Leeds and Liverpool Canal

• 1. Introduction

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  The Leeds and Liverpool Canal stretches 127 miles across Northern England, crossing the Pennines to link the cities of Leeds and Liverpool. It is one of the longest single canals in Britain, and it took nearly 50 years to build. Along the way, two wars slowed its progress, engineers died mid-project, rival canal companies tried to undercut it, and a family of textile manufacturers successfully lobbied to reroute it around their printworks. The questions worth sitting with are these: why did it take so long, and how did it survive when the railways eventually came for it?

• 2. The Problem Worth Solving

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  Bradford merchants in the mid-18th century faced a practical frustration. They had coal from Bradford's own collieries, and they needed limestone for mortar and agriculture, and textiles needed to reach the Port of Liverpool. The existing routes were inadequate. On the western side, Liverpool traders wanted cheap coal for their shipping and manufacturing, and they wanted access to the industrial output of Lancashire. The Bridgewater Canal, opened in 1759-60, had shown what a wholly artificial navigation could accomplish. A canal crossing the Pennines and connecting Liverpool with Hull via the Aire and Calder Navigation would have clear advantages for both sides.

  A public meeting at the Sun Inn in Bradford on the 2nd of July 1766 launched the effort formally. John Longbotham was hired to survey a route. Two committees formed, one in Liverpool and one in Bradford, and they immediately disagreed. The Liverpool committee objected to Longbotham's route through the Ribble valley via Preston, arguing it ran too far north and bypassed key towns and the Wigan coalfield. A counter-proposal from John Eyes and Richard Melling, refined by P.P. Burdett, was then rejected by Bradford as too expensive, largely because of the valley crossing at Burnley. James Brindley was called in to settle the dispute, and he sided with Longbotham's more northerly line, though with a branch toward Wigan. That decision cost the project some of its Lancashire backers. In 1768 Brindley estimated the full distance at just under 109 miles at a cost of £259,777.

• 3. Engineers and Earthworks

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  The enabling act of Parliament passed in May 1770, and on the 5th of November 1770 the Hon. Charles Mordaunt of Halsall Hall dug the first ceremonial sod at Halsall, north of Liverpool. Brindley was appointed chief engineer. He died in 1772, before the canal had made much progress, and John Longbotham took on both his own role and Brindley's.

  By 1774 the canal running east from the Yorkshire end had reached Shipley, and the Bingley Five Rise Locks, the Bingley Three Rise Locks, and a seven-arch aqueduct over the River Aire at Dowley Gap were all complete. By 1777 the canal had joined the Aire and Calder Navigation in Leeds. The western section reached Wigan from Liverpool by 1781, replacing the earlier and unsatisfactory Douglas Navigation. Then money ran out. Every subscribed fund and every loan had been spent, and construction stopped in 1781. The war in the American colonies and its aftermath made renewed borrowing impossible for over a decade.

  Robert Whitworth took up the challenge in 1789 with fresh proposals for the remaining central section, including a tunnel at Foulridge and a more southerly route in Lancashire. Construction resumed in 1791. The 1640-yard Foulridge Tunnel proved the single most expensive item in the entire project, costing £40,000. To cross the shallow Calder valley at Burnley without resorting to two sets of locks, Whitworth designed the Burnley Embankment, a 1350-yard earthwork rising up to 60 feet. The embankment alone cost £22,000 and took five years to complete. Whitworth died on the 30th of March 1799, aged 64, and Samuel Fletcher, previously inspector of works, stepped in as engineer. Fletcher also died, in 1804, and his brother Joseph and son James were jointly appointed to succeed him.

• 4. Wars, Rivals, and Detours

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  Every time the canal company found momentum, external forces intervened. The war in the American colonies halted work in 1781. Britain's war with France, running from 1793 to 1802, drove up taxes and interest rates during the most demanding phase of construction. The temporary peace ended quickly, and the Napoleonic Wars prolonged the financial pressure.

  Rival schemes complicated the route itself. Planning for the Rochdale Canal was already under way by 1791, and it promised a more direct journey from Yorkshire to Liverpool through Manchester and the Bridgewater Canal. In 1794 an agreement was reached with the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal company to create a junction near Red Moss near Horwich. A further proposed extension, known as the Haslingden Canal, would have connected Bury to Accrington, but the Peel family intervened. They asked the company not to build the crossing over the River Hyndburn above their textile printworks, because the required embankments would have reduced the water supply to their factories. Accrington was bypassed and the Haslingden Canal was never built.

  The route was altered again in 1794 under yet another act of Parliament, moving it closer to the line originally proposed by Burdett. At one stage the planned line would have run parallel to the Lancaster Canal and then crossed it; practical sense intervened and the Leeds and Liverpool connected with the Lancaster Canal instead, between Aspull and Johnson's Hillock. The main line finally reached completion in 1816.

• 5. Opening Up the Network

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  Completion of the main line in 1816 did not immediately mean access to the full canal network. Negotiations to link the canal to the Bridgewater Canal at Leigh had been attempted repeatedly without success. Agreement finally came in 1818, was embodied in the 59 Geo. 3. c. cv, and the connection opened in 1820. That link gave the canal access to Manchester and the rest of the inland waterway system.

  The connection introduced a practical problem. The Bridgewater Canal, like most of Brindley's designs, was built for boats 72 feet long. The Leeds and Liverpool had been designed for broad boats of 62 feet. Longer boats wanted to reach Liverpool, and so by 1822 the locks at the western end of the canal were extended to 72 feet. The Leigh Branch from Wigan led to the Bridgewater Canal and thus to Manchester and the Midlands. The Rufford Branch at Burscough, completed back in 1781, linked into the River Douglas and eventually, via the Ribble Link and the River Ribble, connected the formerly isolated Lancaster Canal. At Aintree, the canal passes close enough to the racecourse to give its name to the famous Canal Turn fence.

• 6. Coal, Commerce, and the Railways

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  The canal took nearly 50 years to build, by which time the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the Rochdale Canal had already crossed the Pennines ahead of it. Despite this, the Leeds and Liverpool became a commercial success. Coal was always the dominant cargo; over a million tons per year were being delivered to Liverpool in the 1860s. Even in Yorkshire, coal traffic outweighed limestone. Once the canal was fully open, revenue from general merchandise matched coal revenues.

  Two decisions made early in the project turned out to matter enormously later. The canal's broad locks, built to 60 feet long and 14 feet 3 inches wide, gave it a capacity advantage over the other two trans-Pennine canals. The heavy industry concentrated along its route generated steady trade. Taken together, these factors let the Leeds and Liverpool compete with the railways throughout the 19th century and remain in operation through the 20th.

• 7. War, Drought, and Modern Life

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  During the Second World War, a German bomb fell on the canal at Bootle and breached it. The canal in West Lancashire formed part of Britain's defensive preparations against invasion; tank traps, bunkers, and blockhouses were positioned along it, and some barns and pubs along the route were fortified. Concrete pillboxes and brick-built blockhouses from that period still stand.

  In August 2010 a 60-mile stretch of the canal closed because reservoirs had fallen to their lowest levels since records began. It reopened the following month, though some restrictions remained in place. The £22 million Liverpool Canal Link, completed in 2009, connected the Leeds and Liverpool Canal with Liverpool's city centre. On the 11th of October 2021 the stretch between Barrowford and Blackburn was closed after a breach appeared between bridges 109 and 110. Later that same month, lock numbers 73 and 80 were among 142 sites across England to receive a share of a £35-million government grant from the Culture Recovery Fund.