British Canals: Is their resuscitation practicable?

by Edwin A. Pratt

For a distance of 1½ miles the Shropshire Union Canal passes through the very heart of Chester. Right alongside the canal one sees successively very large flour mills or lead works, big warehouses, a school, streets which border it for some distance, masses of houses, and, also, the old city walls. At one point the existing canal makes a bend that is equal almost to a right angle. Here there would have to be a substantial clearance if boats much larger than those now in use were to get round so ugly a corner in safety. This bend, too, is just where the canal goes underneath the main lines of the London and North-Western and the Great Western Railways, the gradients of which would certainly have to be altered if it were desired to employ larger boats.

WHAT CANAL WIDENING WOULD MEAN.

(The Shropshire Union Canal at the Northgate, Chester, looking East.)

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The widening of the Shropshire Union Canal at Chester would, in effect, necessitate a wholesale destruction of, or interference with, valuable property (even if the city walls were spared), and an expenditure of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Such a thing is clearly not to be thought of. The city of Chester would have to be avoided by the through route from the Midlands to the Mersey, just as the canals of Birmingham and the Black Country would have to be avoided in a through route from the Thames. If the Shropshire Union were still kept to, a new branch canal would have to be constructed from Waverton to connect again with the Shropshire Union at a point half-way between Chester and Ellesmere Port, leaving Chester in a neglected bend on the south.

On this point as to the possibility of enlarging the Shropshire Union Canal, I should like to quote the following from some remarks made by Mr G. R. Jebb, engineer to the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company, in the discussion on Mr Saner's paper at the Institution of Civil Engineers:—

"As to the suggestion that the railway companies did not consider it possible to make successful commercial use of their canals in conjunction with their lines, and that the London and North-Western Railway Company might have improved the main line of the Shropshire Union Canal between Ellesmere Port and Wolverhampton, and thus have relieved their already overburdened line, as a matter of fact about twenty years ago he went carefully into the question of enlarging that particular length of canal, which formed the main line between the Midlands and the sea. He drew up estimates and plans for wide canals, of different cross sections, one of which was almost identical with the cross section proposed by Mr Saner. After very careful consideration with a disposition to improve the canal if possible, it was found that the cost of the necessary works would be too heavy. Bridges of wide span and larger headway—entailing approaches which could not be constructed without destroying valuable property on either side—new locks and hydraulic lifts would be required, and a transhipping depôt would have been necessary where each of the narrow canals joined. The company were satisfied, and he himself was satisfied, that no reasonable return for that expenditure could be expected, and therefore the work was not proceeded with.... He was satisfied that whoever found the money for canal improvements would get no fair return for it."

The adoption of the alternative route, viâ the Trent and Mersey, would involve (1) locking-up to and down a considerable summit, and (2) a continuous series of widenings (except along the Weaver Canal), the cost of which, especially in the towns of Stoke, Etruria, Middlewich, and Northwich, would attain to proportions altogether prohibitive.