C O N T E X T 1 2 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 2 11 nigel crowe Canal history in the making A new charity, the Canal and River Trust, is to manage the multi-designated heritage assets of the waterways through a nationwide heritage partnership agreement. Britain’s world-famous inland waterways deliver a host of public benefits. In 2012 the government will move the BritishWaterways-owned waterways in England and Wales out of the public sector into a new charity, the Canal and River Trust (CRT). £1 billion of investment supports this move, which will create a sustainable future for the waterways heritage and will enable local communities to play a greater part in how their local canal or river is run. It is Big Society in action: an historic moment. Inland waterways have been used for centuries in Britain, but only with the coming of the industrial revolution did they become serious, interlinking transport routes harnessing horse power and human ingenuity to carry heavy cargoes to and from local and regional markets.When the youthful Duke of Bridgewater opened his canal fromWorsley to Manchester, the price of coal in Manchester halved. Without the canal system, the industrial revolution would not have spread as far and as fast as it did. For all that, it took time, years usually, to build a canal. It was built using conventional methods: gangs of sweating men and horses, the line often broken into sections that went to local contractors. Later that changed and more technical, programme-built canals speeded up construction times. From the late 18th century onwards a loose network of separately owned river navigations and canals developed. Many continued to operate until the coming of the railways and beyond. These waterways dominated the industrial heartlands of England in the west midlands and north west in particular. Since 1963 BritishWaterways has been responsible for 75 per cent of the waterways in the UK. Now British Waterways itself is about to pass into history. Its legacy is one that should not be lightly dismissed. In the past 15 years or so, supported by the help and commitment of many other groups, it has made extraordinary progress in restoring and conserving our historic waterways. The heritage assets of the inland waterways in England andWales can be broken down into two broad categories: engineering structures and built structures. To give a sense of scale, CRT will own 2,000 miles of waterways, including 3,112 bridges, 1,569 locks, 53 tunnels, 370 aqueducts and 74 reservoirs. Significant numbers of these structures are designated. After the Church of England and the NationalTrust, CRT will be responsible for the third largest assemblage of listed buildings in the UK. Engineering structures typically range in date from the 1760s to the 1840s.The differences between the early pioneering structures and the later versions are easy to spot, as exemplified at sites like Harecastle Tunnel on the Trent and Mersey Canal. Apart from water, all of them had one thing in common: they were built around the horse. Harecastle Old and New Tunnels,Trent and Mersey Canal.The smaller tunnel was completed in the 1770s and took more than eight years to build; the larger tunnel took three years and was built in the 1820s. The new Canal and River Trust logo
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=