River Improvement 139 



It was not until the passing of the Mersey and Irwell 

 Navigation Act, in 1720, that the work of rendering these 

 rivers navigable between Warrington and Manchester was 

 begun, and another twenty years elapsed before it was com- 

 pleted. The result of this " conveniency of water carriage " 

 when it was, at last, obtained, was to reduce the cost of 

 transport of goods and merchandise from forty shillings a ton 

 by road to ten shillings a ton by river. The goods traffic 

 between Liverpool and Manchester at this time amounted 

 to about 4000 tons a year ; but it had, prior to the provision 

 of water transport, naturally been restricted to the quantity 

 that could be carried by the packhorses, carts and waggons 

 of those days. Hence the river navigation gave the advantage 

 of a transport not only cheaper in price but greater in capacity. 

 It will be seen later on, however, that the Mersey and Irwell 

 navigation subsequently developed disadvantages for which 

 a remedy was sought in the construction of the Duke of 

 Bridgewater's canal. 



An Act, passed in 1720, for making the river Weaver navig- 

 able from Winsford Bridge, beyond Northwich, to Frodsham 

 Bridge, near the junction of the Weaver with the Mersey 

 (a distance of about twenty miles), was not only of further 

 material advantage to the port of Liverpool but a first step 

 in an important development of the salt mines of Cheshire. 

 These mines have been described as " incomparably the 

 richest of the salt mines and brine pits of England " ; but at 

 the date in question their working was greatly hampered by 

 transport costs and difficulties in the matter both of fuel and 

 of the distribution of the salt, when made. 



Fuel was required for heating the furnaces and the pans 

 in which the brine was evaporated into salt ; and in the earliest 

 days of the industry the salt-makers used for this purpose 

 faggots of wood brought from the forests on the borders of 

 Cheshire and Staffordshire. As long as these supplies were 

 available, the principal seat of the salt trade was at Nantwich, 

 in the higher part of the Weaver, and near to the forests where 

 the wood was obtained. But the forests got depleted in 

 course of time, and the industry then moved to other works 

 lower down the river which could be operated with coal 

 brought from the Lancashire coal-field. This coal, however 

 had to be carried, by cart or packhorse, a distance of twelv 



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