The Royal Canal – Rise, Fall, Rebirth

In 1789, as France tumbled into revolution, one of the most enterprising Irish parliaments in history authorised the construction of the Royal Canal, a new, cutting edge waterway that would connect the River Liffey (and the Irish Sea beyond) to the River Shannon and so, it was hoped, open up the Irish midlands to the prosperity that was then flowing into the wider British Empire.

Over the next three decades, the navvies carved a 145km canal from Dublin's inner city docklands through fertile pastures and misty bogs to meet the Shannon by the village of Cloondara in County Longford. In the process, they also built 46 cut-stone locks and 86 stone-bridges, including [as well as?] four aqueducts.

I have elsewhere discussed the creation of the Grand Canal, that splendid waterway that links the River Liffey in Dublin to the River Shannon, with an additional line running south to the River Barrow. I proposed that such a canal was surely an intelligent use of resources for a species like the human race which is all about the movement of goods and people.

But the final question was, did we need two canals? Because we do now have two canals that run from Dublin to the Shannon. In fact, they were both built at roughly the same time, and it was, for a while, a sort of a race between them as to which would get their first. The Grand Canal or … the Royal Canal.

The Royal Canal is the more northerly of the two. It is also, as the name implies, the posher. The locks and bridges are, I think it's fair to say, a little bit more majestic than those on the Grand Canal. And it's got some truly beautiful stretches, some of the most glorious runs in all Ireland. The canal was closed off for a long time but, hats off to Waterways Ireland and the Royal Canal Amenity Group, because it officially reopened in 2010 and it really is one of Ireland's hidden treasures.

So, let's go back in time and look at why on earth the powers that be decided it was a good idea to build two canals across the centre of Ireland.

Origins of the Royal Canal

I have also, elsewhere, discussed the whole rise of the canal concept, and how the government in Dublin was keen to develop canal transport in order to perhaps kickstart the Industrial Revolution in Ireland and boost economic development. For instance, the Newry Canal was built because they wanted to get coal from County Tyrone across Lough Neagh and down to Dublin City.

The Royal Canal was also built to carry coal. Or, at least, that was the original pitch.  T'was the brothers O'Reilly who started it. These brothers, three of them, had opened, or reopened, an ironworks at Arigna, near Lough Allen, up in and around the Leitrim – Roscommon border. That was in 1788.

The ironworks was run on coal which they had found in them thar hills around Arigna. Coal. Black diamonds. The sooty nuggets that powered the Industrial Revolution. Nobody was quite sure how much coal there was but over in England it seemed like every second landowner with a coalfield had become a millionaire overnight, so there was of course much excitement … very quickly, thoughts turned to how they might get the coal to the market in Dublin.

'I know', said someone or other, 'let's build the Royal Canal!'

In fact, the idea of the Royal Canal, or the line that the Royal Canal would eventually take, had been proposed way back in the 1750s. As I say, it's more northerly than the Grand Canal and quite a lot of people thought that northern route was a better bet – it was more level, with more water sources, less boggy ground and its final destination on the Shannon was considered a more sensible location than the Grand Canal's final destination. Anyway, one way or another that plan was shot down and, as we've seen, it was the Grand Canal that got the go-ahead.

So, fast forward to 1789 and the Grand Canal is limping along, bog by bog, and most people are getting pretty doubtful that it's ever going to be finished. Meanwhile, with the giddy excitement about the possible coal fields at Arigna, a new generation of the well-to-do men of Ireland start throwing themselves behind a group that reckon the time has come to start anew with that northern line.

Long John Binns and William Cope: The Silk Merchant & the Spy

There's a great story out there that the Royal Canal was the brainchild of a shoemaker, who had been a director of the Grand Canal until his fellow directors turfed him out. He, according to the story, then decides 'to Hades with you all,' I'll build my own canal.

So, maybe. Maybe there's some truth in that, although it's kind of vanished under the layers of history. What we do have in terms of people are two men of note, two proper characters, either of whom could feasibly have wanted to start the Royal Canal as a form of vengeance.

Both were wealthy silk merchants. The first was John Binns, known as Long John Binns because he was, well, a long, long man. Mind you, that wasn't his only nickname: his opponents called him the devil's darning needle. His family lived at 20 Fownes Street in Temple Bar. I can't resist the added trivia that Long John's brother was the father of 32 children.

Long John was, for a time, immensely wealthy. He was also tied up with the Patriot group in the Irish Parliament. A group who, while the American War of Independence blasted into the newspapers in the 1770s and 1780s, watched with no little admiration as the American planters ousted the British and took control of their own country. Long John Binns approved of that situation. Indeed, his close pals included James Napper Tandy who would go on to be one of the central figures of the United Irishmen's rebellion of 1798. [1]

Long John Binns was in partnership with William Cope. They had a wholesale silk merchants business at 81 Dame Street (on the site of The Oak, at the west end of Temple Bar), and, from 1789, at nearby Shaw's Court. As well as being founder members of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, Binns and Cope were both directors of the Grand Canal Company, albeit briefly in Cope's case. Cope also seems to have had his hand in the shoemaking trade so perhaps he was the shoemaker referred to earlier.

That said, Long John Binns fits the bill as the guy out for vengeance because he had invested £500 in the Grand Canal, was still a director after the Royal Canal Company was incorporated, so he was attending board meetings for one company in which the other one was being discussed … Indeed, Binns has the distinction of having not one but two bridges named for him, with one on either canal – at Robertstown, Co. Kildare, on the Grand, and at Lower Dorset St., Dublin, on the Royal.

Binns Bridge on the Royal Canal became an accidental viral sensation in January 2025  after it was christened 'The Cherry Tomato Bridge'. The bridge became an impromptu shrine to cherry tomatoes, with visitors leaving all manner of tomato-related offerings such as whole and sliced cherry tomatoes, ketchup packets, framed pictures, and even tomato-based jokes and puns.

One way or another there was a huge bust up in the Grand Canal Company that made Binns determined to develop his own canal. So, I guess, what we have is a vanity project founded on a combination of a lust for revenge and the possibility of making some serious moolah if Roscommon turned out to be a giant coalfield. Which, spoiler alert, it didn't.

The Pitch

The Royal Canal was based on some pretty sketchy surveys that had been made in the 1750s. The new line would link Dublin to the Shannon via Mullingar, running through a series of existing rivers and lakes along the way before reaching the Shannon near Longford.[2]

So, Long John Binns and William Cope make their pitch. The Royal Canal is going to be way better than the Grand Canal. It's going to be bigger, faster, snazzier and the whole thing is going to be built in next to no time. [3] 

They were clearly very persuasive because they got some mega-players on their side. Upwards of 200 of the country's leading aristocrats, landed gentry, merchants and businessmen headed up by His Grace the Duke of Leinster who popped £1000 into the kitty early on.[4] These subscribers were, by and large, the landowners through which the new canal line would pass. Many of them were, like Binns and the duke, Whigs, or what would later be termed liberal – sympathetic towards, say, Catholic Emancipation, although, strangely William Cope was not supportive of such a thing.[5] 

Parliament could hardly ignore a proposal by such a heavy duty line up of Ireland's elite. They were told the project was going to cost £200,000. The subscribers had agreed to foot 2/3 of that cost, as in £134,000. And the Irish Parliament agreed to pony up the remaining third, as in £66,000. 

As you can imagine, there were some objections to all this, not least from the directors of the Grand Canal Company who were like, uh, hang on, we've already got this covered, we're building a canal. We really don't think we need a rival at this stage. 

But the Royal Canal had the momentum up by now and whether it was brown envelopes, Georgian-style, I know not, but parliament certainly agreed very quickly to the project and the canal was greenlit. 

When they realised the Royal Canal was going ahead anyway, the directors of the Grand Canal suggested a compromise by which both canals share a common trunk line from Dublin to Kinnegad … and then they could split into two canals, aiming for different parts of the River Shannon.[6] That sounds pretty sensible to me. They could pool their resources, work on making that run from Dublin to Kinnegad top notch and then make their money back with further services over on the Shannonside. 

Well, I'm no economist, so maybe it wasn't as simple as that but, either way, Long John Binns torpedoed the idea. He told the Grand Canal Company to bog off with their suggestion and declared that the Royal Canal Company would go it alone, from Dublin to the Shannon, all the way. 

The Grand Canal Company objected again. Quite reasonably, because a second canal was likely to steal a lot of their business. Parliament struck a deal by which, once the Royal Canal had got 14 miles from Dublin, it was under strict instructions to go no nearer than 4 miles from the Grand Canal at any time. A sort of aquatic restraining order. 

Anyway, the fact the Royal Canal had snubbed the Grand Canal's offer went down very badly and caused a bitter row that ended all contact between the two rival companies. Construction kicked off in the spring of 1790.[7] The game was on.

Construction Begins

Now, one of the oddities of all this is that Parliament, and indeed the subscribers, threw quite so much cash at the Royal Canal when (a) the Grand Canal was blatantly haemorrhaging money at this time and proving to be a colossal loss-maker, and (b) Long John Binns was clearly an impulsive chancer who did not let facts and figures get in the way. Or at least, not until they did and everything fell apart.

Nobody seems to have looked at the surveys properly. Or the estimates. Nothing of that nature before they committed to the project. As I say, the Grand Canal kicked up as much as possible, but they couldn't kick up too much about dud enterprises because that would be the pot calling the kettle black.

In any event, the pot was soon empty. Literally. It turned out that the £200,000 the Royal Canal Company had raised built them around about 14 miles of canal before the pot was empty.

So, what happened? Or, rather, what didn't happen!

In fact, the whole thing was pretty error-strewn, not deliberately, or corruptly, but because they were kind of feeling their way along, and it was high pressure stuff when you've got dukes and MPs and directors and subscribers breathing down your neck, demanding results,

But fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

The surveys, as mentioned, were not great and quite a lot of the level, the slack water levels, turned out to be totally off.[8]

Some of the work was very shoddy – two bridges (Barberstown and Newcomen) collapsed, resulting in the deaths of six men.

Some of the sites chosen to put locks were not very smart. Some of the men they hired were utter slackers. Some of the land through which the canal line ran was just stupid.

And that's before they hit the unexpected, the soggy bogs and the impenetrable rocks. Or came up against landowners who demanded more and more compensation. And yes, if you're getting a Groundhog Day vibe now, this was indeed all very similar to the problems that bedevilled the Grand Canal.

The engineers all fell out too. Just like the Grand Canal. A huge fall out between the chief engineers.[9] I won't go into it or we'll be here all day, but if you want to read more, then you should turn to the principal book I've used for the podcast episode I recorded on this topic. An excellent work by the late Ruth Delaney and Ian Bath usefully called "The Royal Canal of Ireland.' You shouldn't forget that one easily! Ruth actually travelled the full length of the Royal Canal in 1955 on board Hark, the last boat to complete the journey before the canal closed in 1961 and that journey, and her passion for Irish waterways, utterly informs the book which is, as I say, excellent.

So, by the early 1790s, we have the two main engineers are at loggerheads, constantly blaming one another for the various errors that arose. It got deeply personal at times, and they were both wrong and they were both right. But on top of this, the two consulting engineers also had a terrible bust up over how much work it would take to get through the Carpenterstown quarry beyond Blanchardstown in north Dublin. [10]

In fact, the costs involved here were crazy. To get through the quarries cost £42,000, much of it spent on gunpowder. There was no other way through. The rock was just so hard that pickaxes bounced off them and wedges were useless.[11] The only way was to blast through, fragment by fragment …

They also opted to build an aqueduct across the River Rye, which cost £28,000. That was the largest aqueduct constructed by the Royal Canal Company and it was, in fairness, regarded as one of the finest works of its kind in Europe.[12]

But, if they had 200K to start, they've spent nearly 30% building an aqueduct and getting through a quarry. You can see where this is going, and this is before all the embankments and aftercare. Mega bucks. Shades of Temple Street Hospital.

The subscribers were tapped for more money, the government coughed up some more too, and the Royal Canal ploughed onwards to Maynooth. There is a rumour that the Duke of Leinster demanded the canal go via Maynooth in order to be closer to his estate at Carton House. That is scurrilous gossip.[13] Or at least, there were a bunch of other reasons too!

It was common sense to bring the canal to a town like Maynooth and bear in mind that since the project started in 1789, a small event was underway in France … as in the French Revolution which would lead to the beheading of the French king and the rise of Napoleon Buonaparte! And one consequence of the revolution in France was that the Irish Colleges, the six Catholic colleges in France where Irish exiles had been training for the priesthood since before the dark days of Oliver Cromwell … these colleges were shut down by the revolutionary French government. In direct response, the British government gave its blessing to the foundation of the Royal College of St Patrick in Maynooth in 1795. So, Maynooth was on the up and well, there's certainly going to be plenty of priests looking to catch a barge up and down the Royal Canal. That's why they built a harbour in Maynooth although is has sadly been silted up since the 1950s.

Onwards!

Onwards went the Royal Canal. Very slowly. Days turned to weeks turned to months. The money poured away. By 1795, Parliament was freaking out about the cost. As were some of the private subscribers. Well over quarter of a million pounds had vanished already, the company was in the red and the monthly progress reports did not make for merry reading.[14]

Parliament appointed a committee to investigate. Dark tales emerged of neglected advice, overpaid salaries, of incomplete surveys and water sources that weren't what they were supposed to be… and they still hadn't got to Kilcock, or, at the other end, they hadn't completed the canal from the Broadstone terminus in Dublin to the Liffey. [15]

It's easy to be negative. They haven't done this, they haven't done that. I guess that's the thing with these sort of projects – until it's complete, everyone is entirely suspicious that it's some sort of a scam, that it's never going to be complete. Parliament had watched an awful lot of money drain away between this canal venture and the still ongoing Grand Canal just south.

Still, they were waded too far across the river to turn back now. To quit now would be a complete failure, like a motorway that was never completed. So they agreed to pump more money into the venture on condition that the Royal Canal Company get its act together.[16]

These were tough times for Long John Binns and William Cope too. Both men were in financial trouble as the whole silk industry was in a slump. Then came the 1798 Rebellion and, as you can imagine, a lot of the navvies who built the canal were embroiled in that … But, in terms of the Royal Canal, Binns and Cope were both tipped up by the 1798 Rebellion. Binns, as mentioned, was a pal of Napper Tandy and Napper Tandy wasn't exactly everyone's favourite because he was with a French fleet that invaded Ireland in 1798 – Donegal to be precise. It didn't pan out – Napper Tandy was chased off, and declared a traitor, but the authorities didn't think much of old Long John's choice of friends.

​William Cope, on the other hand, was their bestie. It turned out he was an undercover spy of sorts. He played a key role in having the Leinster leadership of the United Irishmen arrested right on the eve of the rebellion, a massive moment that arguably scuppered the whole thing before it had even began. Dublin Castle duly rewarded him with a healthy pension, and a generous loan, all of which he pumped into the Royal Canal so that, well, he lost the whole lot!

The thing is that when Cope's treachery became known, he was kind of boycotted and his business went spiralling.  Both he and Long John Binns were bankrupt by 1801. Cope actually lost his house while Long John, utterly exhausted, quit his involvement with the Royal Canal and was dead by 1804. So much for vengeance.

The Duke of Leinster and all those other subscribers, the smaller investors, also lost, £1000 here, £600 there. The banker William Newcomen was down by £1200. William Newcomen, known as Billy, for whom Newcomen Bridge was named … it wasn't just the canal but by the time he died in 1807, his bank was in debt to the tune of a whopping £74,000. [17]

Meanwhile, more years rolled by and parliament launched another investigation. The findings weren't great. Like its founding directors, the Royal Canal Company was utterly bust. There were incomplete harbours and aqueducts and locks and downed tools up and down the line. There were still no docks at Broadstone. The canal itself was still well short of its western target. It blamed the increased costs since the outbreak of war with France. The price of land in Dublin had certainly rocketed and then they'd run into another money-sucking quarry near Maynooth and an especially complicated bog, the Bog of Cappagh, beyond Kilcock.[18] Elsewhere the soft sand kept causing the banks to slide down into the water, or there was an endless demand for puddle clay to prevent the embankments from leaking. [19]

And so on.

Final Furlongs

Parliament asked the company how much was needed to complete the job. The company said £300K ought to cover it … plus, say, another £127K for ancillary canals. Parliament blinked. By now, £315,000 had been spent, while the income via commercial boat tolls and passenger boat returns amounted to just shy of £4K a year.

Parliament conceded the canal venture was all very, very dicey and so, in one of its very last acts before it voted itself out of existence in the Act of Union, it established the Directors General of Inland Navigation in 1800. Its purpose was to the manage and, hopefully, complete the Royal Canal, the Grand Canal and various other waterways.[20]

Now, money aside, there were some positives at this time.[21] The canal was now operational from Kilcock to Dublin, including an excellent stretch between North Strand Road and the Broadstone junction in Dublin.

But the Royal Canal Company just couldn't keep going the way it had been.[22] It had accrued very severe debts, with interest mounting daily, while Dublin itself was heading into a slump that followed the Act of Union.

​By now the project was in the hands of the brilliant Scottish engineer John Rennie.[23] When the £96,000 was spent, the company asked for more money. The Directors General of Inland Navigation said no.

But somehow the project stumbled on towards Mullingar where it connected to Lough Owel in 1806. Lough Owel is the Royal Canal's main feeder,  providing most of the water required for its summit level. [24] The canal is also fed by the River Inny via the Whitworth Aqueduct north of Abbeyshrule.

Meanwhile, two of the actual directors of the Inland Navigation decide the time has come to view the Royal Canal from top to tail. So, yes, 1806. Think of those Bridgerton chappies in their pantaloons and cravats and top hats.

These two fellows are given a full-on insight into the immense challenges the engineers and the navvies had faced in creating the canal. They could see how slow, hard and dangerous it was to break through a canal, and how much blasting powder it required. They can see the superb quality of the workmanship on the locks, bridges, harbours, hotels along the way. They view this from the Cornwallis, a passage-boat they boarded in Kilcock that brought them back to Dublin.

Furthermore, their visit coincided with a major breakthrough as the canal reached Mullingar. The Countess of Granard, a new packet boat, arrived from Dublin into Mullingar carrying a number of "passengers of distinction", while the band of the Sligo Militia mixed up some crazy tunes to mark the occasion.

All up, the two directors were so impressed by it all that they recommended the release of another ton of money to "get the job done", as they say. Within three years, the canal had reached Coolnahay, County Westmeath, at the western end of the summit.

Oh there were still problems galore, of course. Arguments over which course it should take, and where the branch lines should run. Would it pass through good tillage land? Would landowners transport their wheat and oats and potatoes on the canal? Or would millers shift flour? What about the linen industry?

Colossal Debts

Westminster – and bear in mind that the Parliament was no longer in Dublin; since the Act of Union, it had been at Westminster in London – Parliament launched another investigation. [27] All work was suspended while the results were awaited.

Both canal companies were in deep, deep financial trouble. The Grand Canal Company had debts of over 1 million, and the Royal Canal Company was not far behind. [28] The costs for the Royal were cost in excess of £763,000, with 30 miles (48.2km) yet to be completed. So almost four times the original estimate of 1789.

It was impossible to see how either would ever shake off such debts. Yes, there would be a few pennies brought in from commercial tolls and passenger fares, but these were so minuscule as to be almost irrelevant.[29] Oh, and coal, for which the whole thing was built. There wasn't any. At least, it had ultimately not been worth while trying to link up with the remote Lough Allen coalfields. Ironically, 5000 tons of imported coal was transported in the opposite direction! In fact, most of the stuff carried was agricultural products, with some building materials and general merch, but there was nowhere near enough and, in fact, it was carrying about a third of what the Grand Canal was carrying.

In 1813, Parliament decided enough was enough. The Royal Canal Company was deemed to have breached the terms of its charter and dissolved. All its property was henceforth vested in the Directors General, whose brief was to complete the canal to the Shannon – at public expense. They would do so using a plan by John Killaly who had surveyed the final stretch.

Henry, Mullins and McMahon were contracted to build for £145,000. Given that the contractors had only united five years earlier, this was a huge project for them.[30] We'll come back to them another day, and indeed the workforce who was out there with their pickaxes and shovels. Plus the various superintendents and overseers assigned to each parts of the canal …

And always so much to do! The constant maintenance of banks, of stretches that choked up with weeds every time you turned around, of harbours silting up and bits that leaked …. There was an enormous amount of villainy afoot, gangs of carders and threshers as they were called, highway robbers of a sort … harassing anyone who worked on the canals, and pilfering products that passed by, sinking boats, deliberately smashing up lock-gates and cutting up the canal banks, robbing the blasting powder …  it got so out of hand that the Directors General had to send an entire regiment to provide security for the workers, and pay for their accommodation costs. [31]

Engineers continued to squabble, and there was always the tense question of funds. Where's the money? When can we have it? You said last week. We need it now or our 5000 navvies are going to down tools and go back to their farms.

And yet somehow Henry, Mullins and McMahon completed the contract on time and on 26 May 1817, the Royal Canal reached its final destination – the village of Cloondara, County Longford. [32] Cloondara, about 8 kilometres from Longford Town, where it met with the River Shannon and the River Camlin. The harbour in Cloondara was named for the Duke of Richmond, who had been the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when that end of the navigation was complete.

In January 1818, the Lanesborough Trader became the first boat to travel from the Shannon to Dublin.[33] At last! A complete canal of 146 km, taking in 13 towns, and supported by 46 locks, 86 bridges, 17 harbours and four aqueducts. Plus the docks in place at Dublin Port to "receive" the canal, where Spencer Dock is today. [34] 

The workmanship on the infrastructure was often first rate, not least on all those richly expensive canal bridges in north Dublin.[35] In fact, while some of the early locks had been of inferior quality, all the later stuff was strong and solid and very beautiful. From a straight up cost factor, the Royal locks cost about a third more than the Grand Canal ones.[36] Mind you, 46 locks … the original plan was for 76 locks so they saved themselves a forest of timber with that cutback to 46!

It was the same with the bridges. Ever since those first two bridges collapsed, the company had seriously upgraded the quality of their bridges and the later bridges along the Royal Canal were absolutely first rate. The aqueducts are especially gorgeous. Ruth Delany called the Boyne aqueduct near Moyvalley 'without doubt the finest stone aqueduct in Ireland.' Likewise, the harbours, all splendidly hi-spec, many of them bedecked with warehouses and harbourmaster cottages and quaysides and inns – and magnificent hotels at Moyvalley and, in due course, at Mullingar and Broadstone.[37]

It was a wonderful achievement, no doubt. A slight shame about the timing. As in, it was completed in 1817, 1818, which gave it less than 30 years before the Railway Age came along. In 1845 the Midland Great Western Railway Company purchased the entire canal, laid a railway track along its towpath from Dublin to Mullingar and closed down the passenger service.  Boats continued to voyage down the canal for over a hundred years until it was officially closed in 1961.

Renaissance

And it might all have gone horribly wrong forever more but a new golden era for the Royal Canal kicked off when it was reopened in 2010, hooray! The entire Royal Canal from Spencer Dock to Richmond Harbour.  Furthermore, we now have 130 kilometres (90 miles) of that converted into the Royal Canal Greenway. Towpaths. Lovely flat towpaths, most of which have been upgraded.[38]

The Royal Canal Greenway is Ireland's longest greenway, with a wonderful stretch open all the way from Maynooth to Richmond Harbour. Truly superb, lovely landscapes and scenery and wildlife and what not. Various parts between Maynooth and Dublin are also open for walkers, or opening soon, so perhaps check the Waterways Ireland website for the latest on that. The Royal Canal Greenway won first place in the 'Excellence Award' category at the European Greenways Awards, 2023.

So there we go, the Rise and Renaissance of the Royal Canal …

And the auld triangle goes jingle jangle, along the banks of the Royal Canal.

****

​End-Notes

[1] Long John Binns was a supporter of the Patriot, pro-Emancipation group in the Irish Parliament. He was a friend of Napper Tandy and Lundy Foot, helping their radical agenda to obstruct Dublin Castle wherever possible. Tandy was admitted, by birthright, to the guild of merchants (24 October 1760), and was elected warden (1786), junior master (1788), and finally senior master (1789) of the guild. He is referred to by Sir Edward Newenham of Belcamp, Co. Dublin, as 'agent for my landed estate' (July 1784). Prospering, Tandy took shares in the Grand Canal Co. (1783) and in the Dublin Insurance Company against Fire (1783); he was a founder member of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce (1783) and was eventually elected a trustee of the prestigious Royal Exchange (December 1791).] He also had connections to Adamstown, County Dublin.

[2] The line of the 'Royal Canal' left from the north side of the Liffey in Dublin, joined the Rye near Leixlip and then, availing of the Blackwater, Boyne, Deel and Yellow rivers, went into Lough Derregevagh, out through the River Inny, and then into Lough Ree. When the company was incorporated, the canal actually aimed for Tarmonbarry, north of Lough Ree.The Royal was 15 miles longer than the Grand, with 19 more locks, and also landed in the middle of Lough Ree, where there were no tow paths … so that was all problematic.

[3] There was talk of the canal transport being as fast as the existing mail and stagecoach lines but surely nobody believed that?

[4] Other subscribers include Sir William Newcomen (£1200), Tom Connolly (£1000), Henry Arabin (£600), Captain John Daniel Arabin (£300) and Rev Meade Dennis (£600).

[5] The directors of the Royal Canal Company were much less castle-orientated than the Grand Canal, even though the Grand Canal directors included Whigs like Richard Griffith and Joseph Huband.

[6] Richard Griffith, father of the Griffith's Survey chap, told Parliament how this offer had been made, and rejected, while Parliament was debating the 66/134 split. The Grand Canal genially proposed that the two companies could save money by sharing a common trunk canal from Dublin, from which the Royal Canal could then head to the north Shannon via Kinnegad, about 10 miles north of Edenderry. A perfectly sensible suggestion, but it was turned down by Binns and the Royal directors. Griffiths, a director of the Grand Canal and an MP, was incensed. Slamming Binns as a "jobbing demagogue", he maintained that Binns had deliberately obstructed all efforts by the Grand Canal Company to make a deal with the Royal Canal's subscribers.

[7] Construction work began in the spring of 1790 with some 2000 men were employed at the rate of 10d per day. On 12 November 1790 the first stone of the lock at Phibsborough was laid. It made its way past Broome Bridge, where Rowan Hamilton etched his formula, via Ashtown, Blanchardstown and the Deep Sinking ,where the terrible tragedy occurred, and where the poor towing horses sometimes tumbled fatally into the canal.

[8] An in-house enquiry revealed "errors, oversights and inaccuracies" and yet darker tales of faulty works, sacked contractors and the collapse of two dodgy bridges.  Brownrigg's own surveys were pretty shoddy. He even confessed they were a draft, although he made sure to blame someone else first.

[9] Richard Evans, the chief engineer, had cut his cloth on the Grand Canal, and also worked on the Newry Canal. Opposing him was John Brownrigg who worked for the directors general of inland navigation

[10] The consulting engineers were Sir Thomas Hyde Page and William Jessop. Page was quite right to have concerns about the cost of bringing the canal through the Carpenterstown quarries and across the Rye Water. In his report on the Rye Water embankment, Jessop brazenly suggested the navvies should be able to whizz through the quarries in a few days, which Page decried as poppycock. Jessop had not really assessed the land properly. This was the Carpenterstown Quarries and his belief that men could whizz through it in a few days were poppycock. Moreover, as Page observed, "I will only add the immense expence of pumping water in those quarries to give all 600 men room to work to do the business in the shortest time, is not at all allowed for by Mr Jessop, he was not however sparing of price in his estimate of a raised embankment." Page was so miffed that the Royal Canal Company had gone with Jessop's advice that he quit in 1793, not long after Jessop had returned to England. Thereafter the company decided to run without the expense of consultant engineers.

[11] Cutting through the Carpenterstown quarries by Clonsilla had swallowed up nearly £5000, much of it for gunpowder. John Brownrigg, the engineer to the directors general of inland navigation, would later explain that the cut through the quarries before Leixlip was among the most arduous undertakings ever attempted in Europe. They'd had to get through "extremely hard black calcareous stone with only one small vein fit for the lime burner, and none for the stonecutter, the whole extent being nearly one solid mass, without joints or beds, but as if run together, closely united and impenetrable to the crow, wedge or pick-axe and was therefore torn to fragments with gunpowder."

[12] Brownrigg said the workmanship of the Rye Water Aqueduct challenged anything of the kind in Europe. Jessop deemed it 'unnecessarily strong', but the builders had panicked when the initial work had to be restarted after disastrous floods, so fair enough…

The principal contractors of the stone works were Benjamin and William Pemberton, James and John MacMahon and John Monks; Benjamin Pemberton had been the contractor for one of the bridges that had fallen down.

Evans's originally estimated that the aqueduct would cost £8499; its final tally was £28,231. Getting the canal through the quarries was also way more than the estimates, costing nearly £42K.

[13] The proposed route had changed quite early so that it ran much further south and passed through Maynooth, owned by the Duke. It turned out to be way more expensive but the duke didn't know that, he was working off the proposal by the engineer Richard Evans. Evans had totally underestimated how difficult the terrain would be – hammering through a series of quarries and then crossing the Rye itself.

[14] The company was clearly struggling for cash, new loans were raised. They baulked at handing any more money over. Evans assured them he'd have the canal completed to Kilcock by May 1795 but, of course, 'greater difficulties than could have been foreseen' popped up. One reason he cited for the hold-up was "a great scarcity of labourers." What was that about?

[15] The Dublin terminus was Broadstone Harbour, named for the Braghaid styne, or the Bradogue Water, one of Dublin's tiny rivers, at the heart of the markets and law courts and linen hall.

[16] Specifically it needed to update its surveys, and also find its own backers to pay for that connection between Broadstone and the Liffey

[17] Billy Gleadowe (1741-1807), Viscount Newcomen, grew fruit but he was infinitely less successful with his bank, which was massively in debt by the time of his death in 1807, he left  a whopping £74,397 debt – equivalent to almost €6 million today. Part of this debt was accrued because of his role as a Director of the Royal Canal Company. Newcomen Bridge on the North Strand, the first bridge on the Royal Canal, was actually named in his honour, but his insistence that the canal take a 12-mile detour through his Mosstown estate, as well as Clondra and Longford, is said to have virtually bankrupted the canal company by the time it opened in 1817.

[18] The Bog of Cappagh was proving a horror. They'd learned from experience on the Grand Canal that you HAVE to carry out drainage work for several YEARS before you start work, to allow for subsidence and only then can you start to whack in a canal. They'd watched the Grand Canal stumble across the Bog of Allen. The Cappagh Bog was harder. Brownrigg called it "a tedious, laborious and expensive undertaking… the bog was of the worst soft fungus kind." And yet they converted it into a very fine canal and drained it beforehand so successfully that as Brownrigg said: 'I could not wet the sole of my shoe unless I put it in a drain.'

[19] This was the case with the run up to Cloncurry Bridge where the fine soft running sand kept causing the banks to slide down into the water. Try building a sandcastle with dry sand! Elsewhere the canal ran along a ridge of sand and gravel, which was, again, 'a work of increased expense and very difficult to staunch. Elsewhere again, more embankments were required, and an endless supply of puddle clay needed to staunch these, of which Brownrigg said "the cost of which article alone is beyond imagination." Sections of the canal needed to be puddled with clay to make them staunch to prevent the water leaking away, especially in the bog embankments There was a complicated part where the canal was carried across the rivers Blackwater and Boyne, and a diversion through bog and broken quarry to get to Kinnegad.

The line from Thomastown to Mullingar passed through more quarry and would require deep sinking for a distance of some three miles …

[20] The new organisation was given a kitty of £500,000 to spend on inland navigation works.

The first person to stick their hands up was the Royal Canal.

[21] The Directors General of Inland Navigation met for the first time on 25 November 1800 to decide the fate of the Royal Canal, the Grand Canal and the other waterways of that time. Focusing on the Royal, they appointed two consultant engineers, namely Sir Thomas Page and John Brownrigg! These old faces were now instructed to file reports, which they did, Brownrigg being sure to cover his ass for earlier booboos he'd made in the early 1790s.

[22] The Royal Canal Company had defaulted on some payments, its credit rating was lousy, it was facing various legal actions, and it was basically bankrupt. And yet the Directors General still agreed to grant directors a chunk of cash. £96K, on condition they complete the canal to Coolnahay west of Mullingar, to finish work on Broadstone Harbour and aqueduct and build the docks and a lifting bridge at North Wall.'

The toll was also lowered for any ships using the stretches now open, mainly carrying agricultural cargoes such as grains, potatoes, lime, fuel and manure, to encourage trade. Plenty of people kicked up about this, not least the Grand Canal and Barrow Navigation, which continued to operate at a higher toll rate (on the basis that have them a more realistic profit margin.)

[23] Following the death of Richard Evans in January 1802, the Royal Canal directors turned to John Rennie. He tried to call a halt to the construction of the line to Kinnegad, on the basis that it would be too expensive, in favour of a line through Thomastown. He said the company would need another pot of cash to get the Kinnegad line finished but the Directors General said no, 96K was plenty.

[24] Brownrigg deemed it a missed opportunity when the cut that brought water from Lough Owel was "not made navigable to serve the gentlemen's seats around the lake", which would have brought no small income from the gents using the canal back and forth.

The canal reached Thomastown in 1805, after which eight locks were required to bring it up to the summit level.  In August 1806, they were also trying to finish up the aqueduct and harbour at the Broadstone and the docks and sea lock at the Liffey.

[25] The Royal Canal Company was also ensnared in a legal battle with the Grand Canal Company, which objected to the unauthorised line the Royal was taking to the Shannon, via Lough Ree, which was a blatant swipe at the Grand Canal Company's Athlone trade. A parliamentary committee in 1813 concluded that the Royal Canal Company forfeit its charter but was careful to cause minimum hardship to the company's numerous small shareholders, loan holders and creditors. The canal then turned away from Lough Ree, much to the dismay of its engineers, who were longing to access such a water source. Instead it ran 12 km to meet the Shannon at Tarmanbarry.

[26] By November 1809 the canal had been completed to Coolnahay and the company got the final instalment of the grant. The Grand Canal were often breathing down their neck, as was John Killaly, engineer with the Directors General since 1810. He suggested the canal terminate at Coolnahay and proposed a couple of new branch lines but this didn't stack up when Arthur Richards Nevill, Dublin city surveyor, conducted a cost benefit study.

Nevill was all of for the canal going as close to possible as the people likely to use it, so through farmlands, areas of good tillage producing a range of products that included wheat, oats, potatoes and some flax. Work was underway on a new town at Ballynacargy where Lord Sunderlin (a founding director of the Royal Canal Company planned to establish a linen industry, so Nevill wanted it to go there. He also wanted it to run close to the flour mills at Tinnelick and Ballymahon, an important market town, and the villages like Keenagh and Killashee, both close to the market town of Longford.

However, the fact this line would run to Ballymahon got the Grand Canal to kick up, claiming that was their catchment area, and ultimately they lobbied the Lord Lieutenant who vetoed the proposed line. So the Royal Canal directors were forced to appeal to the Westminster parliament.

[27] Westminster's investigation revealed 'the greatest negligence and irregularity' and underlined how close to ruin the companies were, but they did not think there were any 'corrupt or self-interested motives' The original estimate of £200,000 for the entire canal was clearly absurd; it had by now cost £763K with 30 miles (48.2km) of canal to complete.

[28] The Royal Canal carried about a third of that carried on the Grand Canal, with 52,643 tons in 1810, primarily grain, potatoes, turf, dung, coal and building materials. The company had racked up such a colossal debt it was unable to give subscribers a dividend. If you thought your board of directors was hard work, bear in mind that the Royal Canal Company had 41 until 1799 when reduced to 25, down again to 15 in 1805. Nor was there any money for further construction work.

[29] The company was trying to claw back some money – with company hotels for passengers at Broadstone and Moyvalley, with the passenger boats themselves, with tolls of traffic along any stretches of canal that were complete but this was minuscule compared to their debt of almost a million pounds. Shareholders weren't getting dividends and the one time they did, in 1808, there was another enquiry – the board cited the need to create confidence in the company. There was a clean sweep of the board of directors in 1812 but it was too late …

[30] As an example of expenditure, £10,000 was spent by Henry Mullins and McMahon on the laying down of oak, pitch, pine and other timber, as well as horse-wagons, drays, machinery, limekilns, stonecutter's sheds and forges that ran all along the line.

[31] As well as natural leaks, there were also malicious breaches on the line – at Long Level at Blackshade [?] and near the Blackwater Aqueduct – in 1812, that closed the canal for a month. Marauding gangs were attacking the canal and boats and seizing their produce; apparently there was good money to be made from then repairing the breakages!

Acts of turbulence and riot, by men seeking higher wages, carders and threshers and illegal bands that roamed the countryside cutting lock-gates and canal banks and robbing the blasting powder … there were constant threats against those working on the line, which was a large number of men, 5000 reported in June 1815 …. And yet, there in one instance, 40 men armed with guns, swords and pistols "carded" eight men in a shocking manner… so the Directors General had to send an entire regiment to provide security for the workers, and to pay the accommodation costs. Eventually the bad guys were rounded up and executed in Mullingar and Longford.

[32] They had finished five locks, ten tunnels and eight bridges were complete by April 1815, rolling via Killashee and Ballydrum Harbour, plus the extension to Ballynacargy Harbour by May 1817. That last part was only two months off the original completion date, so most commendable!

Henry Mullins and McMahon successfully tendered for the contract to build the Ulster Canal (Cassels, p. 28) based on the original proposals by Killally but with drew over terms of the redesign, and their contract, at which point William Dargan was given the project.

[33] Job done, the contractors handed the canal back to John Killaly and the Directors General who had to send troops out from Ballymahon in June and July 1817 after malicious breaches were made in the bog embankments. In 1818 nine directors of a New Royal Canal Company were elected and the canal handed over to the new company. This new company now had a complete canal to administer, free from all previous debt but, in the future would not be much easier …

[34] In Dublin there were hints of the Royal Canal Docks near Sheriff Street by 1806, a cut from the canal towards the Custom House Docks, and an opening bridge over the North Wall where the canal entered the Liffey.

[35] Some banks needed strengthening and the canal also required widening in places, not least where they'd brought it through those impossibly hard quarries. (They were one-way only and boats had to be dragged backwards if they met, which was very boring).

[36] That costing was the same for the entire canal, which cost about £8000 a mile, as compared to about £6000 per mile for the Grand Canal system.

[37] There were harbours at, for instance, Maynooth, Kilcock, Thomastown, Ballynacargy, Keenagh and Mullingar, some now silted up. Access points currently exist near Leixlip, Maynooth, Enfield, Thomastown, Mullingar, Ballinea Bridge and Ballynacargy, indicating these sections have been dredged and are navigable again

[38] The Royal Canal Greenway is now Ireland's longest greenway, was awarded first place in the 'Excellence Award' category at the 11th European Greenways Awards, 2023. The Awards, which took place in Rome, saw the RCG compete against 14 other routes to be named as the leading greenway in Europe. The scenic 130km walking & cycling amenity stretching alongside the historic 225-year-old canal was officially opened in March 2021 and runs from Maynooth, Co Kildare to Clondra, Co Longford. The Greenway crosses Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, and Longford.

A former towpath for barges, the Royal Canal Greenway features 90 bridges, 33 locks, 17 harbours and four aqueducts. Greenway users can complete the 130km flat, off-road trail in one visit or explore the shorter designated routes between the 14 connecting access points and towns.

Since launching in 2021, the Royal Canal Greenway has been a huge success, attracting over 650,000 visitors and returning a dividend of €17.2million to the business community in its inaugural year, made possible through the collaborative efforts of Waterways Ireland, the Department of Transport and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, and the local authorities of Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, and Longford.

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