Canal
A quick tour of the Chester Canal, now part of the Shropshire Union Canal.
A view of the canal by the Roman walls looking towards Northgate and with the Bridge of Signs in view.
Background
If Chester is a performance, do you see the Dee as the soprano belting out high notes at the front of the stage, and the canal as the sulky old stagehand lurking round the back? Not so fast! Both waterways are crucial assets and improving both would enhance Chester, whose “face is its fortune” (George Grenfell-Baines).
The Chester Canal is now part of the Shropshire Union Canal. The first section from Chester to Beeston was completed in 1775, so this year is its 250th birthday. What a chequered history it has had! The story of the Chester Canal is a lens through which to view local history since the Industrial Revolution. Grand plans devised & thwarted, bankruptcy, new beginnings, gradual decline, and transition.
Canal Mania was kickstarted by the Duke of Bridgewater who built his canal (with his own money) to speed up the transport of coal from under his land in South Lancashire to Manchester – boosting his fortune and catalysing the Industrial Revolution. Soon, every town and city wanted a canal. The vision was of a national canal system linking town, city, and countryside. (This was fifty years before the railways came along).
The Duke of Bridgewater had been inspired by the Canal du Midi, one of the greatest construction works of the 17thCentury. That canal was designed to connect the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean so that ships didn’t need to travel around the Iberian Peninsula (which took a month and was a stomping ground for pirates). The Romans had dreamed of it and in 1516 the King of France asked Leonardo da Vinci to survey the route. Anyway, back to Chester.
A scene by the canal close to Beeston Castle. The Chester to Beeston section was completed 250 years ago.
The Business Case
In the middle of the 18th century Chester was losing its share of sea trade to rapidly growing Liverpool. With the Trent and Mersey Canal coming into operation, Chester folk were rightly worried that more traffic would flow directly to the Mersey and that Chester would miss out. The big idea was to form a canal between the port at Chester and Middlewich where it would join the Trent and Mersey Canal.
The Chester Canal Bill was passed by the House of Lords in 1772. On 4 May that year great celebrations were held in the city including a twenty-one-gun salute, the ringing of bells, and an evening of entertainment put on by the Mayor and the Corporation. 250 years later Chester also held local celebrations:
https://waterways.org.uk/branch_news/public-flocks-to-chester-celebration
Work starts…and then ends…
The cutting of the canal started soon after and was incredibly hard work for a team of around 150 men. This including tunnelling through rock north of the city walls – done by hand with pick and shovel. Legend has it that when workmen started, they found that the canal ran along the line of an old Roman ditch that had filled up with rubbish over a couple of millennia.
The first section ran from Chester to Beeston. A report from the Chester Chronicle in 1775 shows that a 6-pound cannon ball was found in the mud (15 feet below the surface) while digging the canal at Beeston. It is thought that this dates from 1643 when Beeston Castle was under siege in the English Civil War.
By then money was becoming tight. New capital had to be raised, and the second section from Beeston to Nantwich was completed in 1779. By then, money really had run out so the link to Middlewich wasn’t completed and the planned connection to the Trent & Mersey Canal had to wait another 50 years.
A canal between Chester and Nantwich not linked to the wider network just wasn’t economically viable. Nantwich’s salt-making industry had pretty much died out once rock salt was discovered at nearby Northwich, and its main exports were shoes and cheese – both of which could be transported by road rather than needing a canal. The books didn’t balance, and the new canal was now in a perilous state.
The view to Moel Famau with the Bridge of Sighs in the foreground.
A new hope
When the Ellesmere Canal was proposed in 1790 it was a ray of hope for the ailing Chester Canal. The Ellesmere Canal has its own circuitous story. It was originally intended to link the Mersey and the Severn and connect Netherpool (renamed as Ellesmere Port), Cheshire and Shrewsbury. The initial plan was to have a canal from Ruabon to Chester, but the mountainous route rendered it uneconomic.
The Wirral section from Ellesmere Port from Chester was built first, connecting Ellesmere Port to the Chester Canal. In 1806 the section from Frankton to Hurleston Junction was built and connected the Ellesmere Canal to the Chester Canal. In 1813 the Ellesmere Canal Company and the Chester Canal Company merged.
Linking to the wider canal system
But the Chester Canal was still not linked to the main English canal system. This happened with the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction canal (now part of the Shropshire Union Canal) which connected Nantwich to Autherley (near Wolverhampton). After the relevant Act had been passed, permission was granted to finally link the Chester Canal with the Trent & Mersey Canal in Middlewich.
In 1838 St John’s Church in Chester snapped up the temporary organ that had been used for Queen Victoria’s Coronation at Westminster Abbey and this prestigious cargo was transported on the new canal system from London to Chester. The organ was unloaded at Cow Lane and then carted along Frodsham Street. You can find out more about the organ here:
https://stjohnschester.uk/the-coronation-organ/
The animated map below shows the timeline of the Chester Canal and its links to other canals in the area. The map is simplified – the longer canals were finished in sections but we only show when the major section was completed.
Railway Mania
In the 1840s Britain was gripped by railway mania. Investors were tripping over to invest in this new technology, and the government was authorising thousands of miles of new track. Steam locomotives could carry more weight much more quickly than the canals could. The “Golden Age” of canal building which had lasted from the 1770s to the 1830s was over.
In 1948 the Shropshire Union Canal system (including the Chester Canal) was nationalised along with many other canals. By 1948 canals were mainly used for commercial traffic but since 1948 most of the traffic has been for leisure. The Chester Canal is popular with boaters and some of the towpaths offer spectacular views. The National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port is well worth a visit.
Local Wonders of the Waterways
The ‘Seven Wonders of the Waterways’ was compiled in 1946 to highlight significant engineering feats on the UK’s navigable waterways.
Three of the seven are within 50 miles of Chester: The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the Barton Swing Aqueduct (on the Bridgwater Canal) and Anderton Boat Lift.
The Future of Chester’s Waterways
Chester achieved ‘Heritage Port’ status in 2021 which you can read about here:
https://www.chesterheritagefestival.co.uk/a-heritage-port
The 2012 Waterways Strategy for Chester sees the potential to develop the canal as an economic and social asset. The vision is about ‘joining up’ Chester’s waterways so they can deliver growth and vitality for the city. Living, working, walking, or cycling along a well-maintained waterway is always a pleasure.
Coming full circle to the metaphor of a performance it seems that the canal deserves more attention and investment, as does its partner the River Dee. Hopefully the Chester One City Plan (to 2045) will deliver improvements, so the following generations can benefit from the wonderful asset that is the Chester Canal.
A view of the iconic Telford’s Warehouse in the Old Port area.
Acknowledgements & references
Some of this article was inspired by the very detailed and informative book The Old Chester Canal edited by Gordon Emery. This was produced by the Chester Canal Heritage Trust which started in 1997 and was wound up in 2018.
The starting point of the animated map is from the UK canal map produced by the Canal River Trust.