1790s Llangollen Canal

With the wife and some friends I managed to finally achieve a dream - taking a narrowboat over the amazing Pontcysyllte aqueduct on the Llangollen canal which runs between Wales and England. Engineered by one of my industrial engineering heros, Thomas Telford, he built it out of the crazy new material of the day - cast iron - so it wouldn't collapse under its great weight at the height needed to cross the river (126 ft!). It remains the tallest and longest aqueduct in Britian even over 200 years later! Not only is the aqueduct (and there's a second at Chirk which is also amazing) amazing feats of engineering, the surrounding area is incredibly beautiful and an 11 mile stretch of the canal is a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site. This to say nothing of the 21 locks which are also from the 1790s (not the actual gates though which get replaced every couple decades) which you get to operate as you traverse the canal. When you take a narrowboat down the canal it's a huge trip back in time (one Canal and River Trust volunteer I talked to called it a "Linear History Museum") with the biggest difference being your boat has a diesel engine rather than being horse drawn. Other than that as you wind through the at times fairly remote countryside it might be hard to which century you're in.


I made a little video which highlights some aspects of our trip but really there's so much that was left out. A highly recommended holiday if you have the chance!

Great....combine my fear of heights with sea sickness....

Wow, was that worth my time! Thank you.

In 1952-3, I heard radio dramas based upon a 1951 movie, in turn based upon C. S. Forester's novels about Horatio Hornblower, an English naval officer of the 1790-1820 period. I went to the library and read every one of the books. In one, set in 1805, Hornblower travelled to London on a canal boat, teaching me something of what the experience was like. I still remember reading how two men lay on their side on planks cantilevered from the boat's bow to get through a narrow tunnel with no horse tow path by "legging" through the tunnel.

I live in a canal town, nicknamed the "Summit City" because the locks all went down to Lake Erie in the east and also down to the Ohio River in the west. We had an aqueduct over the St. Marys River, just a wooden structure with no decorative flourishes. It looked like a 240 foot long covered bridge, but the roadbed was a water trough 16 feet wide and 6 feet deep. Local kids liked to swim in it and later started the Aqueduct Club, a social organization for successful and nostalgic men. They put up a statue of two boys overlooking the site of the aqueduct.

I take my wife on a cruise now and then on replica horse or mule drawn narrow boats in Indiana, Ohio and Maryland. It is a silent and peaceful way to travel and a lot more smooth than riding a train. Ohio and Maryland have working locks and Indiana has a covered aqueduct.

The books by L. T. C. Rolt include biographies of great English engineers and his own autobiography with tales of machine shops, steam engines and modern canal cruising.

Larry

This is why I love this site. The ability to see and learn of so many things I would normally never be aware of around the world.

Beautiful country side, thanks for the video. I had not even heard of a narrow boat or the history of such. Quite the engineering feat.

So I'm not alone, having read those books... Though I can't recall reading about a journey on a canal boat... Mind you, it was in the early 70's, and I was not even a teenager yet.

This thread is a good example of why I joined PM, and enjoy reading here!Big thanks to wfrancis for posting the video, and Larry for reminding me of the "Hornblower" books!

Kjelle

Kjelle said:

So I'm not alone, having read those books... Though I can't recall reading about a journey on a canal boat... Mind you, it was in the early 70's, and I was not even a teenager yet.

This thread is a good example of why I joined PM, and enjoy reading here!Big thanks to wfrancis for posting the video, and Larry for reminding me of the "Hornblower" books!

Kjelle

Click to expand...

Hornblower and Atropos. Hornblower was on his way to London by canal boat, where he was put in command of the barge carrying Nelson's body up the Thames from Greenwich to Whitehall in the great funeral procession, January, 1806. Someone had to bail the leaky barge with a hat while hidden under the drapes around the platform holding the coffin. Imagine the terror over the possibility of presiding over the sinking of the great hero's coffin. Of course, the job was done so well that no one noticed that there was a problem. Three cheers!

The state funeral of Lord Nelson, 5-9 January 186 - Historical events - Port Cities

BBC NEWS | UK | Tribute to a 'complex but great' hero

Larry

Very nice video of the canals there. It made me think of the Falkirk wheel boat lift to connect 2 canals of very different elevations:
The Falkirk Wheel (boat lift) - YouTube

Nice video, thanks! About 15 years ago I was seriously contemplating either a Dutch barge or a longboat, only thing that kept me from doing it was that I never could get clear info on how one went about getting a slip with shore power, or what it cost.

Thanks for such an informative and interesting post. That is one trip I can imagine really enjoying.

Dale

My dad had a caravan on a farmers field on the outskirts of Llangollen in the 50's where we spent many summer school holidays. Dad built an alum canoe and trailer in which we paddled miles along the canal ( blistered hands !). He towed the canoe/ trailer with his WW2 Harley and home made sidecar combination. A visit to the horseshoe pass and falls is well worth while as is a visit to the international Eistedford ( in July ?). The area around Llangollen has many attractions and is well worth a 2wk visit if you have the time.
Dad was very good with his hands (shipwright) and made such a good job of the canoe/trailer and double adult sidecar that he was stopped many times and was asked where had he bought them. The Harley was in WW2 green/kharki finish and had a spherical curved windscreen (WW2 bomber gun turret ?) fitted . He even had a spare Harley engine & gearbox ! The engines were decoked every winter and swopped over in the spring ready for the summer journeys. Don't ask me where he got the Harley - I never asked !
Oh! happy days !

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Thanks to Mr Francis for starting this topic, and to Larry for introducing L T C Rolt.

I try to get to the Pontcysyllte aqueduct whenever I’m in the area, which isn’t very often. Having said that, I was in Llangollen a week ago, but didn’t have time to go to the aqueduct, heading for the curious Berwyn Chain Bridge instead. Once there, I saw a sign to the nearby Horseshoe Falls Weir. This is a low curved weir, 460 ft long, built by Thomas Telford to raise the River Dee to a level suitable for feeding the Llangollen Canal. The weir’s masonry blocks are capped with cast iron noses.

If anyone is interested in the constructional details of the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, there is some information here:-
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

The credit should rightly be shared between Telford and the ironfounders and the stone masons. The stonemasons’ achievement can best be appreciated from below.

Longdon 1 Longdon 2

Before Pontcysyllte, Telford designed Longdon-on-Tern aqueduct in conjunction with William Reynolds. Reynolds may well have been inspired by the small Pontycafnau aqueduct/tramway bridge designed by Watkin George in 1793. Telford made a mistake at Longdon. He made the iron trough just wide enough to accommodate a narrowboat. As a result, as the boat was being pulled along by a horse, the displaced water had trouble getting past. He avoided this problem at Pontcysyllte by making the trough wider. It doesn’t look wider, because the towpath projects inward from the side of the trough, and the water passes freely underneath. This can just be seen in my photo 1.

The first navigable aqueduct (Pontycafnau was not navigable) was the Holmes aqueduct, designed by Benjamin Outram. Unfortunately this was demolished as recently as 1970.

After Pontcysyllte, the next longest early iron aqueduct in Britain is at Brearley, Warwickshire. This appears ro repeat the narrow trough mistake.
Edstone Aqueduct

As for L T C Rolt, he was indeed an excellent writer, and he was also a key figure in saving the British canal system - for leisure purposes - when it fell into neglect after WW2, and he played a similar role in the railway preservation movement.

He was also a key figure in sparking my interest in industrial history when I was a youngster. It started when I came across his biography of Richard Trevithick in my local library. I’m currently reading his well-researched biography of Thomas Newcomen. In passing, I found this in a secondhand bookshop, and has the signature and bookplate of its first owner - Rev. W. A. Audrey, inventor of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Rolt wrote a very good machine tool history – Tools for the Job.

I can highly recommend his autobiography. This was originally published as three volumes – Landscape with Machines, Landscape with Canals, and Landscape with Figures, and was reissued in 2005 with all three volumes as The Landscape Trilogy. The first volume provides a fascinating account of his time in engineering, which included his apprenticeship with locomotive builders Kerr Stuart. His involvement with machinery started through the influence of his uncle, Kyrle Willans, who became a key figure at Sentinel, famous for their steam waggons. Kyrle’s father was Peter Willans, inventor of the successful Willans high speed steam engine.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone else who was enthused by L T C Rolt’s writing.

There are a couple of the Rolt Books readable on line on the Hathi Trust and Archive.org sites .
Catalog Search Results | Hathi Trust Digital Library
Internet Archive Search: creator:"L.T.C. Rolt"
Regards,
Jim