History of Preston Basin

Preston Basin was opened in the spring  of 1804, some seven years after the official opening of the 42 mile long Lancaster Canal on 22 November 1797 between Spital’s Moss, Preston and Tewitfield, north of Lancaster. The basin was 300 ft (91.4 m) in length and approximately 60 ft (18.3 m) wide leaving the Lancaster Canal at an almost perpendicular angle in an easterly direction, 40 ft from the terminus of the main canal north of Fishergate. 

The basin was part of a ¾ mile extension to the canal south from Spital’s Moss near the present-day The Guild public house (originally Moss Cottage) on Fylde Road. The canal terminated within 345 ft from the north side of Fishergate. Here freight, principally coal from Wigan’s coalfields and limestone from quarries north of Lancaster, was transhipped between the canal and the canal’s dedicated tramroad. The tramroad joined the two halves of Lancaster Canal’s ‘North End’ which linked Preston, Lancaster and its ‘South End’ between Walton Summit and Bark Hill near Wigan. 

A further extension to the canal was planned to Leigh meeting the Bridgewater Canal head on to reach Manchester, 'The fact that Rennie proposed that the canal should be capable of taking broad beam craft, up to seventy-two feet in length, is an indication that he had designs on linking the canal to the Bridgewater Canal, and thus the main canal system.' (Lancaster Canal Trust, 2023).

In 1816, the South End or 'Summit Branch' formed a junction with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Johnson’s Hillock Locks, in 1819 the Lancaster Canal reached Kendal and by 1826 a branch was opened to Glasson Dock providing access to the Irish Sea.

Planning the basin and the canal’s extension was undertaken by the canal’s Resident Engineer, William Cartwright who had already demonstrated 'his ability to the committee on the Lune Aqueduct (Barritt, p15), replacing John Rennie. Rennie, appointed Principal Engineer for the Lancaster Canal Company in 1792, had surveyed the entire route of the Lancaster Canal and had already overseen the design and construction of 22 aqueducts and 225 bridges along its length. Yet by the turn of the nineteenth century, Rennie was indisposed, engaged in a rapid succession of canal and bridge building schemes throughout the British Isles. Meanwhile, Samuel Gregson, manager of the Lancaster Canal Company, set out to purchase land along the route. 

Gregson and Cartwright desired the canal to pass as close to the centre of Preston as possible. The main consideration of the route was flatness of terrain rather than directness to avoid lockage (Barritt, p4). Consequently, a ‘contour canal’ meandering to follow the natural lay of the land at a constant 82 ft  (24 m) above mean sea level to avoid locks was surveyed. For the Lancaster Canal and Preston Basin, an alignment was plotted through pasture land north of Fishergate with names such as Fishergate Meadow, Fishergate Croft Lane Meadow, Great Field, Great Syke, Great Simpson Field, and the Nearer House of Correction Field. This latter field bordered Marsh Lane to the south and held the only building in the area, a former prison which operated between 1680 and 1789.

The prison reused the only surviving structure of Preston’s Franciscan Friary or Grey Friars. The friary was in existence from at least 1260 (Lancashire Past, 2013) until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 by Henry VIII. Remains of the friary were discovered during construction of the canal including a leaden conduit from the Ladywell, a stream or ‘syke’ conveying water to the friary (Bannister, 1992) named after Lady Well, a mediaeval holy well and site of pilgrimage. Based on archaeological excavations in 1991 (prior to the building of the A59 Ringway Penwortham Bypass) and 2007 (prior to the building of the Legacy Preston Hotel on Marsh Lane and extensions to Brunel Court), a conjectural layout of the friary suggests that the canal cut through the site of the friary’s reredorter and part of its choir (Bradley and Rowland, p84). There is some speculation that large stones from the friary building were used to help construct the washwalls of the canal’s coal wharves (Johnson, 2015, p59). The Lady Well was likely 'destroyed when the canal was built' (Lancashire County Council Historic Environment Team, Monument Full Report, PRN3666 - MLA3666).

Remains of the friary lasted well into the nineteenth century and influenced the construction of the Lancaster Canal Company owned Canal Foundry to the immediate west of the canal, 'The iron store [of the foundry] was once the site of an old monastery which had connections with Tulketh Hall Priory and Furness Abbey; as the decades rolled by it became part of a barracks, then a house of correction, and continued as such until the prison at the east end of Church Street was opened in 1790.' (Gregson, 2012, p56). 

Archaeological records report, ‘As late as the Ordnance Survey (OS) town plan of 1849, the most northerly structure belonging to the Canal Foundry displays a remarkably similar configuration to that shown in the locale by Shakeshaft (1809) and by Baines (1824).’ (Bradley and Rowland, p13). 

Preston Basin would occupy part of Fishergate Croft Lane Meadow and Great Field, the southern boundary of these adjacent plots ran along the north edge of present day Fishergate. When the decision was made to construct the tramroad, 'plate-way', ‘waggon-way’ or ‘rail road’ to link the two ends of the Lancaster Canal, the extension of the canal began to Preston Basin.

The canal was built to a ‘broad gauge’ referring to its broader width at 44.9 ft (13.7 m), in contrast to the ‘narrow gauge’ of most English canals (Greenwood, p233) and no more than 7 ft (2.1 m) deep. The canal was flat bottomed, with sloping sides - a shallow ‘V’ shape - allowing for an operating depth of water of 6.4 ft (1.96 m).

It was made broader still between the terminus near Preston Basin and Maudland Bridge to accommodate barges moored alongside wharves serving coal yards, mills and factories.

Construction of the canal was by hand, using pick, shovel and wheelbarrow principally through clay with excavated clay used to construct embankments. Puddled clay up to 3 ft thick was used to watertight the canal with ‘navvies’ - short for 'navigators' - or canal builders using their bare feet to stamp up and down on the clay to drive out air bubbles (Ibid). Sometimes cattle was used, ‘with whoops and yells the navvies would chase them up and down until the clay had been properly puddled.’ (Philpotts, p25).

Between Maudland Bridge, the terminus and Preston Basin, the canal stretched about a third of a mile and was constructed of vertical stone block walls and brick courses, bedded off with stone coping in anticipation of the heavy transhipment traffic. The basin was described as ‘commodious’ (Priestley, p373), able to accommodate multiple barges at any given time. This entire L-shaped section - between Maudland Bridge and the basin - has been referred to as 'Preston Basin' (Gregson, 2012, p47) but more commonly, only the 300 ft long terminating arm is referred to by this name.

In the Preston Herald newspaper Preston historian J. H. Spencer wrote in 1944, ‘The best navigable stretch of the canal is from Maudland Bridge to the terminus near the top of Marsh Lane and from here it is wider and the water deeper and cleaner than elsewhere. This has been made so for the passage and anchorage of barges at the long wharves at either side where the loading and unloading takes place.’ (Rigby, 2006, p9).

Later a short-lived, slender basin was built just north of Preston Basin and covered by a ‘Packet House’ for the canal’s packet service. On the opposite, west side of the junction of Preston Basin with the Lancaster Canal a small dry dock was built to maintain barges and vessels. This latter basin gave its name to Network Rail’s Dock Street sidings off Corporation Street. 

A typical freight broad beam barge on the Lancaster Canal was 15 ft 6 in (4.75 m) wide and 78 ft (24 m) long with a draught of 4.9 ft (1.5 m) and a maximum capacity of 50 tons, towed either by a single horse or paired horses. Each barge featured a cabin roughly 16 ft (4.9 m) in length and 14 ft (4.2 m) wide to accommodate the boatman’s entire family including narrow beds and a stove. 

Brockbank's shipyard on the banks of the Lune in Lancaster and later William Allsup’s shipyard located by the Ribble at the bottom of Fishergate Hill in Preston constructed many of the canal’s barges from wood. From 1890, Allsup's would make barge hulls from iron. Decoration was sparse unlike their Midland counterparts (Rigby, 2007, p11).

The Lancaster Canal Trust provides an account of the early Lancaster Canal barges and their workings:

'From circa 1850 boats were steel built at Preston, about 48 of them the last one in 1915. They were 72 feet long and of 14ft 6in beam and able to load up to 50 tons. The crew was normally 2 often with the man leading the horse and his wife steering the boat. Most boats had a stern cabin with bunks and living accommodation, there was a small store in the bows for hay and horse harness. A few boats were built without or with only a small cabin, they were intended as day boats for short journeys. All the above boats were built for horse haulage, engines were not added. The normal haulage was a stout Welsh cob or occasionally two small horses or donkeys. The boat hulls were water streamlined and when away from the bank underway and in 5 or 6 feet depth of water were not difficult to tow. One horse could pull a fully laden boat at three and a half miles per hour and keep it up all day.' (Lancaster Canal Trust, 2023). 

A now extinct breed, the Galloway pony, was also used. Horses were 'well cared for and.... treated as one of the family. They were fed on a diet of oats and bran and chopped hay often in a nose bag whilst working. There were stables for overnight accommodation spaced approximately five miles apart.' (Ibid).

Preston quickly capitalised on the arrival of the Lancaster Canal and land on both sides of the canal developed rapidly for mills, factories, foundries and housing. Lime kilns dotted the route into Preston to Spital’s Moss, close enough to the canal but a good distance from populated areas given the noxious gases emitted during the burning of lime. One kiln by Fylde Road near the present day Ashton Basin gave its name to the Stirzaker’s Lime Kiln Inn (latterly The Lime Kiln public house). Burnt limestone produced quicklime, a fertiliser in high demand for farmers in Fylde and South Lancashire, and combined with sand made building mortar. Canalside cotton spinning and weaving mills were constructed along the canalside which made use of the canal as a water supply for their stationary steam engine condensers. 

Preston’s steam-powered mills required copious amounts of coal, some estimates put a figure of 20,000 tons a year by the turn of the nineteenth century and the same tonnage for towns further north (Barritt, p17). John Horrocks, the ‘founder’ of the Lancashire cotton industry quickly capitalised on the arrival of the canal. On Magdalen (Maudland) Fields, narrow, ancient plots of land, he constructed ‘Spittal Moss Factory’ (Spital’s Moss Mill or simply Moss Mill) by the canal in 1794, now Grade II listed. 

This prevailing trade in coal from the Wigan coalfields northwards and returning with lime from quarries north of Lancaster gave the canal the affectionate moniker the ‘Black and White’ and the ‘Lanky’. 

With traffic already increasing on the new canal, this placed renewed pressure on Cartwright and Gregson to have Preston Basin completed as soon as possible. Delays could threaten the opening of the tramroad and already, ‘traders and boat owners who had applied for wharves informed the [Lancaster Canal] committee that in their opinion; ‘the said yards and wharfs are not in a fit state for letting’’ (Barritt, p76). With a renewed push, the second half of 1803 saw the basin fitted out with wharves and ‘splice roads’, what Cartwright called sidings leading off the canal’s tramroad to serve coalyards and wharves. 

Somewhat prematurely, the Lancaster Canal Company advertised a 'Notice of Intention to Let' wharfage at Preston and Walton Summit Basins dated 11 April 1803 but 'it would be further twelve months before the basins would be open to business.' (Barritt, p48).

At the meeting of the canal and tramroad, a timber coal ‘hurrey’ or staith was built 70 ft in length over the head of the canal. Here four tramroad splice roads allowed tramroad ‘waggons’, detached from their horses to discharge their cargo of coal into awaiting barges below; three barges could be loaded simultaneously (Barritt, p77). The hurreys were set 8 ft higher than the canal water line and were driven into the canal bed by 20 ft long timber piles.

The tramroad opened on 1 June 1803 and raises the interesting question about how freight was transhipped if Preston Basin and its counterpart at Walton Summit were not complete until the spring of 1804. It is likely the partly complete basins were pressed into use.

The basin was completed by the summer of 1804. The north wharf was designated as a public wharf while the south wharf was set out for the limestone trade and coal yards sited closer to Fishergate. The limestone wharves were divided equally for the use of John Turner, The Earl of Balcarres (owner of collieries and Haigh Ironworks in Wigan), Thomas Dewhurst, and Mr K. McKenzie. They also had access to the coal yards together with John Hodgson and Pearse Barker and Company. 

Close to the entrance to the Fishergate tunnel, a canal administrative office was built and William Bamford’s Smith’s Shop, John Cook’s Joinery Shop and Mr McKenzie’s Timber Yard helped service the canal and tramroad (Barritt, p78).  The smithy would be used by horses that had made the northbound journey on the ‘Coal Road’ - the northbound track - from Walton Summit and to supply fresh horses on the ‘Limestone Road’ - the southbound track. In the year of the basin’s opening, 102,000 tons of cargo was carried on the Lancaster Canal; by 1840 this had risen to 193,000 tons (Greenwood, p234).

Like its counterpart at Walton Summit, it is possible a weighbridge house was constructed to 'check the weight of materials carried by the waggons on the tramroad in order to charge the correct tolls and protect the [tram]plates from overloading' (Barritt, p63). Every coalyard entrance at Preston Basin was equipped with a weighing machine to weigh coal being prepared for delivery by horse and cart.

The basin was largely devoid of wharfside warehouses and buildings. Freight carried on this particular section of canal and the tramroad was dominated by coal (including cannel coal and slack) and limestone as well as Westmoreland slate which needed no protection from the elements. Wharfside yards were separated by 6 ft high coursed stone walls.

The exception was three, three-storey stone warehouses at the eastern end of the basin. The middle, 'straddle' warehouse covered a short arm of basin featuring two 'boatholes' to access loading bays to enable goods to be transferred directly to and from the warehouse above. These would have been built for dry goods, such as corn and other produce for the adjacent Corn Exchange which was built in 1822 and converted to a Public Hall between 1881 and 1882 (rear demolished in 1986). 

The canal warehouse footings were laid in the second half of 1803 and were likely complete by early 1804, at a cost of £1,000 (Barritt, p77). It is unknown how far the basin reached under the central warehouse which reached about 80 ft in length from the basin to Corporation Street, but it is likely the 10 ft long cabins of the barges protruded out of the arms. For a surviving, similar example of this type of warehouse, see Carver's Warehouse at the head of the former Dale Street Basin of the Rochdale Canal, Manchester, completed in 1806. Google Street View: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nfYuQPG38eVtDZZr6.

The central and north warehouses were later used for Arkwright’s Furniture Stores and Todkill's Motor Body Garage but were demolished by 1939 for Barton Townley’s car showroom. They were similar in dimension, the central warehouse about 37 ft wide (facing the basin) and 80 ft in length and the northern warehouse 33 ft wide and 80 ft in length. The southern warehouse was initially served by a siding from the tramroad which included a wagon turntable and was last used by Edward Sharples, a monumental stonemason, until the 1980s. Of the three warehouses, this warehouse was modified the most extensively over the years. At one stage its 80 ft length, identical to its adjacent twins, was reduced to 53 ft in length and the warehouse became a five sided building with the construction of Corporation Street around 1884. The warehouse was demolished completely around 1986 for another road project, the A59 Penwortham Bypass extension to Ringway. 

On Myer’s map of Preston published in 1836 and a map produced by the Lancaster Canal Company protesting the proposed Lancaster and Preston Railway, a ‘Packet House’ is visible just north of the basin on the east side of the canal. It covered a slender basin for the packet boats and would have looked similar to the stone packet house that survives in Lancaster which is now converted into apartments. 

Prior to the arrival of the railways, a single tramroad with sidings served a series of coal yards that almost reached Fox Street. These coal yards and the foundations of the stables that served them were exposed in 2009 prior to the construction of the seven storey Premier Inn hotel (Greenlane Archaeology, 2009). Another tramroad snaked off around the street-facing side of the canal warehouses to serve the northern wharf. 

Prior to the opening of Lancaster Canal’s main source of water at Killington Reservoir in 1819, the canal was fed by water from the Ribble. This reached the canal via a tunnel cut through rock designed and supervised by William Cartwright and following his death in 1804, his successor William Miller, an assistant engineer, ‘through which water was pumped by a Boulton & Watt steam engine’ (Hadfield and Biddle, p191). The canal end of the tunnel and steam engine building was located just north of Leighton Street slip basin (Wyre Archaeology Group), opposite the Canal Street Mill (Biddle, 2018, p53). The tunnel route represented the shortest distance between the canal and the Ribble and is likely to have met the Ribble on its pre-1884 realignment between the present day Channel Way (built on the original course of the Ribble) and Strand Road. 

Wyre Archaeology Group also refers to an 1821 book written by Marmaduke Tulket called ''A topographical, statistical and historical account of the borough of Preston' in which he says [when describing the Horrock's canal street cotton mill], ''Opposite to this cotton mill, upon the north-west bank of the canal, stands the large steam-engine house, built of stone, and erected at the sole expence [expense?] of the canal company, in 1805, for the express purpose of conveying water into the canal, when deficient. The water is pumped by means of this powerful engine, out of deep subterraneous tunnels, forming a communication with the river Ribble. The engine enveloped within the walls of this massive building is rated at fifty boraes horses power; but at present la very seldom used."'

Another account claims that Preston Basin itself was fed by a culverted feeder stream named on old maps as Brown’s Channel which originated near Tenterfield Street, flowing under Starch House Square, then the lower end of Lune Street and giving its name to Fleet Street just east of the basin (Bannister, 1992). 

The meeting of the canal and tramroad at Preston Basin almost never was. By May 1801, the Lancaster Canal committee had rejected two separate schemes to cross the Ribble. The first was a proposal by James Monk, a committee member of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to construct a channel from the River Douglas (made navigable since the 1730s to Wigan and its coalfields), parallel to the River Ribble to a point in Penwortham. From there vessels would cross to a basin on the north side and goods transferred onto half a mile of tramroad and then an inclined plane to the Lancaster Canal’s North End, perhaps on a route not dissimilar to the aforementioned Ribble feeder tunnel built later, which represented the shortest route on a relatively shallow incline between the extended canal and Ribble. 

James Monk’s proposal was interpreted as a means to raise additional revenue for the cash strapped Leeds and Liverpool Canal Company which owned the Douglas Navigation and were dismissed. One committee member, Alexander Haliburton called the idea ‘insidious’ (Biddle, 2018, p34). Instead it appears the committee held a competition for the design of an aqueduct to span the Ribble at Avenham across the flood plain to the south (Barritt, p21). These were Rennie and Jessop’s design for a 640 ft long aqueduct featuring three 116 ft long elliptical classical arches not dissimilar to his completed Lune Aqueduct, Cartwright’s own design featuring Corinthian pilasters and Thomas Gibson’s gothic-styled design (Biddle, 2018, p35) featuring a ‘continuous aqueduct on pointed arches, three spanning the river, with cross archies between the main spans and an immense pediment’ (Biddle and Hadfield, p190). 

Yet the high cost continued to plague the canal committee, 'The original plan had called for an embankment, another fine masonry aqueduct and locks; now the Committee wanted to consider a plain, unadorned aqueduct, possibly of iron instead of stone and, above all, they wanted to know 'the best and cheapest mode of making a communication between Clayton Green & Preston, while and Aqueduct of some sort or other is carrying on.' (Letter from [Samuel] Gregson, 21 March 1801) (Burton, p105).

Instead, John Rennie and William Jessop, a renowned canal engineer, approved Cartwright’s cheaper tramroad scheme at a cost of approximately £21,600, on the condition that the tramroad was treated as temporary measure until funds could be raised to complete the canal. Nevertheless, the idea of a tramroad had its detractors. Some pointed to the costly and time consuming nature of an interim tramroad to a canal, meaning that to go ‘from Preston to Walton Summit would mean one descent and two ascents and to come back two descents and one ascent with freight transhipped at either end between waggon and barge’ (Philpotts, p43). Indeed Gregson reassured one ‘dissident shareholder’ that the tramroad would help convey materials for the building of the Ribble aqueduct (Biddle, 2018, p36). A combined Ribble aqueduct and canal would have cost £180,945.

The committee was right to be cautious. The 664 ft long Lune Aqueduct in Lancaster had opened four years earlier in 1797, featuring five semi-circular arches and built entirely from stone. It had been completed grossly over budget, costing £48,321, ‘nearly three times the original estimate’ (Self, 2010). Furthermore, ‘A committee set up in 1819 to review progress on the Lancaster Canal commented that resources had been wasted in “ornamenting the town of Lancaster, with a grand aqueduct over the Lune, upon which the water had lain stagnant for over twenty years.”’ (Ibid). Critics pointed out that most canal traffic stopped short of the Lune viaduct which was largely concentrated on the stretch between Preston and Lancaster.

Some also believed Rennie over-engineered the aqueduct to ensure it did not collapse (Philpotts, p33) including the use of inverted arches that sat between the main arches to improve the aqueduct’s strength (Hudson). Rennie himself bemoaned in a letter to Gregson ‘...I still wish the Committee had tried brick, it would have saved many thousand pounds’, comparing the aqueduct with brick structures on Midland canals (Biddle and Hadfield, p187). Furthermore, the use of specialist building materials such as volcanic pozzolano imported from Italy (shipping was subject to French naval and privateer attacks) to make a special mortar for the submerged parts of the bridges piers (Philpotts, p34) resting on piles of imported Russian timber (Visit Lancaster, Lune Aqueduct) undoubtedly contributed to the aqueduct’s high cost. 

Nevertheless the Lune Aqueduct quickly gained aesthetic appeal; JMW Turner sketched the aqueduct in its first year of opening while Rennie’s biographer Dr Cyril Boucher called it ‘the finest bridge in the country’ (Biddle, p18). Alexander Stevens, a Scottish architect, oversaw construction of the aqueduct while William Cartwright was given charge of the pier construction. Cartwright was commended for his works, awarded a silver cup and made resident engineer for the entire Lancaster Canal. 

Rennie's design had been inspired by Thomas Harrison’s nearby Skerton Bridge bridge completed in 1788, Britain's first flat-topped bridge in the Greek revival style. Skerton Bridge itself is believed to be based on the design of the Roman-era Bridge of Tiberius or Bridge of Augustine in Rimini, Italy after Harrison embarked on a Grand Tour of Italy in the 1760s. Rennie later went on to design Waterloo Bridge (opened 1817, demolished 1934) and New London Bridge (opened 1831, dismantled in 1967 and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona) both influenced by the design of the Lune Aqueduct. 

To this day the unbuilt Ribble Aqueduct remains Preston’s greatest architectural and engineering ‘what might have beens’. The only physical evidence of the intent to build an aqueduct lies immediately to the south over the Ribble floodplain known as ‘The Mains’. 

The boundary of the 10 ft high tramroad embankment between the tram bridge and Penwortham or Carr Wood incline is wider than necessary, demarcated for the 40 ft high canal embankment that never was (Barritt, p107). 

Two coloured drawings of the proposed aqueduct by Rennie and Jessop are on display in Lancaster Maritime Museum. The caption beneath tells the story of the drawings rediscovery by Colin Barnes: 'These prints show the plans for the aqueduct which was intended to carry the Lancaster Canal across the River Ribble at Preston. It was designed by John Rennie and William Jessop, engineer. 

Unfortunately, the structure was never built by the Lancaster Canal Company due to the shortage of funds. This was partly a consequence of the high cost of building the magnificent aqueduct across the River Lune at Lancaster in 1797. 

The original drawings were discovered in the roof (?, word obscured) of a canal workshop building at Aldcliffe, Lancaster, by Colin Barnes in 1951. He was researching the canal's history for his thesis as part of the final examination for the Royal Institute of British Architects. There were over 200 drawings in an old chest and they were taken to the County Record Office at Preston to be catalogued. They were later sent to the National Archives. On loan from Colin Barnes and displayed by kind permission of the National Archives, Kew.' 

Colin Barnes would later establish the Preston City Link Canal Trust in the early 2000s which aimed to restore the Lancaster Canal between its present terminus at Aqueduct Street and Maudland Road bridge.

With the idea of an aqueduct and canal placed on hold, Cartwright turned again to his plans for a five mile long horse-hauled tramroad he had drawn up in 1799. Then, he had declared ‘I have turned my thoughts therefore to the forming of a junction by means of a double rail-road or waggon-way.’ (Barritt, p17). Returning to his proposal, he paid a visit to the Peak Forest Canal’s tramroad September or October 1801 where Benjamin Outram was the consulting engineer. 

Cartwright revised his plans for the tramroad on his return to Preston; he was most likely taken aback by the complexity and amount of land occupied by the Peak Forest Canal’s tramroad and canal interchange at Bugsworth Basin in Derbyshire which was at one time Britain’s busiest inland port, in use between 1796 and 1922 and now the only interchange of its nature to survive intact. He recommended beginning the tramroad at its current terminus at Preston Basin. 

An Act of Parliament for the construction of the tramroad and remaining sections of canal was obtained on 20 June 1800 which raised an additional £200,000 (Barritt, p21).

In correspondence to Gregson dated 16 October 1801 he noted that the land by the base of Avenham Walk was insufficient in size to ‘effect a communion between canal and tramroad’ (Barritt, p29) and 'Upon considering the carrying of the navigation to the Ribblesdale at Avenham I am of the opinion that it will prove more desirable to continue the rail road from Avenham to the low ground purchased by the Company between Fishergate and Friargate.' (Barritt, p30-31). 

In doing so Cartwright most likely helped preserve the area for Avenham Park created as a work relief programme for out-of-work cotton operatives during the Cotton Famine caused by the American Civil War on land purchased by Preston Corporation between 1843 and 1853. Landscape architect Edward Milner designed the park to absorb and reuse the now defunct tramroad and incline into its landscaping and pathways. The park opened in 1867 with the adjacent Miller Park to its immediate west creating a 'harmonious whole' (Visit Preston, Avenham & Miller Parks History).

The 4½ mile long ‘waggon-way’, 'rail-road' or 'plate-way' was formerly known as the Preston and Summit Tram Road and opened on 1 June 1803. It was an immediate financial success; trade increased between the two sections of the canal and income from tollage nearly doubled (Philpotts, p43). 

The tramroad used cast-iron rails or tramplates in ‘L’ sectioned ‘flanches’. The idea of flanged or ‘flanched’ iron rails or tramplates had been pioneered for use in underground collieries in 1787 by John Curr while manager or ‘coal viewer’ of the Duke of Norfolk’s Sheffield Park Colliery to transport four-wheeled ‘corves’ or minecarts (Medlicott, p119). These basket or hazel wickerwork corves had previously been dragged through the tunnels on wheel-less sledge-trams or pushed from behind by ‘thrusters’ by coal ‘hurriers’, usually children, a process known as ‘hurrying’. 

The flanches faced outwards to keep the flangeless plain or flat wheeled wagons in check, laid at 4 ft 1 in gauge which appears to have been a last minute change by Cartwright from an originally planned 4 ft 3 in gauge. Wagons were likely switched between tracks by a simple, moveable iron ‘tongue’ as used on the Long Eaton Gangway. 

The tramroad was entirely double track save for where it ran under Fishergate in a single track, 300 yard long tunnel originally designed for the canal. 

A cross sectional plan prepared by Cartwright in 1801 shows the 'horse-shoe' tunnel designed for the canal with 18 in thick stone walls, a width of 20 ft and a height of 20 ft, 6 ft of which would be the depth of the canal and 8 ft at its deepest. The walls would slope inwards slightly towards the base and a 4 ft 6 in wide towpath would occupy one side of the tunnel (Barritt, p75). An example of a canal tunnel with a similar horse-shoe profile would be the extant Sapperton Canal Tunnel on the Thames & Severn Canal, Gloucestershire, opened in 1789. Was the tramroad tunnel built with the possibility of conversion to a canal tunnel, thus some 20 ft wide at its widest? The single track tramroad tunnel would require less width, a levelled bottom and no towpath. The tramroad was gauged at 4 ft 1 in so one can assume that the single track alignment would only require approximately 8 to 10 ft in full width within the tunnel. 

Just beyond the tunnel’s southern portal, it ran along the western edge of the garden of William Cartwright’s home at 49 Fishergate that he had purpose built in 1802. Cartwright had the home purpose built on a small parcel of land bought from the Lancaster Canal Company and was complete by 1802, next door to the Theatre Royal which was opened in the same Guild year. From the upper storeys of his home, he would have had an uninterrupted view of Preston Basin and the Lancaster Canal taking shape and on the cusp of opening (Fishergate Baptist Church, located directly opposite, was not built until 1857 and 1858). 

Sadly William Cartwright was unable to appreciate this view for long nor his new home. In addition to being a Preston optician (Hayes, 2000, cited in Tonks) and an 'inventor of some note' (Hayes, p51), Cartwright was working on the construction of a tunnel to feed water from the Ribble to the canal just north of Leighton Street slip basin and a plan for a 2,200 yard long tramroad between Tewitfield and Kellet Seeds Quarries. Following a short illness, most likely brought on by overwork, Cartwright died on 19 January 1804.

The upper façade of Cartwright’s home was later incorporated into a Littlewoods shop during the construction of the Fishergate Shopping Centre in 1985, and now forms part of a Primark store. 

From the tramroad tunnel the route ran for just under five miles in a south-easterly direction to Clayton Green where the canal’s ‘South End’ had reached by this point near Walton Summit. Cartwright calculated traffic on the southbound ‘Limestone Road’ would be heavier than coal heading north on the ‘Coal Road’, so he carefully engineered the tramroad to incorporate long level sections punctuated by short steep sections aided by stationary steam engines (Barritt, p18). Cartwright ensured sufficient space was left for tramloads to pass one another without endangering men and horses and the entire roadbed was made some 24 ft across. 

In its entirety, the tramroad included three inclines, at Avenham, Penwortham / Carr Wood by Penwortham Mill and Walton Summit and was built within the parliamentary line of the proposed canal, both stipulations of Rennie and Jessop (Biddle, 2018, p35). 

Avenham Incline was the steepest with a 1 in 6 gradient, 115 yards long and rising 51 ft featuring a stationary steam powered winding engine with a tall brick chimney, two small reservoirs and a horsepath. It was originally planned with a 1 in 9 gradient but presumably modified after a review of Cartwright's plan by Jessop and Rennie (Barritt, p67) and was ready for traffic by May 1803. 

The Avenham Incline occupies a special place in tramroad and railway lore being the location of one of the first stationary steam engine hauled inclined plateways in the world: 'So in a sense was the next location where railway vehicles were moved by steam: a plateway across the Ribble Valley, at Walton Summit, completed in 1803 to connect the northern and southern ends of the Lancaster Canal. Its three inclined planes were each equipped with a high pressure 6-horsepower 13-inch cylinder engine costing £350 and made by Summerfield and Atkinson, a local foundry which offered 'patent steam engines', and which also built the waggons. The first was installed in May of that year (Gwyn, p89).'

Wagons were detached from the horses and pulled up on iron staves on the ascending road or lowered on the descending road via links on an endless chain which ran along rollers positioned between the two roads. Should a tramload about to ascend the incline be met by a tramload about to descend, 'the descending waggons would act as a counterbalance effectively reducing the weight of the ascending waggons by two thirds' (Barritt, p19). A maximum of six loaded wagons could ascend at a given time and would take nine minutes to complete one revolution. 

A utilitarian, wooden trestle bridge spanning the Ribble designed by Cartwright was built in 1802 at the base of Avenham Incline. It crossed an area of the Ribble channel known as the 'stone delph' where red sandstone had previously been quarried for the local parish church (Barritt, p71-72). This is in reference to the precursor to the current St. John's Minster on Church Street which was entirely rebuilt between 1853 and 1855, 'with the exception of the lower part of the tower' and the foundations (British History Online, The parish of Preston).

The nine span bridge featured a hipped roof windlass or winding house to correspond with its equivalent situated by the engine house at the top of the Avenham incline. The decking, bearers, piles and bracing struts were constructed from 4,000 ft of deal timber bought from Liverpool likely imported from Scandinavia or Russia in February or March 1802 (timber piles for the Lune Aqueduct were imported from Russia). The bridge was held together with cast iron plates and brackets (Barritt, p31). Construction appears to have taken only three months to complete and trouble free; the final touch was a coat of preservative treatment costing £200 (Barritt, p72).

Dives were made by the Preston Sub Aqua Club throughout the 1970s to retrieve a wheel and parts of tramroad wagons from the bed of the River Ribble by the tram bridge. The wheel is evidence of an accident that occurred on 3 October, 1826 when three wagons belonging to Lord Balcarres disengaged by ‘haler’ John Roberts hurtled back down the incline when the chain broke, killing one horse instantly and sending another to its death in the Ribble. 

It was one of a number of unfortunate incidents to occur on the incline when the chain suddenly snapped, due to poor quality iron, the weight of the loads and the steepness of the incline (Barritt, p70). In the 1826 incident, the cause was due to wagons being attached to the chain before preceding wagons had been detached at the top. 

Preston historian Peter Smith re-published this account on the finding and retrieval of part of the tramroad wagon:

Industrial archaeology from the Ribble

December 21, 2023 ~ Peter Smith

An item by an R. Kitchen from the May 1976 issue of the Lancashire Archaeological Bulletin published by the former county archivist Ben Edwards and his wife Margaret.

Recovery of an Early Tramway Waggon at Preston

In the summer of 1975, an amateur diver made exploratory dives in the River Ribble at Preston. About fifty yards west of the Old Tram Bridge on the north side of the river, he went to a depth of 20-25 feet in the Stone Delph (excavated as a quarry for stone used in the rebuilding of the Parish Church of St. John, Preston). There, almost completely buried in rock, gravel and mud, was what he assumed to be the wheel of a gun carriage. He reported this find to Mr. James Naylor, leader of “Divers ‘74”, a Preston based sub-aqua club. Mr. Naylor organised a more professional search conducted by himself and a team of club members,

Despite visibility being restricted to a distance of one to two feet, by turgid water, disturbed mud, etcetera, underwater cameras managed to produce photographs of part of an iron wheel.

Mr. Naylor brought the photographs and his own findings to the attention of Mr. Stephen Sartin, Assistant Keeper of Fine Art, at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Mr. Sartin, basing his opinion on the remarkable similarity of the wheel in the photograph to fragments of flangeless cast iron waggon wheels found in earlier researches on the Preston and Walton Summit Railway, decided that the pictures were of part of a tramway waggon for this railway which connected the North and South Sections of the Lancaster Canal. Corroborating evidence came from the fact that on 3rd October, 1825, an accident occurred on the Avenham incline of the railway (see account in Preston Pilot, 7th October, 1826), In this accident, the endless chain of the winding engine, hauling a waggon train up the incline, broke, causing waggons and horses to be thrown into the river at a point just upstream from the site of the find.

The divers, encouraged by this evidence of the importance of their discovery, commenced the removal of stones and mud and chiselled away encrusted gravel. Conditions at a depth of twenty-five feet, in tidal waters, were such that work was restricted to an average time of half an hour per week, when tide and weather permitted. The partial re-filling of the Stone Delph in 1858 helped to preserve the waggon from erosion and corrosion by the flowing water, but rendered the divers’ task more difficult. By March of this year, all that was possible to facilitate lifting had been completed. Chris Miller Crane Hire Limited, an experienced Company with excellent facilities, were engaged to carry out the lift.

On 14th March, divers and crane men succeeded in bringing out of the Ribble four cast iron flangeless wheels, each on its own part of the axles; a wrought iron drawbar; some fragments of the woodwork, and parts of axle trees and “U” bolts – all parts of the waggon of the 1826 accident, Interesting among the iron was the greater part of a grappling iron, which would appear to have been used in an attempt to raise the wagcon after its crash into the river.

The actual lifting was televised on the “Look North” programme on Monday, 15th March, 1976, and aroused much popular interest. That this is one of the most important local finds of the early industrial revolution era, is confirmed by Mr. Gordon Biddle, who examined the parts so far recovered. Mr. Biddle, who has done considerable research on canals in general and the Lancaster-Preston Canal in particular, says that only fourteen flangeless-wheeled tramway waggons are known to exist, and certainly none is of this particular design. So far as he can ascertain, neither are there any measured drawings of the waggons used on this line.

Underwater investigations continue and more parts are being retrieved, and it is hoped in due course to produce measured drawings of the waggon.

In a later issue, Stephen Sartin, who created a model of the wagon, added the following:

Readers of L.A.B. will remember an account of how, after a link in the steam-operated incline chain snapped, the coal-laden wagon ran down a 1:6 gradient at the old Tram Bridge, Avenham Park, Preston, and into a deep. and notoriously dangerous part of. the River Ribble.

There it remained until recently, when fragments of it were recovered. It is from these that the present model has been constructed by the writer. Since neither photographs nor measured drawings exist, (the only illustration known is a distant and diagrammatic view of a horse train in a painting owned by the Harris Art Gallery and Museum) it is the first time that it has been possible to show what the wagons really looked like. Work on recovering more items, including remains of the body of the wagon, will start with the onset of warmer weather.

The diameters of the flangeless wheels astonishingly vary from one foot eleven and half inches to two feet and one and three-quarters inches, and all four could not have been in contact with the rails at the same time. This rough and ready arrangement may well have been the cause of the wagon’s leaving the track.' (Smith, 2023).

Despite built only as a temporary measure, it is remarkable the tram bridge lasted over a half a century without any significant repairs. After ownership was transferred from the London and North Western Railway to Preston Corporation on 17 July 1872 under the Lancaster Canal Transfer Act of 1864, the corporation took lengths to repair the structure for pedestrian use, most likely replacing the most decayed wooden sections and adding four stone pilasters at each corner. Photographs from the era show the bridge in superb condition following its renewal by Preston Corporation.

After heavy floods (and a henhouse swept downstream) damaged the wooden structure in December 1936, the structure was replaced entirely with a precast concrete facsimile with a wooden deck. The concrete was reinforced by railway rails.

During the Second World War, the timber decking was removed to impede an invasion force. In the 1960s, inspections found rotten timber which closed the bridge from November 1964. Repairs began in October 1965 and were complete in 1966. The bridge closed in February 2019 due to cracks and defects found in many of the bridge’s pre-stressed beams. 

The Old Tram Bridge has also been known as the ‘Trestle Bridge’ while Myer’s map of Preston in 1824 labels the crossing the ‘Canal Bridge’ (Garlington, p6). 

Each tramload or 'gang' was drawn by two or three horses accompanied by a ‘haler’ (hauliers) walking alongside or riding on one of the horses. The horse would haul a wagonload consisting of six small wagons or four large wagons and each wagon could carry a maximum load of two tons. The tramroad wagons ‘bore a strong resemblance to the agricultural carts in use at the time’ (Barritt, p59) with a wheelbase designed so that ‘no more than a quarter of weight of waggon and cargo’ was imposed on each length of rail’ (Ibid); a fully laden six wagon tramload would weigh up to 2 tonnes (Laws, p18). Each wagon was 10 cwt in weight, 6 ft long by 4 ft wide by 2 ft deep with side boards (Barritt, p19). Some wagons were 'equipped with crude, lever-operated wooden brakes' (Gregson, 2012, p46). A typical one-way journey between Preston Basin and Walton Summit took four hours. 

William Cartwright relied heavily on the Peak Forest Tramway for technical expertise and experience, guided by Benjamin Outram and Outram's friend and business partner William Jessop. It is likely this influence shaped the design of the wagons. On the Peak Forest Tramway, the wagon bodies were constructed 'so that they could be lifted off the wagon chassis complete with load' (Ripley, p13). This was an early form of containerisation, which would have hastened transhipment at Preston Basin and Walton Summit. They were also subject to lower tolls, another idea copied from the Peak Forest.

A model of a tramroad wagon on a short section of track has previously been displayed in the Harris Museum and demonstrated the simple hook and chain arrangement to couple wagons together. The National Railway Museum in York contains an original Peak Forest Tramway wagon on a short section of plateway, and there is a replica wagon on a short section of plateway on outdoor display at Bugsworth Basin, Derbyshire. Both demonstrate the fixed three sided model with a gated end to allow the wagon to be tipped and the contents to fall into awaiting barges. However, there is no evidence to suggest this was the case for the Lancaster Canal's tramroad wagons. 

Large hasps were fitted at each end of the chassis to allow stout iron chains to join wagons into trains (Ripley, p13), while a large iron loop was attached to the solebar on the leading wagon which would allow a horse's chain harness to be attached via a hook. Braking the wagons was usually done via spragging, whereby a stout iron bar or 'sprag' was pushed through the spokes of the wheels to jam them. On some tramroads, this was undertaken by adolescents although there is no record of such practice on the Lancaster Canal tramroad.

Each ribbed tramplate featured a 2 in. high vertical flanche at each end and bowing to 3 in. at the centre where stress was greatest (a 'hump back' flange). The initial batch of tramplates cast by the Aberdare Iron Company in 1802 were found to be of poor quality; in the same year Carwright and Gregson relied upon Messrs Ayden and Elwell of the Shelf Ironworks near Bradford to fulfil their request for further tramplates. 

The tramplates were 3.5 ft long and each end was horizontally splayed. They were bolted to stone sleeper blocks measuring between 16 and 20 inches long, 12 inches 'broad' and 8 and 10 inches thick weighing in the region of 150 lbs. 

Nevertheless, it is clear from surviving and reclaimed tramroad blocks that many were cut irregularly and some were considerably larger, the latter possibly placed at sections of the tramroad under greater stress for example at the foot of Walton Summit Incline and within the Fishergate tramroad tunnel where 9 ft long tramplates were used from 1828.

The blocks were quarried in Lancaster with two notches made in the centre for gad irons to be countersunk into oak pegs bolting the tramplate to the sleeper. These oak plugs were likely octagonal in shape and some 5 inches in length, as used on Outram's Peak Forest Tramway (Ripley, p11). Over time many tramplates became disjointed. 

The passage of a tramload of wagons would have been audible for some distance. A passing tramload would have made a drawn out ‘clickety-clack’ with the horse and haler tramping along directly ahead of the wagons at walking speed.

Although the Lancaster Canal had operated a passenger service since 1798 and a more formalised service from 1 May 1820, in anticipation of the competition from the railways, a fast packet or ‘Swift boats’ service was introduced from Monday 1 April 1833. These were based on William Houston’s service introduced on the Glasgow, Paisley and Ardrossan Canal where a bolting horse towing an empty barge (with Houston clinging on) had inadvertently demonstrated the concept of fast boats, ‘planing’ on their bow waves. 

The Lancaster Canal Company used four horse drawn, enclosed vessels called Waterwitch, Swiftsure, Swallow and Crewdson (later Waterwitch II) each over 72 ft long and 7 ft in beam (Lancaster Maritime Museum, 2023). The 1833 launch was advertised to cover the 30 miles of canal between Lancaster and Preston in about three hours, leaving Kendal at 6 o’clock in the morning, arriving in Lancaster by 1 o’clock and Preston after 4 o’clock.  Journeys took some three hours between Preston and Lancaster, and eight hours between Preston and Kendal. 

Just north of Preston Basin, passengers boarded and alighted from the ‘Packet House’, on St Ann’s Square (previously named Mount Pleasant, later renamed Lady Well then Ladywell Street). One account written by Sir George Head in his ‘Home tour of the Manufacturing Districts of England’ during the summer of 1835 recalled the embarkation point at Preston: ‘A covered shed, thrown over the canal encloses on both sides ample marginal space, so that passengers and their luggage are equally protected from the rabble and the weather.’ (Rigby, 2006, p17). 

This basin, buried under the boundary between an Aldi supermarket within the Corporation Street Retail Park and Brunel Court, was likely abandoned and embarkation point moved nearer to Kendal Street as the wharf area became busier with coal traffic, probably after the arrival of the railways in the 1840s. It is rumoured the ‘Lamb & Packet’ public house near Kendal Street served as a ticket office and a waiting area for the packet boats (Rigby, 2006, p18). 

The packet boat service had proven popular for visitors to the Preston Guild in 1822. The design of the canal's initial packet boat appears to have been made by William Cartwright himself (see illustration below), in which a typical, broad beam Lancaster Canal barge was fitted with a passenger cabin. As Cartwright died in 1804, it is possible this design may have been used for the canal's initial packet boat service.

The faster, swift boats introduced from 1833 were light-weight, sleek and with pointed brows. The service was successful, carrying 16,000 passengers in six months of 1833. They travelled at 9 miles per hour towed by two horses, with a postillion riding the first horse, sounding a horn to warn others of the vessel’s approach while a packet master steered from the stern (Lancaster Maritime Museum, 2023). The packet boats had right of way over other craft on the canal (Rigby, 2006, p18). Horses were changed every four miles and each vessel could carry up to 70 passengers (Lancaster Maritime Museum, 2023). 

A steward offered tea, coffee and refreshments prepared in a small galley and the cabins were warmed in winter. Sir George Head described the ‘Water-Witch’ as a sheet iron boat canoe-like in appearance, 70 ft long, 5 ft 4 in broad, with a light awning of stout calico and dressed in linseed oil. 

Destinations en route included Salwick, Garstang, Forton, Galgate, Lancaster, Hest Bank, Bolton-le-Sands, Carnforth, Capernwray, Tewitfield where passengers alighted and walked up the flight of eight locks to take another craft on to Burton, Farleton, Crooklands, Hincaster and Kendal, the canal’s northern terminus. ‘Fly-boats’ delivering parcels and packages provided a similar fast, regular service up to about 1845 (Rigby, 2006, p17). 

By 1838, the sailings were timed to meet trains arriving in Preston from the south with passengers transferred via a horse-drawn carriage. One can assume this was between the Packet Boat basin as described by Sir George Head just north of Preston Basin, and the railway station via Charnley Street or Fox Street and Fishergate as the southern end of Corporation Street would not be made until the 1880s.

Despite the opening of the railway, the vessels proved popular with cheaper fares, warmed cabins and passed closer to centres such as Garstang than the railway, ‘Why of course we travel by water, it’s fast, much more comfortable than a horse or coach and there are no highwaymen here’ wrote one business traveller (Rigby, 2006, p15). A permanent exhibition on the service in Lancaster Maritime Museum called the packet boats 'the aristocrats among the canal vessels'.

Nevertheless, with the opening of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway in 1846 including its branches to Kendal and Windermere, the Canal Company 'admitted defeat' and withdrew the packet boat service (Lancaster Maritime Museum, 2023). Two survived and were kept as inspection vessels with shortened cabins with Crewdson, later Waterwitch II lasting until 1929 when it was broken up.

By the end of the 1800s, the packet boat service would be receding into memory and the railways ascendent. The Victorian Preston journalist Anthony Hewitson wrote of the service in his book 'History of Preston (from A.D. 705 to 1883) in the county of Lancaster' published in 1883:

'During the Guild, in 1822, a canal packet went twice daily between Preston and Lancaster. A journey by this method would now-a-days be deemed a most sleepy, ridiculous affair; but in the early part of the present century such a journey involved much celerity, and amounted to something quite wonderful. Respecting transit per packet, on the canal northward, it was looked upon as a very choice, first-rate thing. A published notice, emanating, at this time, from the Canal Company, says that "for safety, economy, and comfort no other conveyance could be so eligible as the Packet Boats; for there the timid might be at ease, and the most delicate mind without on the canal must, after all, have been a tiresomely slow process, notwithstanding these attractively fear." Travelling worded advantages; for in 1833, many years after the foregoing announcement was made, the speed of a "swift packet boat," on the canal named, was only about ten miles an hour. A person can now go, by rail, from Preston to London, in three hours less time than it took to travel from Preston to Kendal, on the canal, by the swiftest packet, in 1833! As we have already stated, the canal system of travelling materially affected coaches. In seven years - from 1830 to 1837 - the number of coaches running into and out of Preston decreased from 81 to about 12! About the year 1842, the last coaches-the north mail and that which passed south-ceased to run here. The railway system of travelling, which, by this time, had under-gone considerable development, entirely superseded that by coaches. The average speed of the mail coaches was about 10 miles per hour. Much of the canal traffic was also soon done away with, on account of the superior facilities offered by the railway system. In 1840, during which year the line between Preston and Lancaster was opened, that portion of the canal connecting the two towns was leased to the railway company, and not long afterwards an end was put to all passenger traffic thereon. In 1846, when railway communication between Preston and Kendal was established, the passenger service, which, up to that time, had been conducted on the canal, between Kendal and Lancaster, was discontinued. Since then the canal, along its whole length, from Preston to Kendal, has been principally used for the conveyance of coal, stones, &c.' (Hewitson, 198 - 199).

Both a replica of the packet boat Waterwitch II and a scale model of the same vessel are on display in the Lancaster Maritime Museum. The caption for the model reads: 'Model of the packet boat, Crewdson, (later known as Waterwitch II). The fast packet boat, Crewdson, was built for the Lancaster Canal Company in 1839 and named after its chairman. It was introduced to help improve passenger services between Preston and Kendal and fend off competition from the Lancaster & Preston Junction Railway opened in 1840. Withdrawn from service in 1846, it was later cut down and renamed Waterwitch II and used as an inspection boat. It was broken up in 1929. This model was made in 1915 by Monsieur M. Lile, a Belgian refugee resident in Lancaster. He presented the model to the town in gratitude for the hospitality he received. It was modelled on the real vessel laid up on the canal side at Aldcliffe Road, Lancaster.'

The beginning of the 1800s was witness to immense technological changes; little did Cartwright realise his tramroad would play a small part in developing a means and technology to supersede canals. Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated the world’s first steam powered road vehicle, the Puffing Devil in 1802 and in the same year the world’s first rail mounted steam engine, the Pen-y-Darren Locomotive which ran on the 9¾ mile long Merthyr Tydfil tramroad, between Pen-y-Darren and Abercynon.

Advances in steam technology, in particular 'the harnessing of high-pressure or 'strong' steam towards the very end of the eighteenth century' coinciding with the advancement of boiler construction by the 1790s, allowed for 'higher pressures and greater power', suitable for transport purposes (Gwyn, p88). The Avenham Incline was one of the first locations in the world to demonstrate a stationary steam engine haul wagon loads by an endless chain when it opened in 1803 (Gwyn, p89).

In this same period military conflicts and the Napoleonic wars between 1803 and 1815 helped advance iron casting and iron production. The wars also inflated the price of horse feed and with it the cost of conveying coal from mines, coal 'viewers', managers of collieries were keen to test new methods of extracting and transporting coal to canals and quaysides. 

By the turn of the nineteenth century, tramroads were being constructed as 'feeder' lines to canals or in the case of the Lancaster Canal, to bridge the gap between two canals. 

Tramroads used either cast iron 'L' profile (cross sectioned) plate rails or 'T' profile edge rails, both had advantages and disadvantages. The Preston and Walton Summit tramroad used 'L' profile plate rails with flange-less wheels which, in theory, allowed them to be hauled or pushed along a road as well as along the plateway. In practice, it is unlikely the wagons went any further from the ends of the plateways and 'splice roads' at Preston Basin and Walton Summit Basin (Moreover, a fine of five shillings were levied against 'halers' who mistreated the 'rail road' as a road when derailments led to wagons 'thrown out of the regular course of the Road' and were not properly re-railed, damaging the sleepers and tramplates (Barritt, p88)). 

William Jessop, who was retained as an advisor to the Lancaster Canal Company and to William Cartwright, pioneered the 'T' profile edge rail in 1793 (although Cartwright chose the 'L' profile rail for use between Preston and Walton Summit). On 'T' profile rails, the wagons and later locomotives had flanged wheels and through later modifications meant less friction between the iron wheel and iron rail, the forerunner to today's railway rail.

Meanwhile George Stephenson witnessed William Hedley’s steam engines Puffing Billing and Wylam Dilly haul coal wagons using adhesion of iron wheels on iron rails at Wylam Colliery. Stephenson was born in a cottage adjacent to the colliery in 1781, and by his thirties was developing his own steam engines for the Killingworth Colliery between 1814 and 1816, improving on the designs of Hedley and Trevithick. By 1820, John Birkenshaw had patented longer, malleable, wrought iron 'T' profile edge rails allowing for heavier loads and higher speeds.

In November 1822, Stephenson opened the world’s first purpose built, mechanically operated eight mile long private railway at Hetton Colliery using steam locomotives and stationary engines. By 1825, Stephenson had supervised the construction of the 25 mile long Stockton and Darlington Railway with Birkenshaw’s patented edge rails. It was the world’s first public railway opening on 27 September 1825 and the first train was hauled by Locomotion No. 1 built in the world’s first locomotive workshop, Robert Stephenson and Company in Newcastle. It hauled 38 wagons carrying 600 passengers at a top speed of 15 mph. By 1826, Stephenson had overseen the design and construction of the world’s first intercity line, the 35 mile long Liverpool and Manchester Railway which opened in 1830. The Railway Age had arrived. 

For 35 years the canal and tramroad worked in harmony until 31 October 1838, with the opening of the North Union Railway between Wigan and Preston. The railway’s approach into Preston spanned the Ribble via the 873 ft long, classical ashlar sandstone Ribble Viaduct featuring five wide elliptical arches, rusticated voussoirs and a moulded cornice, designed by railway engineer Charles Vignoles. For Preston, the engineering works 'were of a scale never before seen in the district.' The cutting at the northern end through 'The Cliffe' [the western end of East Cliff] was 29 ft deep, and the embankment on its southern approach was forty feet high on a base ninety feet wide.' (Hunt, 2009, 197-198).

The North Union Ribble Viaduct's immense structure signalled the arrival of the Railway Age in Preston, directly linking the town to Manchester and Liverpool and London, 218 miles away via Birmingham. The North Union Railway made its terminus just over 100 yards west of the tramroad tunnel, signalling new and direct competition to the pairing of canal and tramroad. 

Preston was again quick to exploit this new means of transport as ‘Canal Mania’ gave way to ‘Railway Mania’; ‘The building of the North Union aroused intense interest in country districts to the north of Preston and, before it was ready for opening, three lines extending the railway system beyond the Ribble had been authorised’ (Greville and Holt, p95). 

From the new railway terminus a railway was proposed north to Lancaster by the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway. The alignment of the railway was protested by the Lancaster Canal Company, arguing the loss and disruption to 35 acres of land and facilities that it had developed west of the canal and Preston Basin including the canal’s foundry and a westward branch of the tramroad to coal yards on Pitt Street. Nevertheless the railway was approved and was duly opened on 25 June 1840 between Preston and Lancaster Penny Street terminus. A precarious arrangement existed for seven years with the tramroad spur crossing the railway tracks on the level to reach the Pitt Street coal yards until 1847.

By 1837, the Bolton and Preston Railway took over ownership of the tramroad from the Lancaster Canal Company and had exercised the idea of converting it into a railway as a means to access Preston from Bolton and Chorley. Near Preston Basin, 2,000 sq yards of land north of Fishergate was set aside for the construction of their new station and sidings. The railway company built a short transfer siding from their terminus to Preston Basin, marking the beginning of the railway's encroachment of the canal and basin and paid the Lancaster Canal Company £8,000 per year for the access rights. Yet one year later, the company had already abandoned the idea, signing an agreement on 4 July 1838 to share tracks from Euxton Junction with the North Union Railway into Preston (the present day West Coast Mainline). The Bolton and Preston Railway used a short-lived single platform station called Maxwell House from 1842 to 1844 located just north of the Victoria Hotel at 78 - 79 Fishergate before using the North Union station, now Preston’s main railway station. 

At this point the Bolton and Preston Railway was 'saddled with the tramroad which they no longer needed, but which the canal company had no desire to take back. Eventually they agreed to maintain it for the canal company's use at a reduced rental of £7,400 to allow for the expense of upkeep' (Hadfield and Biddle, p199). 

The Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway company had run into difficulties with its neighbours the North Union and the Bolton and Preston railway companies over the use of Preston railway station. It also faced competition from the Preston and Wyre Railway which had opened a railway to Fleetwood in July 1840 from its terminus at Preston Maudlands station west of Leighton Street. From Fleetwood, passengers could then take a packet steamer to Ardrossan, the fastest route between London and Glasgow at the time until 1848 when the journey could be made entirely by rail. 

This literal and figurative chaotic landscape was not uncommon in the early years of railway construction, ‘lines were built for little beyond local profit, and Preston quickly developed a plethora of lines - all owned by separate companies and each with a different central station.’ (Hunt, 2003, p75). By 1844 five railways served Preston, each with its own station (Biddle, 2003, p519). 

On 1 September 1842, the Lancaster Canal Company took over the running of the local services on the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway due to the railway’s financial difficulties. It was unprecedented for a canal company to run a railway company, and it did so for seven years until 1 August 1849. The company withdrew its highly successful packet boat service, ‘increasing the railway fares and removing seats from the third class carriages so that more passengers could be carried standing… thereby creating a local transport monopoly: passengers and merchandise by rail; coal and minerals by canal’ (Biddle, 2018, p104). 

Rails reached Carlisle by 1846 and exploiting a loophole in the contract the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway Company ran fast services between Carlisle and Preston which the canal company resisted. 'The greatest problem on the line at this time was that the Lancaster & Preston had virtually ceased to manage, and the Lancaster & Carlisle did more or less what it wanted' (White, p36-37). In 1848, ‘The inevitable happened - an express ran into the back of the stopping train at Bay Horse station [between Preston and Lancaster] resulting in one fatality, and the Board of Train had to intervene.’ (Hunt, 2003, p71). 

To compound the situation, Preston station expanded rapidly but dysfunctionally. A busy interchange that initially began with just two platforms, passengers had to walk between trains set down north of the station and the station itself due to a disagreement between the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway and North Union Railway companies. By the mid 1800s and barely 12 years old, the station was 'deemed to be decrepit, dangerous and wholly inadequate for the purpose it was intended to serve.' (Gregson, 2011, p41). Within the station, passengers had to walk across the tracks within the station in the absence of footbridges and subways.

The initial approach to the station from the south was over the double track North Union Railway bridge which was widened on its east side in 1880 and on its west side in 1904. From the north, the railway threaded through a double track Fishergate railway tunnel, 'through passengers were supposed to either pay a supplement to be carried on to the North Union or else to walk through the tunnel and risk missing their train, a very real probability given the lack of co-operation between the two companies!' (White, p22). 

The Fishergate tunnel was demolished in the mid 1870s for a widened throat, only to be widened again in the early 1900s. The station expanded in a piecemeal fashion and its owner the North Union Railway often prevaricated over track and access rights. Preston station is ‘one of the most dismal, dilapidated, disgraceful looking structures in Christendom’ wrote Preston historian and journalist Anthony Hewitson (Hindle, p51). 

Further conflict arose between the North Union Railway and the East Lancashire Railway, the latter of which sought its own dedicated railway into Preston. The railway planned a new station with the Preston and Lancaster Railway at Dock Street by Preston Basin but the idea was rejected by the House of Lords. 

Instead the company built and opened a new line in 1850 known as the 'Bamber Bridge and Preston Extension' from a junction between Lostock Hall and Bamber Bridge. It formed a ‘panhandle’ passenger and goods station adjoining the North Union’s Preston station between Butler Street and Garden Street on land called Alms House Meadow. Part of the land had previously been traversed by tramroad sidings to a timber yard. The new Butler Street station and goods yard left the tramroad’s main embankment extant but narrowed to allow vehicular access to its goods shed.

Arguments and haggling over staff, management and cost sharing were resolved by none other than Isambard Kingdom Brunel who was brought in to arbitrate between the warring companies, with a resolution reached by 1856. It was not until 1879 - 80 that a newly rebuilt station was opened with its ramped Fishergate entrance, ‘quite brilliant and beautiful’ stated Anthony Hewitson (Johnson, 2016, p54). 

After successive expansion, Preston station reached its zenith in 1913 boasting 15 platforms. Despite this, resentment and division between the various companies using the station were not fully resolved until amalgamation and the creation of the London Midland Scottish (LMS) railway in 1923 (Gregson, 2011, p24 and 41). 

The fraught relationship between canal and railway played out nearby at Preston Basin. Samuel Gregson foresaw the shift from canal and tramroad to rail, and the offloading of the tramroad to the Bolton and Preston Railway Company was seen as a 'sagacious move' on the canal's part (Hadfield and Biddle, p199). Gregson tasked George Stephenson, the ‘Father of Railways’ to explore the possibility of converting the tramroad to a railway to expedite transhipment. Stephenson’s recommendations included two diversions, four self-acting inclines and the retention of the Avenham incline. They were dismissed outright by Gregson as impractical who wrote disparagingly of Stephenson’s efforts (Barritt, p93), 'I cannot but consider Mr. Stephenson's plan attended with many difficulties and inconveniences, not only in execution, but even in operation. He estimated the cost would be £11,895.' (Hadfield and Biddle, p198). 

In 1813, Thomas Fletcher, who had worked for the company for 17 years, proposed replacing the tramroad with the long-sought after canal. It appears Cartwright's tunnel would be abandoned and a new tunnel under Fishergate bored. A canal 30 ft wide at the surface and 14 ft wide at the bottom, 4 miles and 5 furlongs long with a three arch aqueduct spanning the Ribble constructed at a cost of £160,537 5s 6d between Preston Basin and Walton Summit would complete the 'missing link'. Deemed too costly, this plan came to nothing (Barritt, p76 and 89). 

In 1816, Gregson’s younger son, Bryan Padgett Gregson, took over the running of the Lancaster Canal Company and turned again to exploring ways to improve the tramroad; improved wagon brakes, enlarging and double tracking the 300 yard long Fishergate tunnel and bypassing the Avenham incline were suggested but came to nothing, most likely because of the costs involved. Thomas Baines in his volume, 'History of Lancashire', noted by 1825 the optimism for an aqueduct and canal had faded and had instead been replaced by a mood of frustration (Barritt, p90).

From 1828, improvements to manufacturing iron enabled 9 ft long tramplates cast by Lyndsay & Co. of Preston to be used inside the Fishergate tunnel and at Walton Summit enabling heavier and longer tramloads but such gains were short lived (Barritt, p92 - 93). 

The final and perhaps most ambitious proposal to replace the tramroad was submitted by Twyford and Wilson, a Manchester firm of surveyors and civil engineers. In 1827, they proposed bypassing Preston by joining the two ends of the Lancaster Canal by cutting a new canal between Poulton and the Ribble at Freckleton through Kirkham. From Kirkham, a branch would be cut to the Lancaster Canal at Salwick. It would then cross the Ribble on movable wooden 3 in. 'Booms', beams of wood moored to the bed of the Ribble with chains that would rise and fall with the tides and be lit to prevent collisions with vessels navigating the Ribble estuary. Barges would then meet the River Douglas Navigation on the south side of the Ribble from which they could join the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Lathom, near Burscough. Presented to the Lancaster Canal Committee, the scheme was rejected and the tramroad's future secured once again (Barritt, p91).

Once the tramroad fell out of favour, railway sidings quickly swept aside the remains of the tramroad serving wharves both north and south of the basin. The merger of the Bolton and Preston Railway and North Union Railway companies in 1844 allowed for the construction of sidings arching off the new railway at Dock Street Junction, overwhelming the canal and Preston Basin. Two lifting bridges carried railway sidings across from Dock Street Junction to the east side of the canal where coal wharves dominated on Ladywell Street, and the entire south side of the wharf became the railway served Dock Street Coal depot. As Preston Basin fell out of use, a third railway bridge was installed over the canal just north of the basin which appears in photographs unable to lift and fixed in position, effectively cutting off the basin from the canal. 

To the west of the canal, rail served wharves dominated with a single track railway reaching north of Marsh Lane by dipping beneath the Marsh Lane bridge alongside the canal reaching coal yards and Leighton Street slip basin. Each railway wagon could be turned within the wharves by way of wagon turntables. Each wagon could then be tipped into barges waiting below by way of ‘tipplers’, cantilevered railway frames that stuck out over the canal at right angles. Tipplers were a little longer than a standard coal wagon and restrained each wagon, tipping their contents into an awaiting barge below. 

Meanwhile, the tramroad became an ‘unwanted millstone’ around the Bolton and Preston Railway; it was ‘never altered, changed or upgraded to the status of a railway’ (Barritt, p98) and ‘would rapidly become an anachronism’ (Biddle, 1980, p23). The timber trestle bridge and the stationary winding houses were a particular drain on resources, repairs were made to the bridge, then in a precarious state in the mid-1850s, and a new boiler was installed in the Avenham engine shed in 1858. Tramroad plates often had to be replaced or realigned, and wooden pegs often swelled after wet and icy weather and split the stone sleepers. Although the block sleepers enabled horses to walk unhindered between the tramplates, that they were not joined to their counterpart under the opposite tramplate meant tramplates become unaligned over time with the weight and vibration of passing tramloads. 

The tramroad survived only as long as it did because of a stipulation of the Bolton and Preston Railway Act requiring that the tramroad had to remain open to prevent a monopoly on coal delivered to Preston by the North Union Railway Company. Once this condition expired, the last horse-hauled wagon load left Walton Summit for Preston Basin in January 1862. The tramroad eventually closed in 1864 between Bamber Bridge and Preston, and in the same year the London and North Western Railway leased the North End of the Lancaster Canal and Leeds and Liverpool Canal leased the South End of the Lancaster Canal. 

The tramroad remained open to carry coal to factories and mills in Bamber Bridge from Walton Summit but eventually closed in 1879, with the tramplates lifted and Walton Summit basin abandoned by 1895 (Tonks, p5). The South End of the Lancaster Canal remained in water for traffic between Whittle-le-Woods and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal but was dewatered and infilled during the construction of the M61 motorway in the late 1960s. On 17 July 1872, ownership of the tram bridge and the tree-lined embankment over the flood plain to Carr Wood was transferred from the London and North Western Railway to Preston Corporation. With the construction of Corporation Street in the 1880s, the cutting north of the Fishergate tramroad tunnel was filled in. The tramroad tunnel was widened and rebuilt in 1884 by the London and North Western Railway Company for road access to the Butler Street Goods Yard from Corporation Street and Charnley Street, still in use today for the Fishergate Shopping Centre.

The London and North Western Railway Company 'bought all the property belonging to the Lancaster Canal Company for half a million pounds in 1885' (Gregson, 2012, p50). On 1 January 1886, the Lancaster Canal Company was dissolved and commemorated by the striking of silver medallions, and 'For the next four decades the Canal operated on a reduced scale but decline continued.' (Visit Lancaster, Why Build the Lancaster Canal?).

Preston Basin survived the purchase; 'The L. N. W. [London and North Western Railway] intended to fill in the canal basin at Preston, together with a section from there to Greenbank, and build a large wharf with sidings at Garstang for the transhipment of coal. The idea was deemed to be impracticable' (Gregson, 2012, p50).

The canal continued to operate into the first half of the 20th century serving canalside industries without direct railway competition, but as the railways and later road haulage continued to develop, the canals found themselves unable to keep pace with change. For the Lancaster Canal, the broader but shallow depth of the channel ‘precluded full loading of barges’ and made them uneconomical (Hadfield and Biddle, p427). The number of barges working the canal between 1875 and 1944 starkly demonstrates the canal as a declining means of haulage: 1875: 55 boats, 1907: 33 boats, 1916: 25 boats, 1920: 21 boats, 1931: 15 boats, 1942: 7 boats, 1944: 6 Boats (Lancaster Canal Trust, 2023).

By 1938, the basin was filled in and the western end saw additional coal yard sidings laid on top. Preston Basin then fell victim to another, new form of transport. 

A plan contained in Lancashire Archives shows an agreement for a sale of land straddling the remainder of the basin and the southernmost canal warehouse dated 21 June 1937 to Barton Townley for a car showroom and garage. This may have become a showroom for Bradshaw’s and/or Loxham's Garages which in turn became the Dutton-Forshaw car showroom. 

Dutton-Forshaw was itself demolished and cleared in around 1986 and 1987 to make way for the Corporation Street Retail Park which opened after the western extension of Ringway through to Marsh Lane and Penwortham via the Penwortham Bypass Bridge. 

During the construction of the western extension of Ringway in that began around 1986 and 1987, the cellar walls of the warehouses that spanned the head of Preston Basin were briefly exposed before being covered over again (Barritt, p85). In a photograph taken by Aidan Turner-Bishop and deposited within a collection in Lancashire Archives (DDX 104/ACC13365/75/15), the site of the recently demolished southern warehouse can be seen by the Dutton Forshaw car showroom which itself would be demolished shortly afterwards.

Justification for the routing of Ringway via this site can be found in an 'Application for permission to develop land etc.' form dated 9th August 1985 in Lancashire Archives (DDX1830/2/3) titled the 'Extension of Penwortham By-Pass from Strand Road to Ringway, Preston'. This would follow the first stage of Penwortham bypass which opened in May 1985 between Cop Lane and Strand Road. In section 3.1 of the application, Lancashire County Council noted that, 'In determining the route of the Cop Lane to Strand Road section of the Penwortham By-Pass, the County Council and Preston Borough Council were mindful that this would restrict any extension towards Ringway to a line closely following the existing Marsh Lane, at least as far as the point where it would pass under the main railway line. The route between the railway bridge and Corporation Street, which lines arrived at after public consultation is felt to be the best option available.'

An accompanying plan shows the route of the then proposed Ringway extending west from Friargate where the road originally terminated. It would cut west, involving the demolition of the rear of the Public Hall and Wharf Street, creating a new and enlarged junction with Corporation Street. Ringway would then head further west, south of the site of Preston Basin involving the demolition of the remaining, southern canal warehouse and the Dutton-Forshaw car showroom built over the eastern end of the basin. The road would then turn in a sharp north-westerly direction curving over the former 'T' junction of the Lancaster Canal and basin on a slight embankment, before falling to pass beneath the West Coast Mainline via a new bridge at Marsh Lane. 

This plan was more or less realised when built and fortunately Preston Basin was not directly affected by Ringway's route or construction. The land left by the demolition of the remaining canal warehouse and Dutton-Forshaw car showroom was developed into the Corporation Street Retail Park, opening in the early 1990s. Most of the former Preston Basin lies beneath the retail park's car park.

The canal fell into dereliction from the former Preston Basin northwards. It gradually filled with waste and natural siltation but was used intermittently by pleasure craft making excursions northwards that began at the Leighton Street and Maudland basins during the mid-1950s for a couple of years (Gibbs, p5).

The Lancaster Canal’s decline was mirrored across the country’s canal network. The Transport Act of 1953 allowed the British Transport Commission to close 771 miles of under-used or derelict canals. Sections of the Lancaster Canal closed in stages: 5 ¾ miles of canal between Stainton Crossings bridge and Kendal which had long suffered leaks due to limestone fissures were closed and drained and the last two miles sold to adjoining landowners but many of the bridges remain in situ. The section from Stainton to Tewitfield Locks was officially closed and ‘ponded’ in order to maintain flow from feeders as a 'remainder waterway', ‘leaving 47 miles of level, navigable waterway from Preston to Tewitfield, and the 2 ¾ miles-long Glasson branch with six locks; the state of the canal as it is today’ (Biddle, 2018, p118), as a 'cruising waterway'.

In 1965, the M6 extension north of Carnforth was authorised and the canal was severed in three places by the motorway at the Northern Reaches, north of Tewitfield, and a further three locations where local roads were rerouted, leaving culverts only large enough to take water flow between the severed sections of canal. The Association for the Restoration of the Lancaster Canal (later the Lancaster Canal Trust) was founded in December 1963 to fight the plans but to no avail (Ibid).  Today, the Lancaster Canal Trust campaigns to have the section of canal between Tewitfield and Kendal restored.

A further severing of the canal occurred just east of Hincaster tunnel with the construction of the A590 Kendal link road in the mid-1970’s, cutting through the former canal at an acute angle.

Meanwhile, Lancaster Canal’s South End between Walton Summit and Johnson’s Hillock was cut in three locations by the construction of the M61 motorway from 1968 and a new terminus made at Town Lane at the site of Johnson's Hillock Bridge.  Bridging the disused three mile long 'Summit Branch' canal was not seen as justifiable by the Ministry of Transport and British Waterways Board who instead chose to ‘denavigate’ the canal and infill the alignment with spoil from motorway cuttings with parts returned to agricultural land (Yeadon, p66) (see also Lancaster Canal & Tramroad today).

In December 1959, Preston Highways Committee declared its intention to widen Aqueduct Street, a narrow, single lane road which passed beneath the Lancaster Canal. 

In the same year, the ¾ mile section of the canal south of Aqueduct Street to Preston Basin was drained and the aqueduct demolished in 1964 thus severing the canal. This left the alignment between Aqueduct Street, Preston Basin and Corporation Street isolated. 

Despite successive waves of redevelopment, remarkably most of the former canal can still be traced through Preston. It is today known as Lancaster Canal’s ‘lost mile’. 

For further reading and images, please see the following sections: Lancaster Canal & Tramroad today and Gallery.