CHAI-. VIII. TI1K GRAND TIM'NK CANAL. 4'_T. 



Mr. Smeaton slioiild lie railed upon to ro-operate with 

 Brindley in making ;i joint survey ;m<l a joint report. 

 A M-roiid meeting was afterwards held at Wolseley 

 Bridge, at which the plans of the two engineers were 

 ordered to l>e engrave* 1 and circulated amongst the 

 landowners and others interested in the project. Here 

 the matter rested for several years more, without any 

 action being taken. Brindley was hard at work upon 

 the Duke's canal, and the Staffordshire projectors were 

 disposed to wait the issue of that experiment ; but no 

 sooner had it been opened, and its extraordinary suc- 

 cess become matter of fact, than the project of the canal 

 through Staffordshire was again revived. The gentle- 

 men of Cheshire and Staffordshire, especially the salt- 

 manufacturers of the former county and the earthen- 

 ware-manufacturers of the latter, now determined to 

 enter into co-operation with the leading landowners in 

 concerting the necessary measures with the object of 

 opening up a line of water-communication with the 

 Mersey and the Trent. 



The earthenware manufacture, though in its infancy, 

 had already made considerable progress, but, like every 

 other branch of industry in England at that time, its 

 further development was greatly hampered by the 

 wretched state of the roads. Throughout Staffordshire 

 they were as yet, for the most part, narrow, deep, cir- 

 cuitous, miry, and inconvenient ; barely passable with 

 rude waggons in summer, and almost impassable, even 

 with ] >aek-horses, in winter. Yet the principal materials 

 used in the manufacture of pottery, especially of the best 

 kinds, were necessarily brought from a great distance 

 flint-stones from the south-eastern ports of England, 

 and clay from Devonshire and Cornwall. The flints 

 were brought by sea to Hull, and the clay to Liverpool. 

 From Hull the materials were brought up the Trent in 

 boats to Willington ; and the clay was in like manner 

 brought from Liverpool up the Weaver to Winslord, in 



