The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 292 • Kate Clark
Some rivers were made more navigable by the introduction of locks, and a canal was built near
Exeter in 1566, but the big boom in canal building occurred during the late eighteenth century
when, for example, Brindley’s canal over the river Irwell in Manchester linked mines with the
Mersey. Canal mania developed between 1789–93, resulting in the estuaries of the Thames, Severn,
Humber and Mersey being linked, the Pennines traversed and London linked with the Midlands
and the north. Nigel Crowe’s surveys of the buildings of Britain’s canal network demonstrate the
variety of structures that were needed to support this enterprise (Crowe 1994).
Ingenious devices were constructed to cope with the differences in height on canals. In many
cases, flights of locks were used, but in some cases, inclined planes powered by water or by steam
engines lifted boats bodily up and down sloping railway tracks (Figure 16.6). The Anderton boat
lift near Norwich built in 1865 was a similar device that lifted boats physically, using hydraulic
rams and later electricity.
Roads were heavily rutted and impassable at many times of the year. Private trusts had been
set up to build turnpike roads in the early nineteenth century, but their great period of geographical
expansion was between 1750 and 1780. Real improvements came only after the introduction of
new techniques for road construction—the use of tar and crushed stones and Telford’s road
improvements. Today mileposts, toll-houses and the occasional buried surface encountered during
road improvement are reminders of the turnpiking process.
Wooden railways had been in use since the early
seventeenth century for transporting coal. In 1767,
iron rails were adopted laid on top of wooden
frameworks, and were themselves superseded by ‘L’
shaped tracks from the 1780s. Horse-drawn tramways
were built extensively well into the 1830s, in
association with canals and collieries, and occasionally
for public use (Figure 16.7). The earliest experiments
in using steam locomotion were undertaken by
Richard Trevithick in 1802, but it was only in 1829
with George Stephenson’s use of steam that the
fortunes of the locomotive began to turn.
Canals, roads and indeed railways all faced the
problem of crossing rivers or valleys while remaining
level. Bridge and aqueduct technology was another
area of innovation during the late eighteenth century,
when engineers devised new methods, including the
use of cast iron on the first iron bridge at Ironbridge
in Shropshire. The history of these and many of the
other great iron structures tends to be dominated by
the great engineers who built them: John Rennie
(1761–1821), Thomas Telford (1757–1834) and John
Smeaton (1724–92). However, it is important to
remember the role of the firms they worked with:
William Hazeldine, the Coalbrookdale Company and,
in the nineteenth century, the Butterley Company and
others whose day-to-day experience in using cast iron
Figure 16.7 Reconstruction of a coal waggon on a
wooden waggon way, Causey, Durham.
Source: Kate Clark
was likely to have been equally important in creating
practical designs.