Lancaster Guided Tour -The Canal

The Canal

This whole waterway, 76 miles long (from Preston to Kendal) was dug by men called navvies, who could shift 11 cubic meters of soil on a good day - that's a whole garage full. There are 225 bridges and 22 aqueducts (bridges to carry the canal) along the canal. All that effort - why?

Up 'till that time the best way to get goods to Lancaster was by sea and up the River Lune - whether you were bringing goods from the West Indies or Preston. By sea because in those days, the roads were awful; muddy in winter - seas of mud you could sink into, dusty and rutted in the summer, there were tolls to pay on the good roads - and highwaymen. Canals offered a chance to improve on this state of affairs - a chance to join a national network along which barges carrying up to 50 tons of goods could be towed by one or two horses.

The merchants of Lancaster wanted a canal so they could compete with other towns that had one - there was a bit of a mania for them at the time. In the early 1790s the merchants of Lancaster, Preston, Kendal and London speculators pledged over £414,000 (probably equivalent to about £400 million today) for the building of the canal. 38% of the money came from Lancaster.

Boat on the Canal

In 1791 the Scottish engineer John Rennie surveyed the route for the canal, and then over the next few years the canal was dug and puddle clayed - a method of waterproofing by compressing clay.

The Lune Aqueduct

The link to Kendal wasn't built for many years. This was a mistake because they had already built the Lune Aqueduct (which was expensive) and was part of the connection going north to Kendal. So unfortunately this beautiful bridge lay idle for a long time - in fact they had spent so much money on the Lune Aqueduct that they didnÕt have enough to build an aqueduct at the southern end of the canal across the River Ribble at Preston. This was necessary if the canal was to connect to the rest of the canals in Britain. In all, the canal took 33 years to complete and eventually cost £816,651.

As you walk along the canal through Lancaster, you can see White Cross and Moor Lane mills which used the coal it brought - you can also see the old coal wharfs and yards at Chancellor's Wharf. Also visible are the changeover bridges where the horses pulling the barges crossed from one side of the canal to the other without being unfastened.

Whitecross