Well here we are at Shipley Wharfe on one of the earlier sections of the canal to be
opened.
When the canal was built it was all done by hand labour; excavated
just by navvies, as they were called then, navigators, as they worked on the navigation.
But, you excavated the canal and then if it was necessary it was lined with a clay puddle,
which kept the water in.
The canal was actually built mainly for carrying limestone,
which might seem a strange sort of thing today, but in the 1770s you got the
development of the textile industry and people all wanted to have the weaving cottages we
know of: with the two stories.
To build a two storey house, you needed a decent mortar and that is where we use lime.
Once you've got the weaver's cottage built, in needed to be light inside,
and so it was limewashed.
And, of course, at the same time, we've got lime
being used on agricultural land.
And so because of that, there was a tremendous demand for it.
At the same time, they wanted to get a way of getting their textile products
over to Liverpool and into the market over there for the colonial areas.
When the canal was built, Shipley wasn't a major
centre as it is today, and it only really developed in the 1850s when a
cholera epidemic in Bradford was attributed to the Bradford Canal.
The Bradford Canal was closed; so in order to get all
the wool, the raw materials to the mills in the area, they had to have new warehouses,
and so here, the warehouses we see opposite were initally built in about
the 1860s to store wool for the whole of the Bradford area.
And these warehouses became one of the main centres
for storing wool - they were extended in the 1880s and 1890s.
And then the brick warehouses, beyond the bridge, were
built into the 1930s - because the canal was still an important carrier of wool
for this area, even into that sort of time.
Well, from Shipley we're now going to go up the valley and the canal follows
the contours of the sides.
It's a very simple canal to build, but there were one or two more important structures
on it, more interesting structures, that were more difficult
to build, and we're going to have a look at one of those now, at Dowley
Gap.
So, go on up.
Well its started to rain a bit, which is never a bad thing for a canal: you do need the water.
But, we're actually coming to quite an interesting area
- where the canal crosses over the river Aire.
And here, over on the left hand side, in amongst the trees, you can actually still
see the quarry where they got the stone for building the aquaduct.
It's quite an interesting feature, geologically: we're on
one of the glacial moraines going up the valley.
The glacial moraine is actually further over, and here the river has cut through
the sandstone, so we've got the river away on our right hand side, just down the valley,
and here we've got some of the sandstone which they were able to use, for getting the stone
to build the aquaduct.
Its got seven arches, which is quite a big structure
really, it's the biggest on the canal.
But the arches aren't symetrically placed.
We've got two at the far end, and they're where the river goes through; and then there
are five dotted around on this end, for where the flood water goes through, because the
river Aire is a really quick up and down river.
So you've got to make sure that when they have these flash floods, that you can get
all the water away.
The whole of the aquaduct is made of stone and the canal section was
actually lined with clay originally, but that does cause problems with leakage, and here
its now been re-lined with concrete.
As we go along the canal today, and we're going to carry on going up and having a look
at some other structures, you've got to remember that we're looking at the
canal with 20th century eyes, when we're used to making some really big structures,
and they look quite puny to us today, but really they were some of the biggest engineering
works of their time.
And here at the end of the aquaduct, we've actually got a small
mill, that quite a few of these little mills grew up alongside the canal, using
the canal for transport.
It just shows how important the canal was to the development of industry - really all
the way along.
Even somewhere as rural as here.
Well, we're now coming to the Bingley Five Rise Locks which were opened with a great
fanfare in 1773, and they are certainly a fine engineering structure.
But, I always have my doubts a little bit, because
in 1610, in France, they'd opened an eight-rise flight.
And so, the technology was already well-known.
There are problems with these riser locks: the riser ones are when
one lock is built right on to the next lock, so that the top gate of one lock, is
the bottom gate of the next.
And the big problem with them, is that they use a lot of water every time a boat goes
in a different direction.
So, if you were going up this flight of locks, you'd have to have all the locks full of water,
all the top four filled with water.
So, for each boat going through, you use four locks of water, and that makes them very very
wasteful.
And quite soon after they built the five-rise, they decided that this sort of system was
not the effective way of building a canal.
Subsequently all canals had individual locks with a space inbetween each flight, each lock.
The locks on this canal use about 80,000 gallons - that's 400,000 gallons of water
every time a boat goes up and down here.
Anyway, we'll go up and have a look now at the
actual locks and the paddle gear for controlling the water, and to see if we can see any of
the smaller engineering details that go to make up the flight.
I think one of the nice things about canals is that they tell a 200 year story.
You can just find all sorts of little details, like this bit of ironwork here, on
the side of the lock, and that's to actually protect the stonework from the
tow lines of boats being towed in and out, well, out of the lock.
The tow line rubbed against the iron, rather than into the stonework.
And you find those all over the place on riser
locks.
Well this is one of the lock gates for holding back the water, and these
are actually brand new gates, these were only put in this year [2010].
But interestingly, they've still got the original type of paddle gear, that's a sluice mechanism,
for letting the water in and out.
They're called a scissor gear, because they operate from side-to-side and are pivoted
at the bottom.
There's a hole at the bottom of the gate to let the water out.
There's a boat just about to come up and so they've
had to fill all these chambers of the lock, so there's going to be enough water for the
boat to pass through the whole flight of five.
What happens is, once the boat's in the chamber below, they'll have to open this
sluice, to fill the lock below up, and get these two locks at a level, you then open
the gates.
The boat will sail into this lock.
Shut the paddles, because you don't want to waste any water.
You then shut the gate, go up, and then you open the gate, with the
paddle gear above, and let that lock full of water down into here, to fill it up to
the same level.
It wasn't until 1816 that is was completed as a through route right from Leeds
to Liverpool.
It was the longest canal, 127 and a quarter miles, and it also took the
longest time to build: 45 years from the first sod being dug right through to it being opened
throughout.
It's always been open, its remained open all its life; but in the 1960s
it became very close to being closed, fortunately it wasn't, and so it's still here
today for everyone to enjoy.