Macclesfield Canal

The Macclesfield Canal is a canal in Cheshire East, England. There were various proposals for a canal to connect the town of Macclesfield to the national network from 1765 onwards, but it was not until 1824 that a scheme came to fruition. There were already suggestions by that date that a railway would be better, but the committee that had been formed elected for a canal and the engineer Thomas Telford endorsed the decision. The canal as built was a typical Telford canal, constructed using cut and fill, with numerous cuttings and embankments to enable it to follow as straight a course as possible, although Telford had little to do with its construction, which was managed by William Crosley. The canal opened in 1831 and is 26.1 miles (42.0 km) long. All of its twelve locks are concentrated in a single flight at Bosley, which alters the level by 118 feet (36 m). The canal runs from a junction with the Peak Forest Canal at Marple in the north, in a generally southerly direction, through the towns of Macclesfield and Congleton, to an end-on junction with the Hall Green Branch of the Trent and Mersey Canal. There is a stop lock at the junction, which drops the level by 1 foot (0.30 m), and the branch runs for another 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to Hardings Wood Junction, where it joins the Trent and Mersey main line. This short branch is usually considered to be part of the Macclesfield Cana

Canal data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).