Canals are very logical structures. You have one water
channel on your left and another on your right. To get water from one channel
into the other, you cut a track – a canal – through the land that connects the
two. The Grand Canal involved digging out a 132km (82 mile)
artificial channel, including 43 locks. The new canal did bring new industry to
the regions it passed through, although the kegs of Guinness stout were
not quite as full when they reached their destination
as they had been when they left the Guinness brewery.
Canals were cut in Mesopotamia (Iraq) at least 6,000 years
ago, while other early examples can be found in ancient India, Egypt and
Afghanistan. The Chinese invented rising gates, slipways and other clever ways
to transport vast shipments of rice and grain around the country. This culminated
in the construction of the Jing–Hang Grand Canal,
which runs for over a thousand miles, which is the longest canal in the world
and always has been. It starts in present-day Beijing and connects with both
the Yellow River and the Yangtze river. This incredible feat of engineering has
been consistently developed over the last thousand years or so, but China’s
Grand Canal had its genesis back in the 7th century, at about the same time
that the early Christians were starting to build island monasteries in Ireland.
By the time the Vikings began raiding Irish monasteries in the
9th century, the Chinese had invented the pound lock, the first device by which
boats were lowered and raised through a built-in chamber, and the ancestor of
our present-day canal locks.
Around the time of the Cambro-Norman conquest, the
ingenious Cistercian monks built a large
number of abbeys along multiple Irish waterways, including Mellifont, Boyle,
Jerpoint, Duiske (Graiguenamagh) and so on. The Cistercians excelled at
building weirs. In the late 12th century, the first artificial channels were
carved. I’m willing to stand corrected, but I believe the oldest “canal” is the
Friar’s Cut in Galway, which enabled boats to pass through an island at the
southern end of Lough Corrib into Galway Bay.
The 12th and 13th centuries also brought the construction of
the first proper weirs on Irish rivers – a weir being a dam, or barrier of
stones, laid across a river to create a pool or pools of water. Such pools were
useful for keeping fish stock but also vital for raising raise water levels in
shallow areas so that boats could navigate the surface. Weirs also meant people
could divert water from the rivers into mill races, special channels that
turned water wheels which, in turn, created waterpower to crush oats for making
loaves of bread.
Following William of Orange’s victory at the battle of the
Boyne in the 1690s, there was a new age in store for the Irish waterways. King
Billy was Dutch, and that Dutch link is important. The Dutch are world-renowned
for building canals and waterways, as well as reclaiming water. Bismarck once
allegedly remarked that if the Dutch were given Ireland, they would make it the
most beautiful island in the world, but if the Irish had charge of the
Netherlands, they would fail to maintain all the dykes and dams, and everyone
would drown. I don’t know if Bismarck ever actually delivered such an
outrageous remark, but it does underline how the Dutch were so admired for
their skill at the taming river, lake and sea.
By the early 1700s, a growing interest in Irish waterways
generally prompted the Irish parliament in Dublin to pass an act in 1715 “to
encourage the draining and improving the bogs and unprofitable low grounds, and
for easing and dispatching the inland carriage and conveyance of goods from one
Part to another within this kingdom.”
In the ensuing decades, there was an enormous amount of
“draining and improving” of bogs and such to make the land more profitable.
Some were more successful than others. The act also referred to the
‘easing and dispatching the inland carriage and conveyance of goods.’ In other
words, the notion that the transport system could be boosted by new canals and
river navigations to get people and products from A to B.
On the back of the 1715 act, eighteen different navigation
schemes were launched across Ireland in the early 18th century. Almost all of
them were complete disasters, mostly because too much money was required to get
each project off the ground, and then keep them in motion
On the back of the 1715 act, eighteen different navigation
schemes were launched across Ireland in the early 18th century. Almost all of
them were complete disasters, mostly because too much money was required to get
each project off the ground, and then keep them in motion
Only two schemes enjoyed any progress – a minor tweak to the
River Maigue near Adare Manor in County Limerick, and a scheme to make the
Liffey more navigable. However, even the Liffey scheme came a cropper in the
long run.
Tolls were introduced to generate some of the money required
to run these navigations. It was also hoped that each canal would generate its
own income by the very nature of the goods being transported such as, say,
bringing coal from the coalmines of Tyrone or Roscommon to the household of
Dublin. Coal was starting to earn big bucks for canal investors in England so
there was plenty of interest in Ireland.
In 1759, Henry Brooke, a map maker, described Irish
waterways as a giant spiders’ web that would enable Ireland “to spin her own
web of happiness out of her own bowels.” Brooke reckoned that if 80,000 idle
hands were put to work, Dublin and the Shannon could be connected within a
year! It took rather longer than a year, and for slightly crazy reasons, they
ended up building two canals from Dublin to the Shannon instead of one … for which
the building and maintenance costs were massive and constant.
Ultimately, almost every canal in Ireland was doomed to
disappoint – leaky, money-munching, exhausting. Ironically, just as they worked
out how to build sensible canals that didn’t leak in the 1840s, the railway
arrived and utterly knocked them for six. The canal system was almost entirely
redundant by the 1940s. A glimmer of hope was ignited by forward-thinking souls
who recognised the long-term importance of having waterways, rivers and canals
that flowed freely through the land. That become increasingly important as
tourists – domestic and international – began to enjoy the waters, walking and
cycling on the greenways and blueways of Ireland’s beautiful riverbanks and
canal banks, or voyaging on barges, cruisers and other boats.
To my mind, the story of the Irish Waterways is only just
beginning. The canals didn’t work in the age of the Industrial Revolution, but
maybe their golden age is yet to come. As we voyage towards the middle decades
of the 21st century, perhaps these tracts of perpetual
rainwater that tumble down from the mountains and hills into our rivers, lakes,
streams and canals are serving another incredibly important purpose – as a vital
part of our ecology, our biodiversity, creating havens for flora, fauna and
wildlife, for otters, bats, bugs and bees. Perhaps this network of waterways
can help us win the mighty battle of the present age to regain control of our
climate.
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Researched and written by Irish historian Turtle Bunbury,
the history of Irish Waterways and their environs is the result of
extensive original scholarship through the National Archives and
contemporary newspapers, as well as the expertise of local historians
and academic historians.
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