Canal Engineering and Architecture

Canal tunnels, bridges, aqueducts, locks, lifts and engineers

Building the English canals was a stupendous undertaking, transforming the countryside and man’s place in it using private capital and over a short fifty year period.

At a time when roads were poor and disjointed, a national system capable of moving large tonnages of bulk goods from North to South, East to West, coast to coast, was developed through personal initiatives, enthusiasm and human labour.

Civil engineering began here! An army of navvies (navigators) was mobilised, moving from canal project to project, doing all the hard labour by hand, and often terrorising the neighbourhood in the process! Almost uniquely the results of their labours, locks, bridges, buildings, are still in daily use, fulfilling their original purpose because of a design integrity that has lasted hundreds of years.