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Overview
The first edition of British Canals was published in 1950 and was much admired as a pioneering work in transport history. Joseph Boughey, with the advice of Charles Hadfield, has previously revised and updated the perennially popular material to reflect more recent changes. For this ninth edition, Joseph Boughey discusses the many new discoveries and advances in the world of canals around Britain, inevitably focussing on the twentieth century to a far greater extent than in any previous edition of this book, while still within the context of Hadfield's original work.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752487113 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 05/30/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 23 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
British Canals
The Standard History
By Joseph Boughey, Charles Hadfield
The History Press
Copyright © 2012 Joseph Boughey and the estate of Charles HadfieldAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-8711-3
CHAPTER 1
Origins
The first edition of this book, which was written largely in 1948, depicted the scene at Boulter's Lock on the Thames, on which boating for pleasure had then been significant for over 60 years. A contrast was then drawn with the river that earlier generations would have experienced, as primarily a means of transport. On artificial canals elsewhere in Britain in 1948, very few pleasure boats could be seen, as what will be termed the Second Canal Age was then only embryonic. On those canals, most boats that could be seen were engaged in carrying the surviving traffics over routes that had been constructed largely during the First Canal Age. To those who now use those routes, for boating, walking, or angling, or who benefit from their less obvious roles in water supply, drainage or nature conservation, their past use for transport may well not be apparent, leaving the reasons for their construction unclear.
This book aims to explain the promotion and construction of canals in the British Isles and their survival into the Second Canal Age. The use of inland waterways for transport long predates the First Canal Age, before which coastal transport and transport by road were supplemented by the extensive use of rivers. Rivers were often used for food, power generation, drainage and water supply and, sometimes, adapted for transport. Then, as now, these purposes could be in conflict, especially under pressure from economic development.
Freshwater fish remain significant in many parts of the world for food as well as for recreational angling, and, before transport developments improved meat distribution, many inland areas relied on freshwater fish for food. In the mediaeval period, fish were often harvested through fish weirs. These comprised dams of wooden stakes with nets, stretched across rivers, to trap migrating fish like eels. Similar examples from the Saxon period have been found in intertidal coastal areas. Weirs were largely created by major landowners, and presented such major barriers to navigation that Magna Carta in 1215 provided specifically that: 'All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.' Most coastal weirs had ceased to be used after the fourteenth century, but many inland ones long continued to impede navigation of rivers. Some still survive, such as those in Durham.
Rivers often provided a major source of hydropower, especially where they were tidal or fast-flowing. Wherever a sufficient fall of water could be exploited, waterwheels could grind corn mills and industrial processes like driving the hammers of ironworks could be powered. Often weirs, mill races and ponds were built to raise river levels and enable a sufficiently large and controllable flow through the wheel. This raising of levels could assist navigation on larger rivers, but both the fall, and the need to maintain levels, provided barriers to navigation. The earliest means in the world by which such barriers were overcome used rough ramps, later known as inclined planes, over which boats were dragged in the dry. Later, opening wooden sections in weirs enabled boats to pass through once levels on either side were equalised. These were known as flash-locks or staunches, early examples being developed on the Thames in the thirteenth century. These had a very limited fall, and provided a 'flash' of water so that a boat could be pulled upstream over a shallow section. At half-locks, or watergates, 'the weir was built of masonry and was equipped with a gate, swinging on rides and equipped with movable paddles, which could be opened against the flow of the river by means of a winch on the bank.'
The larger rivers, like the Thames, featured some such flash-locks until the 1930s, while the last navigable watergate, at Pershore on the Warwickshire Avon, was removed only in 1956. The remains of earlier staunches may still be found on the Little Ouse and Bottisham Lode, in Eastern England.
Few rivers had towing-paths, and it remains unclear which had them, or when the use of animal haulage began. The Warwickshire Avon certainly had a path in the 1630s when William Sandys improved it, while the Wey Navigation had paths both for men and horses from 1652. When barges could not rely on sails, they were pulled by gangs of men, known as bow hauliers, who could scramble through obstructions and ford side-streams more easily than could horses or donkeys. Sometimes they would damage property or steal 'Hennes, Geese, Duckes, Piggs, Swannes, Eggs, Woode and all such other Commodytyes' en route. Rivers were rarely dredged or maintained, and barges going upstream would often ground, with the water in each level reach held back to protect the power supplies to each mill. Bargaining with the miller controlling the reach above would be needed in order to release a 'flash' – sufficient water to enable the barge to be floated off. Further bargaining would be required at each weir to allow levels to equalise sufficiently to allow the boat to be pulled through, often with a winch, and sometimes, going downstream, to release enough water for the barge to float over shallow sections. It was reported of the River Lea in 1760 that:
The natural inconveniences of the River [are] made much worse by the practice of those who own the Mills, for tho Flashes from the Mill be in some places necessary, for which the Bargemen pay ... for the most part the Millers by deepening and enlarging their bye streams that bring water to the Mill, draw off from the main river very much more than they need, that so they may sell the same water to the bargemen again and help those for money whom they have first themselves disabled. It is certain that some of the Mills do command the streams, that they can lay a whole fleet of Barges on ground upon the adjoining sharps and help them off again upon Composition, and one turnpike there is that lays the whole River dry.
It was written later, that this 'brings on a considerable charge to the Barge-Owner; renders his arrival at any given Place uncertain; and gives the Land Carriage the greatest advantage over that of the River Navigation.'
The records are full of disputes between these interests, over excessive charges, refusals to give a flash, fights and stratagems. The medieval period involved similar efforts to remove fish weirs.
Any economic expansion requires improvements in transport and power, without which progress in agriculture, industry and distribution will be inhibited. Similarly, innovations in transport and power provide opportunities for industry, agriculture and distribution, which may consolidate progress if they are taken, or retard it if they are not. The process known as the Industrial Revolution was characterised in Britain by the mechanization of cotton manufacture, allied to a growing population and colonial surpluses, although the seeds were sown in the sixteenth century. The expansion of industrial production required improved transport and improved means of power generation. The population of England grew from 4 million in 1600 to over 7 million by 1750, and the size of the industrial labour force would almost double between 1780 and 1820. Industry and mining slowly grew in output and variety, as did the range of consumer goods, but before the locomotive railway, their products could only be moved in three ways, by land, sea or inland water.
Land transport has always existed, of course, but, before road engineers emerged in the eighteenth century, roads were often so bad that waggons could not always be used, and much was carried on the backs of horses and mules. For instance, in the early eighteenth century clay coal and flints to the Staffordshire Potteries, and the distribution of finished goods, largely relied on packhorses. The cost of road transport was prohibitively expensive: one horse could draw around 2 tons on a level road but from 50-100 tons on a good larger waterway. Road transport was therefore often limited to short-distance carriage, for instance the transport of coal for a few miles around a colliery, or of goods to and from a river or the sea. It was mainly used over long distances only where perishable or valuable goods were involved, where water transport would cause damage, or the cost and unreliability of water transit were increased by monopolies or delays. Waggon services in England and Wales eventually grew with the expansion of trade before and during the canal age, with many roads being turnpiked between 1751 and 1772, and further developed to reflect urban and industrial growth, before the railways took much passenger and freight traffic. Some early river navigations were ineffective or expensive; thus various roads in West Yorkshire were turnpiked under Acts of 1741, to bypass the Aire & Calder Navigation that had opened in 1699.
Around the coasts, especially those of England and Wales, ships of the coastal trade moved goods that would be later moved by rail or road. Vessels passed up estuaries to minor inland ports on the smaller rivers of (for instance) East Anglia, or to the larger seaports such as London, Bristol and Kings Lynn. At seaports goods were transhipped to smaller craft – keels, trows or Western barges – in which they were transported to smaller ports, such as Bewdley and Bridgnorth, on the Severn.
Other waterways were adapted for navigation merely by the construction of landing-places. In some cases goods carried in larger vessels were unloaded to small boats and then onto the waterside. Estuaries and lakes often presented a barrier that had to be crossed by ferries where there were no bridges or fords. For lakes such as Windermere and Coniston in the Lake District, Llyn Padarn in North Wales, or Lough Corrib in the west of Ireland, the water was used as a means of transport rather than a barrier. Estuarial tidal waterways were often used without recourse to the sea; thus, barges carried lead up the River Dee from Flintshire mines to the leadworks at Chester. In other cases, the river itself was the source of raw materials, such as sand and gravel dredged from its bed, which was then landed nearby.
The River Severn was the main water route to the west side of midland England. Much traffic was carried upstream from the port of Bristol, along with that originating from industries along its length such as the saltworks of Droitwich. Large quantities of coal passed along it from the Shropshire collieries of Broseley, Benthall and Barr. Of around 2–300,000 tons of coal carried on English rivers at the end of the seventeenth century, 100,000 passed along the Severn to Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Worcester, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. From Bewdley's warehouses goods landed from Severn trows were distributed by packhorse and waggon into the countryside of Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. A return flow, in goods like Midlands ironware, was sent down river to the seaports and the West Country.
On the other side of England, the Thames was also a distributing and trading river, connecting towns such as Windsor, Reading and Oxford, and forwarding goods from the port of London. Cambridge had long been significant for the distribution of goods by water from Kings Lynn, sending corn and other produce downstream. The nearby Stourbridge fair, which Defoe described in 1724 as the largest in the world, was sustained by water transport, much of it to and from East Coast ports.
The Fens waterways had a special position, as the main highways in parts of Eastern England. They carried goods from overseas and coastal ports up the Great Ouse, Nene, Welland and Witham, sending back countryside produce. They were used to move passengers and goods round their water-dominated district, where roads were few. Stone was brought by water from the Barnack quarries in Northamptonshire to build the Crowland and Ramsey abbeys, and the Lincoln, Ely and Peterborough cathedrals. The fourteenth-century records of Ely show:
... the sacrist and his fellows using the fenland waterways as their normal means of transport; whether it was to synods at Barnwell, or to buy cloth wax, tallow, lead and other necessaries at Lynn and Boston, or merely to conduct their ordinary business at Shippea, Quaveney, Littleport and elsewhere among the fens.
In much of Scotland, Wales and coastal Ireland, rivers tended to be fast-flowing, and not readily adapted for navigation, although in Scotland the deepened Clyde would play its part in the growth of Glasgow, and several tidal rivers around the Welsh coast were navigated upstream.
Before the reign of Elizabeth I most legislation sought to maintain or restore navigation upon naturally navigable rivers, but after her reign there were many more attempts to make new navigable rivers. Beginning with the Lea in 1424, the Thames, Yorkshire Ouse, Kentish Stour and others (but not the Severn) had been put under the care of corporations or other bodies charged with maintaining navigation. Meanwhile Acts authorised the removal of fisheries and other obstructions from the largest rivers, such as the Wye and Medway, the latter without success. Improvement schemes needed bodies which had powers to set aside the rights of private property in the public interest. These were usually corporations in cities like London, Gloucester and York, or Commissioners of Sewers. The latter bodies, set up under a 1531 Act, comprised local landowners with rating powers whose principal concern was land drainage and flood protection rather than navigation.
When rivers were to be made navigable for the first time, the usual practice was to grant letters patent to one or more people who undertook to make the navigation. Thus Thomas Skipwith was empowered in 1634 to make the Soar navigable. In other cases trustees were appointed or powers were given to a company. Those involved were permitted to collect tolls from all who used the improved navigation, and sometimes the exclusive right to carry goods on it. Improvements and operations conferred uneven benefits, and thus attracted variations in support from landowners and merchants.
In the second part of the sixteenth century, the pound-lock, in use since the previous century in Italy and the Netherlands, was introduced into England. Despite its cost, this invention made it possible to improve river navigation far beyond the level achieved merely by dredging and the removal of obstructions. A Victorian civil engineer described the pound-lock as:
... a chamber, placed at the junction of two reaches, in which the water can be raised or lowered so as to be on a level with either the upper or lower reach. The lock-chamber is usually closed by a pair of gates at each end; it is filled by letting in water from the upper pool through sluices in the upper gates or side walls, and emptied by letting it out through similar sluices at the lower end.
If pound-locks were used to pass boats from one level to another, weirs no longer needed a central moveable portion, and could be made continuous. This created such an increased economy in water use that compromises with milling interests became possible. Pound-locks only needed a lockful of water, but a flash given to a barge might have meant lowering the whole stretch of river up to the next weir.
The first known examples of pound-locks in Britain were not on a river but on a short canal. John Trew of Glamorgan, an otherwise unknown engineer, built three on the Exeter Canal between 1564 and 1566. These were very wide basins, with very limited falls; soon replaced, this design does not seem to have been emulated elsewhere. Pound-locks began also to be built on rivers – seemingly one on the Lea and one on the Trent, both in 1576. In the seventeenth century they were constructed on the Thames between Iffley and Abingdon, the Warwickshire Avon, the Wey and elsewhere. Pound-locks were now included in improvement schemes, as with the six 'sluices' built on the pioneering Great Ouse between 1618 and 1625, alongside the older 'staunches' (flash-locks), which continued to be used at lower toll charges.
Opposition to navigation improvements came from many quarters. Those interested in road transport disliked a cheaper competitor. Landowners perceived increased risks of flooding from the raising of water levels for pound-locks, or conversely that improved flood-control would prevent their water-meadows from being flooded. Farmers feared that improved transport would open up wider areas of trade and cause prices to fall, since produce could be obtained from further away. The most sustained opposition to specific schemes came from local authorities in towns that might lose their role as distributing centres for goods. For instance, Nottingham, high up the Trent, bitterly opposed the attempts by Derby citizens to make the Derwent navigable, so that goods would come up the Trent without transshipment at Nottingham. Reading opposed the Kennet Navigation to Newbury, and Liverpool the Mersey & Irwell to Manchester. Parliamentary Bills for navigation improvements thus involved many petitions and compromises with opponents.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from British Canals by Joseph Boughey, Charles Hadfield. Copyright © 2012 Joseph Boughey and the estate of Charles Hadfield. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Maps,Preface to the Ninth Edition,
Note and Acknowledgements,
1. Origins,
2. Building the Canals,
3. Early Life on the Canals,
4. The Arteries of the Revolution,
5. The Canal Mania and the Wars,
6. Canals, Seas and Ports,
7. The Golden Years,
8. The Rivers during the Canal Age,
9. War with the Railways,
10. The Years of Decline,
11. Time of Hope,
12. Towards Nationalization,
13. Between Transport and Amenity,
14. Into the Second Canal Age,
Notes,
Further Reading,