Why did the canals in Britain start?
Initially it was the efforts of private industrialists devising means of moving larger and/or heavier loads of their goods or products faster and over longer distances from their place of manufacture or origin. This of course was prior to the invention of the steam engine as a form of locomotion, and therefore at a time when the only means of transporting goods was by horse and cart. Once one or two relatively short canals had been built (or existing rivers canalised), it soon became evident that using barges on water (even when only being pulled along by men on shore), enabled the movement of large and heavy loads far more efficiently in terms of the effort involved, and it was not long before other shrewd busnessmen began to see that Canals were ‘the business of the future’ and worthy of considerable investment, and consequently started to buy up land that would enable them to build canals running between various manufacturing works and mining areas, and the towns and cities that wou
