Canal and Boatyard





The Boatyard and Basin
Most people first see the Canal and Boatyard from the City Walls. The section of the city walls between Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower and Pemberton’s Parlour originally dates to the late eleventh or early twelfth centuries, when the defences of Roman Chester were extended westward, but was altered to form a raised promenade between 1701 and 1708, a walk that is about 2m wide.



Approaching the end of this stretch of the City Walls, the Canal and Boatyard come into view to the north. From Boughton to Mollington, the Chester Canal worms its way through the centre of Chester, forming a moat for the walls between Cow Lane Bridge and the Watertower. The Chester Canal which dates 1779 from was dubbed "England's first unsuccessful canal", after its failure to bring heavy industry to Chester.



The City Walls walkway also crosses the railway here, as described in glowing terms by the "Strangers Guide to Chester", where Hughes writes:


 * We are now upon a flat iron Bridge and whew with a rush like that of a tiger from his den the giant of the nineteenth century a steam engine and train emerge from the dark tunnel which passes under the city and dash away beneath us full forty miles an hour en route to Ireland by way of Holyhead The Roman Walls that resisted so successfully the Roundhead batteries have in our own times succumbed to the engines of peace and the railway trains with their living freight now career it merrily through two neighbouring apertures in these ancient fortifications.

It is possible to get down from the City Walls near Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower for a short side-trip to the canal and boatyard. It is also possible to explore the canal by walking along it, although it should be noted that for a veriety of reasons sections of the towpath are sometimes closed.

Why the canal?
During the 13th and 14th century, Chester was the largest and busiest port in the north-west, trading with ports throughout the British Isles and Europe. In the 18th century, it traded in raw hide with the Americas and even sent slave ships to Africa, but only on a fairly small scale. Grain and wine were also major imports. Until the start of the 14th Century, the ancient city walls provided adequate defence to the port (the River Dee used to flow close by the Watergate). Silting of the River Dee had become a problem by the early 18th Century, leading to a loss of maritime trade to growing rival ports such as Liverpool which did not have the same silting problem as Chester. In response, the River Dee Company was formed and the Old Port area was developed as a new port for the City. In resturn for the rights to any reclaimed land, the River Dee Company excavated the "New Cut" which, after its opening to shipping in 1737 allowed easier navigation and led to the construction of Crane Wharf at Chester and a minor boom in Chester's failing fortunes.

Even just before the start of of the Industrial Revolution, improvements to the river Weaver after 1730 served to channel trade from central Cheshire away from Chester to the Mersey, and the Trent and Mersey Canal Act of 1766 threatened to strengthen still further the dominance of Liverpool over the Dee. Despite that threat, no apparent opposition to the Trent and Mersey Bill was voiced in Chester, but within two years of its passage there was a proposal for a canal to link Chester to the new canal at Middlewich and surveys were commissioned from, among others, the canal engineer James Brindley.





The Chester Canal
The original plan for the Chester Canal was for a canal linking the south Cheshire town of Middlewich on the Trent and Mersey Canal (of 1777) with the River Dee at Chester, with a branch to Nantwich, providing a route for produce (including salt) from Nantwich to reach Chester and, beyond it, the sea via the Dee Navigation of 1737. However there were difficulties with the Trent and Mersey Canal Company, and its owner the Duke of Bridgewater, who were jealous of their own lucrative traffic and put up a prolonged and robust opposition to any link with the proposed Chester Canal. Many of the arguments relating to the Chester Canal are set out in John Monk's "Remarks relating to a Canal, intended to be made from the city of Chester, to join the navigation from the Trent to the Mersey, at or near Middlewich" (1770):


 * "That if a navigable Canal was made from Chester to join the Canal at Middlewich which is now making between the Rivers Trent and Mersey and which last mentioned Canal is intended to communicate with the other Canals now carrying on to Manchester, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Kidderminster and the River Severn and also to Tamworth, Coventry and Oxford it would be a means of improving the Public Trade and Manufactures of this Kingdom of increasing the Number of Sailors to be employed in our foreign and coasting Trades of reducing the Expence of the inland Carriage of Goods and of opening a more extensive Communication between the inland Parts of the Country and the Sea and would also be of Benefit to the Inhabitants of the City of Chester and of the Country near to which the said Canal from Chester is intended to pass as well as a Means of increasing the Tonnage on the Navigation from the Trent to the Mersey and of the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal from Manchester to Preston Brook."

A limited plan was authorised in 1772 permitting the building of a canal 14 feet wide from Chester to Nantwich and Middlewich. This had immediate effects on Chester: Queen Street having been constructed fairly rapidly around 1777, with much development by two individuals in particular: John Chamberlaine and Roger Rogerson. The development of the street was obviosly connected with the development of the Chester-Nantwich canal. From the 1770s city development was especially concentrated north of Foregate Street, beginning with Queen Street and expanding later to include Bold Square and Seller and Egerton Streets before 1820.



The canal project was seriously undermined, however, by a requirement that the new canal should end at least 100 yards away from the Trent and Mersey Canal at Middlewich, requiring overland portage rather than allowing for a functional junction. As a result, the Middlewich branch of the Chester Canal was not begun, and the branch to Nantwich became the course of the final section of the Chester Canal. There were also arguments with the River Dee Company over access to the River Dee at Chester. " Weale's Quarterly Papers on Engineering" noted the following:


 * "The line which Mr Brindley surveyed was probably that of the Ellesmere Canal from Chester to Nantwich with a branch to the Grand Trunk at Middlewich. By the first Acts of Parliament obtained for this canal the proprietors are empowered to make it from Chester to Nantwich and Middlewich. In the Act 17th George III 1777 however there is a most singular clause inserted for the protection as it is called of the Duke of Bridgewater and the Grand Trunk Canal Company by which the Chester Canal Company is restricted from carrying the Middlewich branch of that canal nearer than 100 yards to the Grand Trunk Canal. In consequence of this restriction the branch to Middlewich remained untouched up to the year 1827, while in the mean time the Chester Canal had been extended to the south as far as Wolverhampton and connected at Welshpool and several other places with the Severn and with the canals in Staffordshire. The want of a communication with the Grand Trunk however was still severely felt and a valuable mining district in Denbighshire was almost ruined by the competition of places more favoured by the proximity of water carriage. At the same time the value of the shares in the Chester Canal had been extremely depressed by the want of communication with other canals and at one time were worth no more than one per cent of their original value."

When the canal between Chester and Nantwich opened in 1779, it was a dead end and attracted little traffic, leading to financial disaster for its backers which at one stage saw the share price in the canal company fall to 1% of the initial value. No dividends were paid during the canal company between 1772 and 1813. Part of the canal was even closed in 1787, when Beeston staircase locks collapsed, and there was no money to fund repairs. The canal was funded by subscriptions with almost half of the capital of £38,500 coming from Chester, a fifth from Cheshire gentry a tenth from Nantwich and lesser sums from further afield. While the Chester Corporation was strongly in favour of the intended canal to Nantwich and beyond, it was a heavy investor in the company's shares only through the Owen Jones charity, thus risking the funds of the charity rather than its own. Others were not so lucky. Various plans wer put forward to improve the canal. In 1791 Joseph Turner, identified in various sources as either "a Chester architect" or a "Whitchurch Engineer" (Canal Ports, John Porteous), put forward a scheme for the course of the Ellesmere/Whitchurch Canal routed to the east of the Dee, with Whitchurch being served by a heavily-locked branch about 10 miles long, up the Wych Valley from a junction near Threapwood.

In 1793 Joseph Turner was to be paid "£20 on erecting a stone arch over the canal from the Northgate garden to the Blue Coat Hospital" (ZA/B/5/f.36v, [p.72] 30 July 1793). This became known as the Bridge of Sighs. He by now appears to have some role in local government as he is involved in the consideration of a "Petition from John Bramwell for a lease of land, to compensate for land recovered from him by River Company" (ZA/B/5/f.43, [p.85] 13 February 1795).

Overall, the Chester Canal was 19.5 miles long, has 17 locks and ran from the River Dee to what proved to be a pointless end at Nantwich. If anything, it had a negative effect on the trade of Chester by allowing the export of Cheshire Cheese to Shropshire rather than via the Port of Chester. Chester's canal was only saved from complete financial ruin and ignominious closure by the 'Canal Mania' of the 1790s and the opening of the "Wirral Line" (1795) between Chester and what is now Ellesmere Port.

The Wirral Line
The Ellesmere Canal Act was passed in 1793, and although the scheme took 12 years to complete it ultimately connected the city to a much wider hinterland. The first section, opened in 1795, linked Chester to the Mersey at Netherpool (later Ellesmere Port) as the "Wirral Line". "Joseph Turner Architect" was named as a shareholder in the 1796 Act which enabled the purchase of the mortgage of the Chester Canal for £8000 from William Egerton (heir of Samuel Egerton). (it was valued at £15,0176 19s and 7d). Turner was engineer for the Chester Canal until 1797, when he was succeeded by John Fletcher.

The addition of the Wirral Line section of the Ellesmere Canal led to some changes in the original layout at Chester. Hunter's Map of Chester (1775) shows how the canal was initially planned to go straight to the River Dee. Nowadays, the River Dee branch heads eastwards from the river, and passes through two locks before turning to the north - initially it went straight on after the basin to join the Northgate staircase of locks - as shown in Stockdale's Map of Chester (1795). The basin was originally tidal but this proved difficult of access and prone to silting, and so a new entrance with a tidal lock was opened in 1801 Another two locks now raise its level to that of the Ellesmere Canal. Originally, the branch continued eastwards after the first two locks, and another two brought it up to the level of the Chester Canal main line. From the junction, the Ellesmere main line heads south, to another right-angled band where it joined the Chester Canal. The last bend proved awkward for horse-drawn boats and was made worse when the railway cut across the cramped site below the locks.

The Wirral line of the Ellesmere Canal proved a great success and revived the debt-ridden Chester Canal. It was navigable by flats, the standard craft of the Mersey and Weaver, and goods could be brought directly to Chester by water from Liverpool and other points on the Mersey. Lancashire coal, for example, became cheap enough to compete with that from north Wales. A service of passenger packet boats bewteen Chester and Liverpool was provided from the opening of the canal, the journey to Liverpool optimistically timed at three hours, and 15,000 passengers a year were using it by 1801. Pigot describes the journey as follows:




 * "From hence to the river Mersey is ahout nine miles and the canal in that distance is not interrupted hy a single lock. A large clean and commodious hoat leaves the Canal Tavern every day ahout two hours hefore high water for Liverpool. The passage along the canal is very pleasant and the sail down the Mersey particularly amusing the intercourse between Liverpool and Chester hy this conveyance is very great and the payment demanded for the whole distance amounts only to the sum of half a crown."

The service continued until the opening of the Chester and Birkenhead Railway in 1840. The new link to the Mersey attracted a Leadworks and corn mills to the canalside in Chester. The interdependence of the Chester and Ellesmere companies led to their merger in 1813. However, there was still no connection with the Trent and Mersey canal despite many petitions in parliament. One such petition from 1796 made it clear that:


 * ".. the Petitioners apprehend the real Object of the Trent and Mersey Canal Company is to exclude all Competition and to lay hold of all the Supplies of Water in the Country in order to prevent the Possibility of any other Canal being brought through the Staffordshire Potteries however beneficial or necessary to its increasing Trade and so to secure the great and alarming Monopoly of that Counpany for ever." (Journal of the Commons, 7th Dec 1796)

By 1827 the joined companies had become powerful enough to overcome the long-standing (45 year) resistance to a connection with the Trent and Mersey. "Weale's Quarterly Papers on Engineering" noted:


 * "In 1827 however the influence of the Chester and Ellesmere Canal Company was sufficiently strong to effect a junction with the Grand Trunk at Middlewich. Under the powers of an Act obtained in that year the Grand Trunk Company undertook to cut a branch of 100 yards in length out of their own canal and by another Act passed in the same year the Chester and Ellesmere Canal Company is empowered to make a cut of five miles to join this branch from the Grand Trunk. In this way these important navigations have been united we believe greatly to the advantage of both notwithstanding the long and determined opposition of the Grand Trunk Company."

Successful as it was, the new canal served ultimately to demonstrate that Chester's waterborne traffic could be carried more effectively through Liverpool and the Mersey than through its own port. Although the increase in imported grain after 1860 initially made the canal more important, eventually it became more economic to open new mills on the Mersey and the canal-borne trade to Chester ceased, probably around the time of the First World War. The trade in timber brought from the Mersey to the lumber-yards at Cow Lane bridge also ceased soon after 1918.

The Llangollen Canal


In 1806 Chester was linked by the circuitous new Ellesmere canal (later called the Llangollen Canal) to the Denbighshire coalfield near Ruabon, as well as to Whitchurch in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire. It joined the Chester Canal at Hurleston not far from the original terminus at Nantwich. Plans for a direct link between Chester and Wrexham foundered because of cost and engineering difficulties. The present-day Llangollen Canal was originally the centre section of the Ellesmere Canal. The canal was intended to link the River Mersey at Netherpool (now known as Ellesmere Port) with the River Dee, and from there run via Overton (south of Wrexham) to the River Severn at Shrewsbury. The upper section was built as a navigable feeder and is both shallow and narrow. Thomas Telford's Horseshoe Falls is the "filling point" for the canal. Construction work on the canal running through the Vale of Llangollen began in 1795 and was completed in 1808. The canal was not only intended to supply a means of transport but also to provide a supply of water (to Crewe and Nantwich) and so it is known for it's marked current.

East of Llangolen, Thomas Telford's 1000 foot long Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, of 1805, carries the canal 120 feet above the River Dee. It consists of a nine foot cast iron trough supported by nineteen hollow masonry piers. Each span is 53 ft (16 m) wide. Mortar used in the construction comprised lime, water and oxen blood. The thin iron plates making up the troughs were cast locally and dovetailed into each other. They were caulked by a mixture of pure Welsh linen and boiled sugar before the joints were sealed over by lead. Crossing the aqueduct is not advised for anyone with a morbid fear of heights. The towpath is cantilevered out from the east side of the trough, which is the full width of the aqueduct. While walkers on the towpath are "protected" by railings on the outside edge, the holes to fit railings on the other side of the aqueduct were never used. As the edge of the trough is only a few inches above the water level, the narrowboat crew have nothing between them and a fatal drop. With it's aqueducts and scenery, it is the most popular canal for holidaymakers in Britain. The aqueduct cost the then considerable sum of £47,000. This resulted in the project running out of money and the Wrexham branch of the canal never reached Ellesmere Port, it's intended destination, but in this phase only reached a quarter of a mile north of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Eventually the Ellesmere canal was completed between Frankton Junction to Ellesmere and Whitchurch in Shropshire, eventually reaching the Chester Canal at Hurleston Junction near Nantwich, Cheshire.

The volumes of water abstracted from the River Dee into the canal system led to problems - when the sluices were opened the level downstream fell significantly and water-powered mills on the River Dee suffered a loss of flow. In 1811 the canal company admitted liability and paid £312 in compensation, but problems continued. Before long the tenants of the Dee Mills were claiming compensation for the reduced flow of the river. A merger with the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal in 1845 was followed in 1846 by the formation of the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company, making the canal part of the Shropshire Union Canal network. Following litigation in the 1880's the canal company entered into an agreement to pay compensation to Mills on the Dee for the next 21 years. It is not known to what extent, after 1808, the diversion of water from the Dee (which was canalised by 1740) accelerated the silting of the estuary, which was already well underway, but the abstraction of such a volume of water must have reduced the scouring action of the River Dee in the "New Cut".

The Junction Facilities
At the side of the basin is a building which appears to have a roof but no walls. This is actually a covered dry-dock for narrow-boats and can accommodate two boats at once, allowing the hulls of the boats to be maintained. The dry dock at Tower Wharf (known as Graving Dock) is believed to date from 1798, potentially making it the oldest surviving example of its kind on the canal system.

Next to the Graving Dock is a "Roving Bridge". This allows the horses drawing a barge to cross from one side of the river to the other where the tow-path changes sides, as it does here. The clever design of the bridge allows this to happen without disconnecting the tow rope or tangling it. The bridge bears a memorial to L. T. C. Rolt who was a prolific English writer and the biographer of major civil engineering figures including Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He is also regarded as one of the pioneers of the leisure cruising industry on Britain's inland waterways, and as an enthusiast for both vintage cars and heritage railways. He was born in Chester to a line of Rolts "dedicated to hunting and procreation".

Telfords Warehouse was originally conceived by the famous industrial engineer Thomas Telford in the 1790’s, the Warehouse stands as a magnificent example of Georgian architecture and as a reminder of the once thriving port of Chester. The building was constructed partly over the canal to allow boats to be located and unloaded from the full height of the loading bay within the building. The grade 2 listed building from 1802 was originally converted to a public house in the 1980′s by local architect James Brotherhood.

In 2000, Telford’s was forced to close due to a major fire which destroyed some of the building’s internal features and took nearly a year to restore.

links

 * Chester canal on Wikipedia.
 * British History Online about the canal.
 * Boatyard on English Heritage;
 * Rolt's memorial;
 * Telford's Warehouse on Wikipedia;
 * Chester City Walls - Wall from Bonewaldesthorne's Tower to Pemberton's Parlour on Revealing Chesters Past;
 * A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester (John Aikin, 1795);

=Chester Canal=

From Boughton to Mollington, the Chester Canal worms its way through the centre of Chester, forming a moat for the walls between Cow Lane Bridge and the Water Tower. Overall, the canal is 19.5 miles long, has 17 locks and runs from the River Dee to Nantwich. It is now part of the Shropshire Union Main Line.

Surveying and layout
The original surveyor was James Brindley and work on the canal started in 1772. Brindley's death (from diabetes) was noted in the Chester Courant of 1 December 1772 in the form of a dreadful epitaph which plays upon the cause of his death and is worthy of William McGonagall:


 * JAMES BRINDLEY lies amongst these Rocks,
 * He made Canals, Bridges, and Locks,
 * To convey Water; he made Tunnels
 * for Barges, Boats, and Air-Vessels;
 * He erected several Banks,
 * Mills, Pumps, Machines, with Wheels and Cranks;
 * He was famous t'invent Engines,
 * Calculated for working Mines;
 * He knew Water, its Weight and Strength,
 * Turn'd Brooks, made Soughs to a great Length;
 * While he used the Miners' Blast,
 * He stopp'd Currents from running too fast;
 * There ne'er was paid such Attention
 * As he did to Navigation.
 * But while busy with Pit or Well,
 * His Spirits sunk below Level;
 * And, when too late, his Doctor found,
 * Water sent him to the Ground.

James Brindley was a man of humble birth, and for several years worked as a labourer on a farm, amusing himself in his spare moments with making wooden models of machinery with a pocket-knife. He was so clever that he was often called in by the mill-owners of Macclesfield and Congleton to repair their machinery. When he was first employed by the Duke of Bridgwater he was paid only half a crown a day. He was a very practical man, and gained his knowledge not from books but from his own experiments. When he was called to the House of Commons to explain his scheme for carrying a canal over the Mersey, which many people laughed at as absurd, he took with him a Cheshire cheese which he cut in halves to represent the arches of the bridge, and made a complete cheese model of his proposed work which greatly amused his audience. "Weale's Quarterly Papers on Engineering" noted, after listing his works:


 * '''"Besides these numerous projects the consideration of which must have required the active and incessant occupation of Brindley's time and talents there are many brief notices of his inventions and casual employments scattered through the imperfect histories of his life Amongst these may be noticed his suggestions for the drainage of the fens in several parts of Lincolnshire and the Isle of Ely his plan for cleansing the Liverpool Docks of mud his method of building walls against the sea without mortar his improvements in the machinery for raising water and coals out of mines his use of double barges with an opening between them for forming canal embankments on the principle of the hopper barge with several others concerning which we are merely in possession of notices like the above without particulars of any kind Mr Brindley died in the fifty sixth year of his age at Turnhurst in Staffordshire on the 27th September 1772 and was buried at New Chapel in the same county. In taking a hasty retrospect of Brindley's engineering career it is important to remember that all the works he projected planned and executed are comprised within a period of twelve years and by far the greater part of them within the last seven years of his life It is amazing to reflect that the man who had to struggle without precedent or experience to guide him with all the difficulties which attended the early history of canals should himself have effected and originated so much There can be no doubt that he possessed an intellect of the highest order that his views were most comprehensive and his inventive faculties extremely fertile Brindley was wholly without education and it has even been asserted that he was unable to read and write the utmost extent of his capacity in the latter accomplishment extending no further than that of signing his name This however has been disputed as before mentioned on the authority of his brother in law who stated that he could both read and write though he was a poor scribe However this may be it is certain that he was quite ignorant in the vulgar sense of the word Education and perfectly unacquainted with the literature of his own or any other country It may be a bold assertion and yet I believe it to be one with strong presumptions in its favour that Brindley's want of education was alike fortunate for himself for the world and for posterity There was no lack of scholars in his day more than in our own nay the literary coxcomb had then a more nourishing soil in which to vegetate But where were the Brindleys amongst these scholars where were the men capable of the same original and comprehensive views the same bold unprecedented expedients and experiments upon matter and the forces of nature which the illiterate Derbyshire ploughboy dared to entertain and to undertake?"'''

Boughton and the Steam Mill
This stretch of the canal is home to several pairs of swans, who build their chaotic nests on the banks.

Harkers Arms to Northgate
There is a turning basin by Cow Lane Bridge.

Northgate to the basin
A flight of three locks descends beneath the railway and ring-road bridges.

Near the base of the Water Tower can be found the Gloverstone worth a diversion to look at if you are passing by.

The Branch to the Dee
Opposite the Water Tower, where a newish development of flats can now be found, the canal tow path was made in part of the gravestones of those who had lived and died on the water. These stones are now gone.

Basin and Boatyard
Taylor’s Boatyard at Tower Wharf was for many years run by David Jones, (67 in 2009), who repaired craft there for 35 years, but is now semi-retired. Parts of the yard date from the 1840s, and it is said to be “possibly the best surviving example” of an historic boat-building yard. In its commercial heyday, the boatyard employed more than 200 people, servicing the huge fleet of canal company working vessels. It comprises a workshop, former saw mill building, former blacksmith’s workshop, covered slipway and dry dock

The yard has been known as Taylor’s Boatyard since it was leased by Joseph Harry Taylor in 1921 when the Shropshire Union Railway & Canal Company ceased carrying.

Prior to 1921, Taylors had a yard on the Dee Basin alongside South View Road. The Dee Basin Slipways were established by Joseph Harry Taylor about 1913.

Initially,Taylors operated the Graving Dock, and one of the 90 ft bays - the other half was operated by a Mr Horne, Canal Carrier of Cambrian Road. They also worked out of what was known as "Dandy's Shed". Dandy's Shed was removed when the North Basin was excavated.

The Taylor family owned and ran the yard until 1972. Bithells Boats then took over the yard for two years before David Jones leased the proprty in 1974.

In 2005 there was disappointment over the failure of a Lottery bid which would have restored the yard. It had been supported by waterway enthusiasts including Mr Taylor’s grandson Geoff Taylor, who lives in nearby Cambrian View.

Links to the canal

 * Chester canal by Jim Shead;


 * Chester canal at Wikipedia;


 * Chester Canal Heritage Trust;


 * "Canal plan";


 * Shropshire Union Canal;