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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 05 Oct 2025

Taken: 05 Oct 2025

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this photo by Dinesh

Fred Fouarge, Pano ☼ Rapi ♫✯♫, Annemarie have particularly liked this photo

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
www.canalmuseum.org.uk/history/ukcanals.htm

The great age of canal building started with the construction of the Bridgewater Canal. This pioneering waterway is nowhere near the town of Bridgwater but was the initiative of the third Duke of Bridgewater, pictured left (image coutesy of The National Trust). A well educated young man, the Duke had visited a great early French navigation, the Canal du Midi, 150 miles long, which had been completed in 1681. The Duke owned coal mines at Worsley, north west of Manchester, a big city with an appetite for coal. The Duke made plans together with John Gilbert, one of his estate managers, and they brought in the engineer James Brindley (1716 - 1772) who had previously built a reputation working on mills, water wheels etc. The enabling Act was passed in 1759 and there were further Acts of Parliament to amend and extend the scheme. Completed in 1776 the Bridgewater Canal was the catalyst that started half a century of canal building. Brindley had built an aqueduct which was regarded as a remarkable achievement, and there were tunnels right into the mines at Worsley where the coal was loaded. The price of coal in Manchester fell as the new means of transport made cheap deliveries possible.

Next there followed a number of long distance navigations, with Brindley as the leading canal engineer of his time. He largely built the so-called "Grand Cross" of canals which linked the four great river basins of Britain, the Severn, Mersey, Humber, and the Thames, the latter being reached from 1790 via the Oxford Canal, lengthy route to London from the north. There were two concentrated periods of canal building, from 1759 to the early 1770's and from 1789 to almost the end of the eighteenth century. The American War of Independence separated the two periods. London and the south east did not feature much in the first period. Canals were built to serve the heavy industry of the north and midlands and whilst London had industry and the country's major port, it did not have coal mines and the surrounding south east of England was mainly agricultural.

It was not until 1793 that an Act was passed to authorise the Grand Junction Canal from Braunston on the Oxford Canal, to Brentford on the river Thames west of London. London was not joined directly to the national canal network until 1801 with the opening of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Junction Canal.
4 months ago.
 Fred Fouarge
Fred Fouarge club
interessante schets dinesh
4 months ago.

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