The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Landscape and townscape from AD 1500
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In the later eighteenth century,
canals transformed the landscape
even more profoundly than
turnpikes (Ransom 1984). The
earliest canals developed out of
schemes to improve navigible rivers
by dredging and installing locks to
regulate and raise water levels.
Canals like the Sankey Navigation,
designed to supply coal to Liverpool,
for which an act was passed in 1755,
had a specific purpose but soon
became used by more general traffic.
The scale of new engineering works
associated with canal construction
was first evident in the Bridgwater
canal, completed in 1761, designed
to bring coal from the third Duke
of Bridgwater’s mines at Worsley
into Manchester. By the end of the
century, trans-Pennine canals like the
Figure 15.7 Mullion Cove, Cornwall, typical of many small British harbours
from pre-industrial times.
Source: I. Whyte
Huddersfield, Leeds-Liverpool and Rochdale canals were tackling gradients using flights of locks
and long tunnels, while elsewhere steam-powered inclined planes and vertical lifts were used.
Railways had antecedents stretching back at least as far as canals. By the late seventeenth
century, colliery tramways were becoming common on Tyneside. In the early nineteenth century,
the extension of some of these tramway systems and a broadening of their role to include
carrying general freight and passengers demonstrated that they could be competitive with other
forms of transport even without steam locomotion (Ransom 1984). Extensive tramway systems
were developed in the early nineteenth century in some areas like Brecon Forest, linking coal and
iron deposits and encouraging agricultural improvement. However, the introduction of more
effective steam locomotives in the later 1820s and 1830s encouraged the first true railways. The
opening of the Liverpool-Manchester line in 1830, primarily to carry passengers, was a major
landmark. By the end of the 1840s, a national railway network was beginning to take shape with
almost every major town in England connected to the railway and two lines linking England and
Scotland. The impact on the landscape, with cuttings, tunnels and bridges, was even more dramatic
than that of the canals because of the much greater mileage involved. They created a number of
new urban centres at important junctions such as Crewe and Swindon. They also caused profound
changes in existing towns, as the construction of lines, sidings and stations with associated railway
hotels required the demolition of huge areas of property including many historic buildings as
well as large areas of slums.
Over the same period, marine transport was also transformed. Excavation has made only a
limited contribution to the study of harbour developments. The development of Britain’s major
ports has been relatively well chronicled but there is still much research to do into the history—
and the physical remains—of a great many small ports (Jackson 1983; Figure 15.7). Sequences of
harbour developments can be best seen on difficult estuaries like the Lune or the Tay where
growth of trade and increases in the size of vessels forced the construction of successive harbours
further and further downstream (Bowler and Catchart 1994).