The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Man
The Packet House at Worsley, on the canal
The Opening of the Bridgewater Canal A.D. 1761 by Ford Madox Brown, one of The Manchester Murals at Manchester Town Hall
Brindley's aqueduct, replaced late in the 19th century
Borrow's Bridge across the Runcorn extension of the Bridgewater Canal
The Manchester Ship Canal is a 36-mile-long inland waterway in North West England that links Manchester to the Irish Sea. Beginning in the Mersey estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, i
Stolt Kittiwake heading toward the Mersey estuary, 2005
A cartoon published in the satirical magazine Punch in 1882, ridiculing the idea that Manchester could become a major seaport
Cheque dated 3 August 1887, in the amount of £1,710,000, for the purchase of the Bridgewater Navigation Company. At the time it was the largest cheque ever presented.
The Excavation of the Manchester Ship Canal: Eastham Cutting with Mount Manisty in the Distance (1891), by Benjamin Williams Leader, brother of the canal's engineer Edward Leader Williams