The Bridgewater Canal is considered to be the UK's first true canal because it didn't simply follow or improve on existing rivers.
It was built be the Duke of Bridgewater in 1761 to connect his coal mine at Worsley with Manchester.
The canal was later extended and although no longer used commercially is popular with leisure boaters, walkers and cyclists.
For many years it has not been possible to access the original wharves at Worsley where the canal met the coal mine, but the renovation work has included the building of viewing platforms and information boards at that location.
A number of information boards, "You Are Here" maps, benches and sculptures have also been installed between Worsley and Barton.
This artwork was created by a design company called Scartworks. There are three sculptures people associated with the early days of the Bridgewater Canal, Francis Egerton (the Duke of Bridgewater), James Brindley and John Gilbert.
This sculpture is of James Brindley.
"Commissioned by Salford City Council as part of a £3.6 million Heritage Lottery funded project, these pieces were installed Autumn 2017. The new canal side features were created from water-jet cut 20 mm thick Cor-Ten Steel. Also known as ‘Weathering Steel’, this metal is designed to have a long lasting rusty patina and was selected for this project for its colour. The Bridgewater Canal is permanently stained an orange colour due to oxide residues seeping into the water from the redundant mine workings it once serviced."
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James Brindley, canal pioneer
"The canals and rivers that we enjoy today exist because of an ambitious set of 18th century engineers who had a vision of an efficient and speedy transport system.
'Brindley pioneered many of the engineering features that became common on Britain's canals' Nigel Crowe, head of heritage.
James Brindley (1716-1772) was one of the early canal engineers who worked on some of the first canals of the modern era. He played an essential role in shaping the way canals were built during the Industrial Revolution.
Brindley was part of what the English Heritage Book of Canals calls the ‘pioneering’ phase of canal construction. He cut his teeth working with watermills in Derbyshire and had a practical and empirical approach to his work.
The birth of the Canal Age
He worked on the building of the Bridgewater Canal, which was regarded as the first modern British canal, and which triggered an explosion of canal-building. In a sense, Brindley created a template for the narrow canal system when he chose to build narrow locks on the Trent & Mersey Canal.
Nigel Crowe, head of heritage, says:
'Brindley pioneered many of the engineering features that became common on Britain’s canals. Some of his prototype bridge designs, in brick and stone, have a homely charm about them. Others reflect the Georgian craftsman’s love of silhouettes and flowing lines.'
Other canals built by Brindley include the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, the Coventry Canal and the Oxford Canal. He was responsible for such ambitious structures as Barton Aqueduct on the Bridgewater Canal and the three-thousand yard Harecastle Tunnel on the Trent & Mersey Canal.
Setting the template
Nigel says: 'For a while, Brindley’s Harecastle Tunnel was reputedly the longest man-made tunnel on Earth. But it was not a place for the faint-hearted or the claustrophobic. It remains alongside Telford’s later, much bigger tunnel as a monument to the more primitive early days of canal construction.
A lot of Brindley’s canal construction was done on the cheap and, like his wooden accommodation bridges, has vanished. His surviving brick bridges are curving forms with a hole punched through them. They are like a child’s drawing and have a rough-and-ready charm about them. But they also set the scene for much of what came later in the Canal Age.' Nigel Crowe, head of heritage
Brindleyplace in Birmingham, at the heart of the canal network, is named after James Brindley and there are statues of him at Coventry Canal Basin and in the Etruria district of Stoke-on-Trent."
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