Heritage of Wales

Historical Background of the Aqueduct and Canal

The Llangollen Canal, formerly the Ellesmere Canal, originated in a scheme to link the rivers Mersey and Severn, which would also access the iron and coal fields around Shrewsbury, Ellesmere and Ruabon. This plan was fuelled by the need for improved forms of transport, both for an agricultural economy increasingly dependant on long distance trade, and the Industrial revolution that swept across Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century. Shropshire, heavily reliant on the trade of its agricultural output, was dependent on the River Severn providing a trade route to the port at Bristol, but many in the county also wished to take advantage of the new industrial trade afforded by the iron and coal fields situated along the Welsh Border.

  • The Vale of Llangollen looking south, with the Eliseg Rocks to the left, Castel Dinas Bran in the centre of the photograph, and Llangollen in the far right. (AP_2007_4009)
  • The Vale of Llangollen below Castell Dinas Bran, looking east, showing the line of the canal (centre left) and the course of the River Dee.(AP_2007_4019)
  • The Vale of Llangollen looking north (AP_2006_1046)

In 1791 landowners met to discuss a proposal to link the ports of Liverpool and Bristol by means of a canal connecting the Mersey and the Severn. Overwhelming public support led to the creation of the Ellesmere Canal Company, with a management committee and a consultant engineer in the form of William Jessop, a highly respected Civil Engineer. Two rival schemes were drawn up; the ‘Eastern Route’ running to the east of the River Dee, which avoided the mountainous terrain of the Welsh Border but needed a separate branch to the coal and iron fields to the west, and the ‘Western Route’ which ran to the west of the River Dee from Chester, to Wrexham, Ruabon, Chirk and on to Shrewsbury. Although crossing far more difficult terrain, on consideration, and at the recommendation of Jessop, the Western Route was adopted by the Committee.

An Act of Incorporation was granted by Parliament in 1793 giving the Company the authority to raise up to £500,000 for the construction of the canal. In September of the same year, Thomas Telford (then County Surveyor for Shropshire) was appointed as ‘General agent, surveyor, engineer, architect and overlooker, and clerk to the committee’ and charged with responsibility to ‘make reports, to superintend the cutting, forming and making of the canal, to make drawings, …forming and directing the making of bridges, aqueducts, tunnels, locks, buildings, reservoirs, wharfs and other works’ as well as being in charge of all contracts, contractors and accounts.

By 1795 the nine mile section of canal across the Wirral linking the River Mersey with the River Dee had been completed and was open to heavy goods and passenger traffic. A branch line from Frankton to Llanymynech was also completed in 1795, while the section between Llangollen and Hurleston did not open until 1805. By this date the idea of a section linking Chester, Ruabon and Frankton had been abandoned and the dream of providing a though link from the Dee to the Severn was never realised.

The main section of the Ellesmere Canal, as completed, was the 44-mile section between Hurleston and Llangollen, crossing the Welsh-English border near Chirk. This section contains a large number of the canal's most impressive engineering works - the Chirk Aqueduct, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the Pontcysyllte embankment, and the Chirk and Whitehouse Tunnels.

  • The Ceiriog Valley spanned by the Chirk Aqueduct, with the later Chirk Railway Viaduct immediately behind it. (DI2005_1116, NPRN: 344016 & NPRN: 87002 )
  • The Trefor Basin Wharves crossed by Scotch Hall Bridge in the foreground (DI2005_1128, NPRN: 402309 & NPRN: 34411)
  • The Llangollen Mooring Basin and the International Pavilion (AP_2006_0950, NPRN: 406587)

Although the construction of the canal had been initiated by Shropshire landowners to serve their largely agricultural interests, the importance of the canal in the industrial growth of the region quickly became realised. The opening of the Wirral Section lead to its terminus, Ellesmere Port, rapidly developing into a large and prosperous trade centre where revenue increased year on year between 1795 and 1805. It continued to expand throughout the 19th century with china clay works, corn mills and boat building industries joining the trade in iron ore and coal. This section of canal also had a busy packet boat service for carrying passengers between Chester and Liverpool.

The adoption of the Western Route scheme had involved taking the waterway through the industrialised areas around Ffrwd, Bersham, Brymbo, Wrexham and Ruabon where there were large coal fields, limestone quarries and a number of iron works, including the Plas Kynaston Works where the elements for the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct were being cast. When this part of the scheme was abandoned in 1800, it was instead decided to construct of a series of tramlines which would connect these industries to the north end of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Here a short extension of the canal was built, ending in a double prong shaped dock forming the Trefor Wharves. The success of this combined transport system quickly encouraged further industries to establish themselves in the area.

The Frankton to Llanymynych branch line in turn was particularly important in terms of serving the limestone quarries and limeworks such as those at Llanymynych, Porthywaen, Nantymawr and Llanyblodwel. Like those industries further to the north, these were linked directly to the canal by a series of tramways. At the easternmost end of the canal a tramway was constructed to link the Oernant Slate quarries, located just beyond the Horseshoe Falls, to the canal at Pentre’r-felin near Llangollen, while the Glyn Valley Tramway linking the canal to the Glynceiriog Quarry in the second half of the 19th century, finally allowed the commercial exploitation of slate quarries which had been worked on a minor scale since the 1500’s. Other industries served by the canal included flour milling, brick and tile making, sand extraction and superphosphate manufacture.

  • Canal Walk postcard (DI2007_1491)
  • Entering the south end of the Chirk Tunnel (DI2007_1520, NPRN: 405785)
  • The Llanddyn Lift Bridge (DI2007_1498, NPRN: 405856)

Eventually the balance between the railways and canal began to change, and instead of the tramlines serving the canal by supplying it with commodities to transport, the railways took over as the main lines of transportation. In 1944 an Act of Parliament limited the amount of water that could be let into the Ellesmere Canal via the Horseshoe Falls to 6¼ million gallons a day. This led to the closure of all sections of the Ellesmere Canal apart from that section between Hurleston Junction and the Horseshoe Falls, which was subsequently renamed the Llangollen Canal. Although the Act to abandon this section was also obtained in 1944, it appears to have been spared due to the increasing needs of the water boards to provide water to the large cities and their use of the canal as an open pipeline. In 1950 a number of these boards collaborated to obtain an Act allowing them to increase the amount of water extracted from the Dee, and the Mid and South Cheshire Water Board also obtained permission to take water from the Dee at Froncysyllte to the canal reservoir at Hurleston Junction to be purified before taken on to supply Cheshire.

More recently the rapidly increasing use of it for tourism, with large numbers of people hiring boats for day trips or canal holidays, has ensured the future of the canal.