March 2002 at a cost of £7 million.
For 21st century boaters, a passage through the Anderton Boat Lift should be right at the top of their To Do List. Places must be booked in advance by telephoning 0303 0404 040. There is an excellent Visitors Centre on site which will tell you everything you need to know – and more.
6. The Bingley Five Lock Rise
What makes the Bingley rise stand out from all the other lock flights you might have encountered is its incredible steepness. If you think that the Caen lock flight has a gradient of 1:44, the Bingley’s is 1:5, a feat of engineering so technologically advanced that when it originally opened in 1774 a crowd of 30,000 people turned out to see the first boats pass through. There are five locks with no intermediate pounds and in those early days the passage took twenty eight minutes. The challenge is such that in modern times there has always been a full time lock keeper on site – indeed, the country’s longest serving keeper Barry Whitelock received an MBE for his 30 years service there. There have been several renovations to the gates and paddles during the 21st century to ensure that this wonderful engineering achievement is preserved for future boat users to enjoy and it is certainly one of the highlights of the Leeds Liverpool canal.
7. The Burnley Embankment
Compared to its flashier competitors in the Seven Wonders of the Waterways cohort, the Burnley Embankment is an understated marvel. Known as the Straight Mile, it was constructed to carry the Leeds Liverpool canal across the Calder and Brun valleys over what was at the time (1796) a small town, with the intention of avoiding having to build lock flights on each side of the valley. The canal was routed through Burnley to help transport coal from the local coalfield and its very presence has played a significant part in the growth of the town. Originally skirting the eastern side of Burnley, the waterway is now right at the heart of the action and this growth was partly stoked by the arrival of a dozen cotton mills and three corn mills at the turn of the 20th century, all of them benefiting from water extraction rights. Today, the embankment is grade two listed in recognition of the engineering prowess which lifted the Leeds Liverpool sixty feet off the ground and carried it 1256 yards across two Yorkshire valleys.
British-Irish waterway regions – Northern | East Midlands | West Midlands | Welsh | Southern | Scottish | Irish
French waterway regions – North | North-East | North-Central | West | Centre | South-East | South | South-West
