184 History of Inland Transport 



vicinity, and 47 on account of mines of lead, ore, and copper 

 which have been discovered, and for the convenience of the 

 furnaces and forges working thereon." 



Among the more typical of the canals, in addition to those 

 already mentioned, were the Grand Junction Canal, con- 

 necting the Thames with the Trent, and thus with both the 

 Mersey and the Humber ; the Thames and Severn Canal ; 

 the Ellesmere, connecting the Severn with the Dee and the 

 Mersey ; the Barnsley Canal (of which Phillips says : " The 

 beneficial effects of this canal, in a rich mineral country, 

 hitherto landlocked, cannot fail to be immediately felt by 

 miners, farmers, manufacturers and the country at large ") ; 

 the Kennet and Avon (opening, according to the same au- 

 thority, " a line of navigation, sixteen miles in length, over 

 a country before very remote from any navigable river ") ; 

 the Glamorganshire Canal (" has opened a ready conveyance 

 to the vast manufactory of iron established in the mountains 

 of that country ") ; the extensive network of the Birmingham 

 Canal system ; the Shropshire Union, which connects the 

 Birmingham Canal with Ellesmere port, on the Mersey, and 

 has branches to Shrewsbury, Llangollen, Welshpool and 

 Newtown ; and the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal. 

 To the last-mentioned, constructed under an Act of Parlia- 

 ment passed in 1791, Baines alludes as follows in his " Lanca- 

 shire and Cheshire " : 



" The River Irwell flows directly down from Bury to 

 Manchester, and the river Croal, which flows through Bolton, 

 joins the Irwell between Bury and Manchester ; but neither 

 of these streams was considered available, by any amount 

 of improvement that could be given to it, for the purposes 

 of navigation. They are both of them very impetuous streams, 

 occasionally sending down immense torrents of water, but 

 at other times so shallow as not to furnish sufficient depth 

 of water for the smallest vessels. Instead, therefore, of 

 wasting time and money upon them, a canal was cut at a 

 considerably higher level, but following the general direction 

 of the river Irwell." 



The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal was thus a further 

 example of the resort to artificial canals, with water channels 

 capable of regulation, in preference to further schemes for 

 rendering rivers navigable. 



