Montgomery Canal Built Heritage Report, Assessment (1.6MB PDF)

MONTGOMERYSHIRE CANAL BUILT HERITAGE ASSESSMENT 1 HISTORY THROUGH BUILDINGS The history of the Montgomeryshire had profound effects on its development canal shows the detailed local evolution and buildings. of broader national trends. This report is a chronological history of the canal in terms of its buildings, set against their THE BACKGROUND TO historical and environmental CONSTRUCTION: background. CANAL BUILDING IN THE 1790S. The Montgomery Canal originated not From the mid C18, agricultural as a self-contained project, but as a expansion and industrial development branch to the much larger Ellesmere had shown the limitations of the existing Canal system. It was extended in two roads and water transport systems. The phases, reaching Newtown by 1821, yet shortcomings were most obvious in the remained ancillary to a larger system. It transport of heavy bulk goods such as was to serve three different purposes – stone and coal. From the 1770s, canals as a branch to feed limestone into the had been built and natural waterways rest of the Ellesmere system; as an improved, so that by the 1790s, the agricultural canal to distribute limestone, building and operating of canals was grain and raw materials; and as a well understood. There was no transport link to a potential industrial alternative to private funding for such town. infrastructure improvements, and the Because of this, the waterway was not procedure of establishing a company, conceived as a unit, but was instead selling shares, and, hopefully, paying managed in two branches by separate dividends, was well established. In the companies. These never amalgamated, early 1790s, the hopes of speculators for and only in 1850 did the canal come impressive profits led to a frenzy of under unified management by the canal promotions. The Ellesmere canal Shropshire Union Railway and Canal was one such speculative scheme. Company, itself a dependent of the London & North Western Railway. With a brief interlude during World War I, THE ELLESMERE CANAL this continued till 1922, when railway grouping placed the canal under the Proposed in 1792, the Ellesmere canal control of the London North Eastern attracted an exceptional rush of Railway. There it remained till formal speculators. The majority proved to be abandonment in 1944. So for most of its significant local landowners, and it was existence, the waterway was under the their agricultural and industrial interests control of railway companies. These the canal was intended to serve. The origins, and subsequent management, original intention was to link Shrewsbury with Chester and Liverpool, 1 carrying coal, limestone, iron and demanded great amounts of lime to agricultural produce, interchanging with improve and maintain their condition – imports via Liverpool. about 3 tons per acre every eight years. A canal was ideal for carrying limestone, A defining feature of the Montgomery and it could also be used to carry coal, Canal is that it was intended only to grain, building stone and timber. carry a one-way traffic in limestone. It was never planned as a through route, nor to serve industries along its route, for LLANYMYNECH LIMESTONE there were none of significance in 1792. The great limestone outcrop at Llanymynech was crucial to the Ellesmere company’s plans. Exploited since the C16, the quarries there had THE AGRICULTURAL MOTIVE reached an impressive size by the mid C18. A canal was ideal for distributing The Montgomeryshire/Shropshire border this inexhaustible resource, which would was a prosperous agricultural area in the be a firm base for the company’s late C18, and for many years afterwards. profitability. Quicklime was far too There were many large estates, and dangerous to be carried by boat, so the landowners took an active interest in pattern was set by which the canal agricultural development, in response to carried limestone to numerous canalside a rising demand for wheat, with little kilns, whence quicklime was distributed interruption till 1815. The area under by road. So important was the limestone cultivation was increased by the draining traffic that the Llanymynech branch, and improvement of moorlands and planned by Jessop and Telford, opened heath, and by parliamentary enclosure of in 1796 – well before the main line existing farmland. Along the canal, this section northwards to Pont Cysyllte extended from the enclosure of Baggy opened in 1802. Limestone was the basis Moor in 1777 up to the enclosure of of the Ellesmere canal’s prosperity till at Llanymynech in 1845. By 1801, least 1815. Montgomeryshire had more enclosed land than anywhere else in Wales. A further motive for the enclosure of THE EASTERN BRANCH waste land and commons was to evict a sizable population of squatters and so The Llanymynech branch in fact suppress any disaffection or extended as afar as Carreghofa, where it revolutionary sympathies. Landowners was joined by a water feeder from the wanted above all a docile and Tanat. As early as 1792, proposals were controllable workforce, and this in part made to extend the waterway beyond explains the numerous estate cottages Carreghofa via Welshpool, in the which offered comfortable direction of Newtown. This proposal accommodation to the more biddable. was again put forward by prominent For the waterway, the importance of local landowners, who became major agriculture was that the soils of the area shareholders, and their interest was 2 agricultural development. Engineered by THE SHROPSHIRE UNION the Dadford brothers, the extension opened as far as Garthmyl in 1797. It The speculative enthusiasm for canals in included a further branch from Burgedin the 1790s was never equalled again. towards Guilsfield, ending in a basin at Later speculative manias in the 1830s Tyddyn. This was intended for the and 1840s focused on railways. More export of timber. High quality timber difficult economic circumstances after for naval construction had been 1815 affected industry, agriculture and produced in the canal hinterland for transport. Thomas Telford many years, and had previously been disingenuously claimed that railways transported via the Severn from Pool were being promoted in the 1830s Quay. Timber and tanbark remained mainly to increase the demand for iron. significant products from the area till at Railways were devised for carrying coal, least the early C20. and by the mid 1820s they had developed to carry both coal and passengers by steam power, at much THE WESTERN BRANCH greater speeds than canals could achieve. In response to this, the Shropshire Union The Montgomery canal was completed Railway and Canal Company was by a further extension to Newtown. The established, with a foot in both camps. proposal was contentious, partly because One of its proposals was that the entire it was made as late as 1815, when the Ellesmere canal system should be trade in limestone was at its peak and converted to railway, including the full poised to fall. The extension was length of the Montgomery Canal. Plans promoted mainly by the entrepreneur for this were drawn up in 1845 by no William Pugh of Newtown, who raised less an engineer than Robert Stephenson, much of the finance for it himself. The which suggests the proposal was branch’s finances proved precarious: no perfectly serious. By 1850, both dividend was ever paid, and Pugh branches of the Montgomery Canal were became bankrupt. The intention was part of the SURCC, which determined apparently to promote the growth of their character thereafter. Newtown, which was beginning to develop a significant flannel industry at this time. Planned by Josias Jessop, and LANDSCAPE AND WATER carried out by John Williams, the extension was completed in 1819-21. In Landscape is a major influence on the the event, there was an almost wholly character and viability of canals. It is one-way trade in limestone and coal to the major influence in determining the Newtown, and although by the 1830s a route, and this in turn establishes what substantial flannel industry and market engineering works will be required. had developed, it is not clear that the Engineering works – locks, cuttings, canal played any significant part in this. embankments, aqueducts - are of course a major element of the waterway’s buildings. Water is the other major determinant. Its supply and control – by weirs, feeders and sluices - was essential 3 to the canal’s success. Unlike most canals, the Montgomery line had a surplus of water, which had a major impact on waterside activities. However, a surplus of water also implied heavy rainfall and a number of watercourses, hence the canal’s most important engineering structures are aqueducts, most of them notoriously troublesome. PHASES AND BUILDINGS The canal’s history can be divided into coherent phases of construction and management. In each case, most of the buildings date from the time of construction, simply because without a watertight channel, locks, aqueducts, weirs and bridges, the canal could neither exist nor function. Warehouses, lock houses, lobbies, cranes, weighbridges, even boundary marks, are secondary. Limekilns, though the canal existed to serve them, were not actually part of it, nor run by the canal companies. Like malthouses and factories, they were potential customers. Several vernacular buildings alongside the waterway predate it and now complement it, but they are ancillaries. 4 2 THE CONSTRUCTIONAL PHASE THE CHANNEL Much of the original channel survives from each of the three phases. It retains its original character best where it is South of Freestone Lock/ least used, and the dry sections allow it to be easily examined. It is clear from surviving stretches, as well as from archaeological investigation and documentary record, that the form and material of the channel were standard for their day. There is no evidence of a real variation between the stretches built in the 1790s and those from 1815-21.The stretch from Frankton Locks to Carreghofa was the first to be constructed.

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