270 NAVIGABLE RIVERS AND CANALS. 
canal, one of the early works of Brindley, and com¬ 
pleted about the year 1770. This canal enters the 
county at Wolverley, and after accompanying the 
Stour (but always upon a higher level) for nine miles, 
with nine locks, and a fall of ninety feet, communicates 
with the Severn at Stourport; this canal is constructed 
for long boats, flat bottomed, seventy feet long, and 
seven feet wide, burden twenty to twenty-four tons; 
the depth of water, four feet six inches, and top water* 
width about thirty feet. 
This undertaking has turned out an advantageous 
concern, both to its proprietors and the public, for¬ 
tunate in its general line, which unites the Severn and 
Trent, and nearly at right angles with both ; passing 
near the inexhaustible coal and lime mines of Stafford¬ 
shire, and opening a communication from Bristol inland 
direct to the north of the kingdom, and to the ports of 
Liverpool and Hull; it has become a kind of general 
thoroughfare for commerce ; an extensive basin having 
been formed at its junction with the Severn, it is gene¬ 
rally crowded with boats and barges; and the new town 
of Stourport has arisen, with near 200 houses and 1000 
inhabitants, forming a commercial town and harbour 
in the interior of the kingdom, where a bridge has, 
with great public spirit, been thrown over the Severn, 
consisting of a single iron arch over its main channel of 
150 feet span, and 150 feet rise, and a number of brick 
arches form the approaches, to the extent both ways 
of between six and seven hundred feet. 
The Droitwic-h canal, from that town to the Severn, 
was also constructed soon after the former by Brind¬ 
ley; this is a barge canal, five miles and a half in 
length, with about sixty feet of fall, and five locks; it 
cost25,000l. and, so early as 1782, produced a tonnage 
of 
I 
