Thomas Telford's best known canal work is probably Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen (Ellesmere) Canal, possibly followed by the construction of the Shropshire Union and Caledonian Canals. However, the greatest concentration of engineering works exhibiting Telford's genius is probably a 6 km length of the Birmingham Canal, where he dramatically upgraded the waterway while maintaining existing traffic and preserving revenues for the canal company. This paper describes the project, which included removing a congested summit of six locks with a vast cutting up to 22 m deep. The canal and its structures remain in full use today.
The development of the network of navigable inland waterways and canals in Britain was a fundamental step in the growth and spread of industrialization in Britain. These waterways played an important role in the early transportation of raw materials, particularly coal, to factory sites, and of finished goods to the coast for national and international distribution. The importance of the waterways, however, is not solely technological, but also for the impact they had on the landscape, the peripatetic community employed on the water, and the communities that developed to maintain, support, and run the system. This chapter discusses the development, growth, and decline of inland waterways and their central role in the industrialization of Britain. Through a discussion of the upstanding, working, and buried archaeological remains associated with inland waterways this chapter presents the current state of research and suggests future directions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.