Bridgewater Canal in the context of "History of the British canal system"

The Manchester Ship Canal is a 36-mile-long (58 km) inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire before joining the latter at Salford Quays. Several sets of locks lift vessels about 60 ft (18 m) to the canal's terminus in Manchester. Landmarks along its route include the Barton Swing Aqueduct, the world's only swing aqueduct, and Trafford Park, the world's first planned industrial estate and one of the largest in Europe.

The rivers Mersey and Irwell were first made navigable in the early 18th century. Goods were also transported on the Runcorn extension of the Bridgewater Canal (from 1776) and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (from 1830) but by the late 19th century the Mersey and Irwell Navigation had fallen into disrepair and was often unusable. Manchester's business community viewed the charges imposed by Liverpool's docks and the railway companies as excessive. A ship canal was proposed to give ocean-going vessels direct access to Manchester. The region was suffering from the Long Depression; the canal's proponents argued that the scheme would boost competition and create jobs. They gained public support for the scheme, which was first presented to Parliament as a bill in 1882. Faced with stiff opposition from Liverpool, the canal's supporters were unable to gain the necessary act of Parliament to allow the scheme to go ahead until 1885.

The Canal Age is a term of art used by science, technology, and industry historians. Various parts of the world have had various canal ages; the main ones belong to Egypt, Ancient Babylon, and the historical empires of India, China, Southeast Asia, and mercantile Europe. The successes of the Canal du Midi in France (1681), Bridgewater Canal in Britain (fully completed 1769), and Eiderkanal (superseded by today's Kiel Canal) in Denmark (later Germany) (1784) spurred on what was called in Britain "canal mania". In the Thirteen Colonies in 1762 legislation was passed supporting in the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania to improve navigation on the Schuylkill River through Philadelphia.

Canals were critical industry, as until steam locomotives, canals were by the fastest way to travel long distances. Commercial canals generally had boatmen shifts that kept the barges moving behind mule teams 24 hours a day.
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Trafford Park is an area of the metropolitan borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, 3.4 miles (5.5 km) southwest of Manchester city centre and 1.3 miles (2.1 km) north of Stretford. Until the late 19th century it was the ancestral home of the Trafford family, who sold it to the financier Ernest Terah Hooley in 1896. Occupying an area of 4.7 square miles (12 km), it was the first planned industrial estate in the world, and remained the largest in Europe over a century later.

Trafford Park is almost entirely surrounded by water; the Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, its northeastern and northwestern boundaries. Hooley's plan was to develop the Ship Canal frontage, but the canal was slow to generate the predicted volume of traffic, so in the early days the park was largely used for leisure activities such as golf, polo and boating. British Westinghouse was the first major company to move in, and by 1903 it was employing about half of the 12,000 workers then employed in the park, which became one of the most important engineering facilities in Britain.

Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port within the Borough of Halton in Cheshire, England. It lies on the south bank of the River Mersey, where the estuary narrows to form the Runcorn Gap, and is located approximately 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Liverpool and 29 miles (47 km) southwest of Manchester. The Runcorn built-up area had a population of 61,145 at the 2021 census.

Runcorn was founded by Æthelflæd of Mercia in 915 AD as a fortification against the Viking invasion at a narrowing of the River Mersey. Under Norman rule, Runcorn fell under the Barony of Halton and an Augustinian abbey was established there in 1115. It remained a small and isolated settlement until the Industrial Revolution, when the 1776 extension of the Bridgewater Canal to Runcorn established it as a port linking coastal Liverpool with inland Manchester and Staffordshire. The docks enabled the growth of industry, initially shipwrights and sandstone quarries; in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was a spa and health resort, but this ended with the growth of polluting industries, especially soap and chemical works. In 1964, Runcorn was designated a new town and expanded eastward, absorbing neighbouring settlements and more than doubling its population.

The Barton Swing Aqueduct is a moveable navigable aqueduct in Barton upon Irwell, Greater Manchester, England. It carries the Bridgewater Canal across the Manchester Ship Canal. The swinging action allows large vessels using the ship canal to pass through and smaller craft, both narrowboats and broad-beam barges, to cross over the top. The aqueduct, the first and only swing aqueduct in the world, is a Grade II* listed building, and considered a major feat of Victorian civil engineering. Designed by Sir Edward Leader Williams and built by Andrew Handyside and Company of Derby, the swing bridge opened in 1894 and remains in regular use.

A canal pound (from impound), reach, or level (American usage), is the stretch of level water impounded between two canal locks. Canal pounds can vary in length from the non-existent, where two or more immediately adjacent locks form a lock staircase, to many kilometres/miles.

The longest canal pound in the United Kingdom is on the Bridgewater Canal between the stop lock on the Trent and Mersey Canal at Preston Brook (Dutton Stop Lock No 76) and the start of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal near Leigh (Poolstock Bottom Lock No 2), a distance of 39.5 miles (63.6 km). Another long pound is on the Kennet and Avon Canal between Wootton Rivers Bottom Lock and Caen Hill top lock. The longest level on the Erie Canal in New York was the so-called '60 mile level' (actually 64.2 miles (103.3 km)) between Henrietta and Lockport.