The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [88]
The aqueduct over the river Irwell at Barton, on the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal between Worsley and Manchester. It was designed by James Brindley, an illiterate, Dissenter canal engineer, and was the first aqueduct to be built in England.
In 1763 the end of the Seven Years War meant that the government was no longer in urgent need of capital, so the rate of interest on borrowed money fell to 4 per cent. Bridge water extended his canal to Runcorn, connecting south-east Lancashire with Liverpool, and was thus able to sell coal at half its normal price. Whereas transportation of coal by road had cost £2 a ton, on the canal the price was six shillings.
Three types of canal were built in the next forty years. Wide canals were constructed mostly in north-east and north-west England and Scotland. Narrow canals, centred mainly in South Wales and around Birmingham, made up the cheaper routes with locks up to only 7 feet wide. The third type of canal, the ‘tub’, was built in the south-west and in Shropshire, on the steepest gradients. At the height of canal-building a narrow boat 70 feet long and 7 feet wide could go anywhere in England south of the rivers Trent and Mersey. To the north, barges up to 53 feet long and 13 feet 6 inches wide could be used.
The cheapest methods of construction were used in building the canals. Engineers preferred to follow the contours of the land rather than cut through hills, because the length of the canal was no drawback so long as boatmen’s wages remained low. Tunnels were cheaper than cuttings, and eventually over forty-five miles of them were built, the longest being that on the Huddersfield canal at Standedge which was 5415 yards long. Some canals, such as the five-lock staircase on the Leeds and Liverpool at Bingley, were marvels of engineering.
The beginning of Bridgewater’s canal at Worsley, showing the entrance to the canal tunnel.
The high degree of English spending attracted foreigners to London. One such was Burkhat Shudi, the Swiss harpsichord maker, seen here tuning one of his instruments. His customers included the composer Handel.
The labour on the canals was largely made up of Irishmen who could most easily be sent home by the JPs once the work was finished. They were called ‘navigators’, or ‘navvies’, a term which referred to all those working on communication routes. By 1775 a network of canals connected all the major English ports of London, Bristol, Hull and Liverpool with every large coalfield.
The coalmines themselves were still primitive affairs. Only in Northumberland, Durham and Cumberland were the mines deep, and none of those went lower than 300 feet. Most coal was dug from surface drift mines. Stimulated by cheap rates of transportation, the production of coal had risen to six and a quarter million tons by 1770. Darby’s coking techniques spread as the ironmasters, no longer tied to the hill forests for fuel, began to build permanent furnaces on the plains of Lancashire, near the ports.
The market for domestic goods expanded even further. In 1763, the British Magazine had commented: ‘The present rage of imitating the manners of high life hath spread itself so far among the gentlefolks of lower life, that in a few years we shall probably have no common people at all.’ Indeed, the prosperity of the English began to give rise to comment from visiting Continentals who remarked: ‘Individuals are better clothed, better fed, and better lodged than elsewhere.rsquo;
Growth in trade and industry was stimulated by new developments in finance. From the early years of the century the number of banks in London had been steadily increasing; by 1770 there were fifty. These provided medium-sized loans, usually to landowners, for a period of twelve months. From 1716 on the City banks had also acted as agents for a growing number of provincial banks, taking their gold and silver deposits and thus