The Leeds Liverpool Canal, A Working Highway - Hirst Wood, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

`Here ye great aqueduct over Aire' When the navvies reached the western end of Hirst Wood, just before Dowley Gap, they had the problem of getting across the River Aire and the tail-race from New Hirst Mill. One of the country's leading engineers, James Brindley, designed Seven-Arches aqueduct, one of the masterpieces of canal architecture. Built by local stonemasons James Rhodes of Shipley, Jonathan Sykes of Oulton and Joseph Smith of Woodlesford, it carries the canal 30ft above the river.

Whole families worked a loaded boat and the horse provided the power to move it along the canal. Many local people not only made their living on their boat, it was also their home

The Towpath Changes In the early days of the working canal the general public were not even allowed to walk on the towpath but gradually it was realised the canals could be places of leisure too.

100 years after the Leeds & Liverpool Canal opened, one local boatman gave his life for his country. Wilson Spencer was born in Windhill in 1879 and at the time of the 1901 census he was living alone on the barge 'Sarah' moored "somewhere on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal between the basin with the Bradford Canal and Bingley Ten years on and Wilson was still working as a canal bargeman when he joined the West Yorkshire Regt to fight for King and Country. Wilson Spencer was killed at the battle of the Somme on 14th July 1916.

Greater access meant more danger and the canal has always to be treated with caution The canal has been the scene of many tragedies over the years. In June 1916, the body of nine year old Harry Varies of Atkinson Street, Shipley, was found by boatman John Holmes. He thought the boy had been trying to catch fish with a teapot on the end of a piece of string and had lost his balance and fallen in. He was the second young boy to drown in the canal that year.

After 46 years and more than £877,000 spent on construction, the Leeds & Liverpool Canal was completed in 1816. The first company boat to travel the full 127 mile length, navigating the 91 locks and 300 bridges, left Leeds on Saturday 19th October 1816 and arrived in Liverpool the following Wednesday.

On 2 July 1766 colliery owner John Stanhope called a meeting in Bradford to discuss the possibility of a waterway linking east to west across the Pennines. On 26 April 1771 canal surveyor John Longbotham staked out the route he wanted through Hirst Wood and negotiations started over how much the canal company would pay for the land. Shipley's Lord of the Manor was keen to get the best possible price. In June 1772 navvies were carving their way through Hirst Wood and there were disputes over who had the right to the timber on the land they had bought to make the canal. By August 1773 they had almost finished that stretch of canal and the discussions now were for the damage done to the Lord of the Manor's land by navvies 'digging and carrying a most prodigious quantity of soil out of the wood for lining the sides and bottom of the Canal.' On 21 March 1774 the first boat made the trip from Bingley to Shipley, loaded with coal. The Leeds Intelligencer wrote: "From Bingley to about three miles downwards the noblest works of the kind are exhibited, viz: A fivefold, a threefold and a single lock, making together a fall of 120ft: a large aqueduct bridge of seven arches over the River Aire and an aqueduct and banking over the Shipley Valley."