Canals

The man most associated with early canals was the **Duke of Bridgewater**. He owned coal mines in Lancashire but he needed to get the coal to the big market of Manchester which was nearly six miles away.The duke gave the task of designing and building the canal to **James** **Brindle** - an engineer who at this time had never built a canal before. As such, the duke was taking a great risk and he even had to borrow £25,000 to pay for the project - which was a vast sum of money then. It took two years to build the canal which was completed in 1761. The canal had a series of tunnels which were linked directly to the coal mines. But its most famous section was the Barton Aqueduct which took the canal over the River Irwin. []

Canals are man made waterways. They were built during the Industrial Revolution to allow industrialists to move large quantities of raw materials and goods to and from their factories.A canal has several big advantages over using roadS.Firstly a boat, or barge, on a canal is not going to have a bumpy journey so fragile goods are much less likely to smash on route. Secondly a canal barge is much larger than a horse drawn wagon and so it can be used to carry much more than wagons on Turnpike roads could be expected to. The third major advantage of canals is that, once they are built, they are very cheap to use. If a barge can carry 50 tonnes of coal and it only takes two men to look after the barge consider how much has been saved in wages if the largest wagon on the road could only carry 2 tonnes. There's also less breakage so the factory has more goods to sell. SCHOOLHISTORY.ORG.UK A canal can be created where no stream presently exists. Either the body of the canal is dug or the sides of the canal are created by piling dirt, stone, concrete, or other building materials. The water for the canal must be provided from an external source like other streams or reservoirs. Examples include canals that connect valleys over a higher body of land, like Canal du Midi and Canal de Briare.