Proposed Grand Contour Canal built in the UK sooner

I cannot see this having a hope post 1900 because of the railways and i'm not sure if the engineering is possible before the time of railway mania and it may actually be an ASB subject but i'll put it here.


What is the Grand Contour Canal had been built but built sooner?

As mentioned, its going to have to be before the railway mania but does the engineering knowledge exist to do it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Contour_Canal

The Grand Contour Canal in England and Wales was intended to enhance and upgrade the British canal system, but was never built. This canal was proposed in 1943, and again ten years later, by J F Pownall . Mr Pownall observed that there was a natural 'contour' down the spine of England, around the 300 ft level that connected several of the most populated areas. He put forward the idea that this contour could be used to define the course of a large European sized canal which contained no locks except at its entry and exit points. It would also serve as a water grid capable of distributing domestic water supply around England as need arises.

The proposal would have accommodated 300-ton continental-size barges.[1] Feeder conduit canals at the same contour level would have been used to bring water into the system from North Wales, The Pennines and the South West Peninsula.

It was also named The Three-hundred-foot Canal for its height above sea level, 310 feet (94 m). It was to be 100 feet (30 m) wide by 17 feet (5.2 m) deep, with 25 feet (7.6 m) headroom.

It was intended to connect the major industrial centres of London, Bristol, Southampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby, Chester, Manchester, Blackburn, Bradford, Hartlepool and Newcastle, with vertical lift locks at the nine termini, having tanks 250 feet (76 m) by 35 feet (11 m) by 14 feet (4.3 m) draught. A 6-mile (9.7 km) long tunnel was proposed between Airedale and Ribblesdale.

The scheme was intended both for transport and for a water supply grid, for water distribution is a major problem in London and South East England.


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Looking at the date says it all about why this did not happen, really. I reckon the proposal came about a century too late to be accepted.

Or a century too early; a post fossil fuel, postindustrial, electrically powered Britain could benefit from such a thing- but by that point, how would we ever manage to build it?

It doesn't seem like a very complicated job, just bloody enormous, you're looking at nearest round number a thousand miles of canal at almost ninety million cubic feet of digging per mile. The size of the work force needed, immense.

This is a generational project by the sounds of it, that had it been begun at the beginning of the industrial revolution would have been of immense value- might have killed rail freight over long distance- but was hopelessly overtaken by events by the time it was proposed.

Could the possibility have been spotted earlier- did the joined up mapping for anyone to spot it exist? Would anyone in the early Industrial Revolution have had the clout to authorize it and make it happen- under Victorian public economics, I doubt it would have been proceeded with even if it had been suggested.

You'd need something like a Waterways Authority two centuries early, and one bold and innovative enough (stop me when this starts sounding entirely unlike the British civil service) to see and promote the possibility.

Something like it might help keep Britain viable in the long feeble centuries after oil, but the political economics don't add up at the time it was proposed.

Hmm. The early 1800s might be the right time, and the Admiralty might be the people to do it; we were running out of good ship timber, there were untapped resources but it was uneconomical to cart it to the sea, a canal network proposed as a matter of military expediency at the height of the Napoleonic Wars might gain purchase- generations to complete, but...
 
As a transport thing I think maybe Britain lacks the geographical depth to make a big canal viable. IIRC no part of Britain is more than 100 miles from the coast whereas on the continents there are navigable waterways hundreds of miles long which makes the transhipment from river barges to seagoing ships viable.
 
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