Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00I'm heading out across Britain to find the history embedded in the landscape.
00:07This is a country where you're never very far from an ancient routeway,
00:12a glimpse of lost industry, or a grand monument from our past.
00:17So from coastal paths to hilltop tracks...
00:21I've started doing some serious walking.
00:25Each of my walks leads me to a different time and a stunning location
00:31to find the stories you can only really appreciate on foot.
00:36This time, I'm walking through the early years of industrial Lancashire.
00:40My guide, one of the greatest wonders of the industrial age,
00:43the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.
00:46The longest single canal in Britain, it stretches 127 miles.
00:51It took 46 years to build and cost a whopping £4 billion in today's money.
00:57But it set Liverpool and Lancashire up for a mighty future.
01:01The city of Liverpool has had an extraordinary history.
01:17Little more than a century ago, over a third of all world trade flowed through here.
01:25These docks were the hub of trans-Atlantic commerce,
01:28handling cotton, tobacco and sugar imported from the New World.
01:34But Liverpool's success wouldn't have been possible without its unsung hero,
01:38the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.
01:41It was the canal that connected the city with the rest of Britain.
01:46To uncover its impact, I'm taking a three-day walk along the Lancashire half of the route.
01:52Starting in the city centre, I'll follow the canal north to Aintree, home of the Grand National.
01:59From there, it's into Lancashire's agricultural heartland and the canal junction at Burscoe,
02:07before heading to Parbold, where the route and long-term future of the canal took a major turn.
02:12On my last day, I'll visit the canal-side settlement at Crook,
02:17before reaching Lancashire's coal capital, the home of Wigan Pier,
02:22and the flight of locks that completed the construction of this canal.
02:31So, unusually, I'm starting my 41-mile walk in the city centre.
02:36Rather more gritty than pretty.
02:39These three iconic buildings epitomise Liverpool's history, don't they?
02:44You've got the Port of Liverpool building there, the Customs building, the Liver building, of course.
02:50There from the time when Liverpool was known as the Manhattan of the north of England.
02:55It was so wealthy from all the goods leaving our shores, coming into our shores.
03:01Liverpool connected us to the rest of the globe.
03:06This city remains justly proud of its maritime history.
03:11But I'm on the trail of a more obscure part of the Liverpool story.
03:15Hello.
03:16So I'm meeting industrial historian William Ashworth for an insight.
03:19Most people think of Liverpool and they think the docks, they think cotton,
03:24they think slavery, they think sugar, they think tobacco.
03:27But what's missing in the story, typically, is the important role of the canals.
03:32You say important. Why was the canal built in the first place?
03:36A dock is only as good as it can reach inland.
03:39So industry can grow up around canals and you can link places that couldn't be linked before.
03:46So they're really, absolutely crucial.
03:49When Liverpool built its first dock in 1715, it was a tiny town with a population of just 5,000.
03:56To grow, it had to encourage its imports to be traded further inland and enable Britain's manufactured goods to be exported through its port.
04:07But the road network was terrible.
04:09So in 1768, Liverpool's leading merchants met with their peers from Leeds, the burgeoning Yorkshire textile metropolis on the other side of the Pennines.
04:22They discussed a canal that could link their two centres of industry.
04:26Who decided what the route of the canal would be? The people of Leeds or the people of Liverpool?
04:32A very good question. Both interests had different ideas.
04:37What were the two different interests, though?
04:39Well, the people of Leeds wanted the shortest route possible.
04:45Their priority to begin with was to access the limestone of Yorkshire, bring it to Bradford,
04:50where they could use the coal mines around Bradford to reduce it to quicklime to use as fertiliser
04:57and to use as mortar to help with the building of mills and so forth.
05:02So that was all about textiles in a way, wasn't it? In a way, yes.
05:05But presumably people around here weren't interested in that at all.
05:09They wanted to finish textiles, but their priority was very much to access the coal from Wigan and the coal mines around there.
05:16But when the original survey was carried out, a northerly route towards the Pennines was proposed, bypassing Wigan entirely.
05:26Now, the people of Liverpool, of course, didn't want that at all and walked out of the meeting.
05:31It was War of the Roses, wasn't it? Very much so, yeah.
05:34The contentious route was eventually signed off thanks to a last-minute piece of diplomacy,
05:40which allowed the canal to include an offshoot to the Wigan coal fields.
05:44The Halifax-born Yorkshireman John Longbottom was appointed chief engineer,
05:50and to keep both sides of the party happy,
05:53he decided that work should begin simultaneously on both the Yorkshire and Lancashire sides.
06:01I'm off to find where that Lancashire side ended here in Liverpool,
06:05and discover the canal's effect on the city.
06:07What I do know is that after it opened in 1774, during the reign of George III,
06:13Liverpool's population exploded to nearly 80,000.
06:18Apparently the city still has more Georgian buildings than Bath,
06:23although right now they're not very apparent.
06:25Well, I didn't expect to turn the corner and be miraculously transported into the 18th century,
06:31but there's nothing remotely canally here, is there?
06:34Old Leeds Street.
06:38That rings something of a bell.
06:41Let's have a look.
06:43This is this area a hundred years ago.
06:47Look, yeah, there's Leeds Street there.
06:50Coalyard, Coalyard, Coalyard, Coalyard, Coalyard, Coalyard, Coalyard.
06:53Vauxhall Vitriol Works, Water Works, and there is the canal.
07:01So, if I was standing here in the 18th century, my feet would be very wet.
07:10At the canal's original terminus, all you'll find is this little company office.
07:14But, incredibly, much of the main canal was used for business as recently as 1981.
07:21And if you wander north from the city centre, all the old infrastructure is still in place.
07:28Stanley Dock is the clue that I'm getting close.
07:33A series of locks linked this dock directly to the canal.
07:38And perhaps it's no coincidence that that's why this massive building
07:42was built right there.
07:45In 1900, the tobacco warehouse was the biggest brick building in the world.
07:51Over 27 million bricks went into its construction.
07:55And just like a host of other imports,
07:58the valuable tobacco could now be brought into the docks, stored,
08:03and then distributed inland via the canal.
08:07And that's where I'm heading now.
08:09Finally, I've found the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.
08:17Morning.
08:22One of the things I love so much about walking along by the side of a canal
08:26is that you feel so shut off from the rest of the city, don't you?
08:30It's hard to imagine that 150 years ago
08:32this would have been full of deafening noise and stink,
08:36and it would have looked like total chaos.
08:41This area, Vauxhall, became Liverpool's epicentre for industry.
08:46As the Industrial Revolution took hold and steam power became all-important,
08:51it turned out the canal wasn't just useful for transport,
08:55it was a handy supplier of water too.
09:00You can't see them now, but there would have been pipes under the surface
09:04which would have fed water directly into the factories along the sides of the canal
09:09in order to power the steam engines,
09:10and then the condensed steam would come out again along other pipes back into the canal.
09:17It's pretty smooth here today, but in industrial hotspots like this,
09:22the water would have been bubbling like a witch's cauldron.
09:24A whole range of manufacturing industries grew up along here,
09:29making use of the raw materials that came into the port.
09:34The sugar from the Caribbean, flour from Ireland,
09:38even timber from the Baltic.
09:42Look at the number of products that originated here.
09:46Turned my rucksack into a bit of a shopping bag here, didn't I?
09:50Look.
09:52Bryant and May matches.
09:54600,000 of these an hour they were producing at one time.
09:59Crawford's Biscuits.
10:02Tate and Lyle, Sugar.
10:05Hartley's Jam.
10:08Could have a bit of a picnic with this look, couldn't they?
10:11These companies are no longer based here in Liverpool, which is rather sad.
10:16But walking a couple of miles further up the canal to Aintree,
10:19you can still find the remains of one idiosyncratic factory building.
10:25I know it's well past its sell-by date, but look at that.
10:29That used to be Hartley's Jam Factory.
10:32Aren't those gates magnificent?
10:35You can imagine Willy Wonka coming out of there, can't you?
10:37Yeah.
10:39To get a taste of Hartley's success, I've arranged to meet Pam Corbin,
10:43a leading historian of jams, for a potted history of the company.
10:48That is presumably strawberry jam.
10:50It is, and that's what Mr Hartley sort of sold most of all those years ago.
10:54What sort of amounts would he have sold?
10:56Oh, at the turn of the century, about a thousand tons a year.
10:59That's a lot of jam, isn't it?
11:00A lot of fruit, a lot of sugar.
11:02Do we know much about him?
11:03He started his early life as a grocer in Colne in Lancashire,
11:07and one year his jam supply didn't turn up,
11:11so he took things into his own hands and thought he'd better make his own,
11:14and must have made a very good product,
11:16because before long he moved his business down to Bootle,
11:19which was on the canal,
11:21and there he could access sugar from the Tate and Lyre factory,
11:25and he also had these wonderful stoneware pots made that would hold it,
11:29and this is one of the very early ones from the Hartley factory.
11:34Would the jam in those have tasted like the jam we get today?
11:37It would have tasted sweeter, 72% sugar content,
11:41much higher than we have today.
11:42Why was that?
11:44Because they were preserving it,
11:46and they really didn't want to risk their jams going mouldy.
11:50It's the sugar that's going to keep it,
11:52and it would keep for, you know, one, two, three, four, five years
11:55if it wasn't eaten.
11:57At the end of the 19th century,
12:00the Hartley jam factory could produce 1.3 million pots of jam a week,
12:05supplying the entire British Empire,
12:07as well as the new American market via the port.
12:11But jam wasn't the only canal-related benefit for the people of Aintree.
12:19Behind that rather ugly concrete wall is a global sporting icon,
12:22Aintree Racecourse, home of the Grand National.
12:26The famous steeplechase, now watched by over half a billion people each year,
12:32had truly humble origins.
12:34Racing was started on the Canal Side site in 1829 by a local hotelier.
12:41Ten years later, the event was transformed.
12:4550,000 people attended,
12:46and the name Grand National was coined for the first time.
12:51Anyone who's ever seen the Grand National on telly
12:54will have heard of the Canal Turn.
12:56Well, there's our canal through those trees there,
12:59and there's the turn.
13:01Some of the most exclusive views have even been from Canal Side terraces and floating pontoons.
13:12George V was in attendance in 1924, and apparently was given a Canal Side seat.
13:19Like so many of the enterprises that developed along the side of the canal,
13:25Aintree not only transformed the lives of the Lancashire locals,
13:29but everyone, rich or poor, near and far.
13:37Today I've seen the kind of impact that a canal can have on a city,
13:42a city that ends just about where I am now.
13:44But tomorrow I'm going to head out into the open country beyond the city limits.
13:50I want to find out how the canal transformed rural Lancashire
13:54into the heartland of industrial Britain.
14:03I'm walking from Liverpool to Wigan along the Liverpool Leeds Canal,
14:08and finally I've reached the open countryside.
14:10Yesterday I saw the impact that the Liverpool Leeds Canal had
14:16on Liverpool's sprawling industrial metropolis.
14:20Today I'm in for a bit more of a rural idyll,
14:23as I find out how the canal was originally made.
14:26And very nice it is too.
14:29So I've left Liverpool's suburbs at Lydiot,
14:32and I'm heading through the Lancashire countryside beside the canal's earliest stages.
14:36Just here the towpath is so peaceful, it's difficult to imagine this as the main arterial route
14:52into one of the world's biggest ports.
14:55Little more than a century ago, over two million tonnes of cargo
14:58were coming in and out of the city through here every year.
15:06Look at this lovely little bridge, isn't it pretty?
15:09It's supposed to be one of the first bridges ever put up over this canal.
15:14You can tell it's really old.
15:16Look, here's the clue.
15:19That isn't weathering, it's erosion from all the thousands and thousands of ropes
15:24that have dragged thousands of barges past this point over the best part of 200 years.
15:30This particular bridge was one of the very first to be built,
15:38because, odd as it may seem, work on the Lancashire end of the canal
15:42didn't start in Liverpool and work inland.
15:45It started here, in this rather tranquil setting, 14 miles from the city centre.
15:50Engineer John Longbottom decided that the canal should be built in one-mile sections,
15:57each supervised by different contractors to maximise efficiency.
16:02In 1770, the builders here at Hallsall were the first to get started.
16:08Since this is where it all began, I've arranged to meet local archaeologist Ian Miller
16:13to find out more about its construction.
16:16So what did the actual building consist of?
16:18A lot of man, with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows, and a lot of manual effort,
16:24working long days in all conditions, it must have been very, very hard.
16:28These are the navvies, which were, in many respects, a new class of workmen, if you like,
16:32because building something like this was pretty new to the landscape.
16:36So what was the first thing that they would do?
16:38Start digging.
16:41But here, I mean, presumably, this must have been a hill.
16:46That's right, yes, that's right.
16:47I mean, not a massive hill, if you look at it in general terms, but if you were faced with it with a pick and a shovel,
16:53you'd certainly think it was a pretty massive effort.
16:55So you've done this great big long trench, then what happens?
16:57You want to put water in it, but if you put water in immediately, it is just going to leak away immediately.
17:02So you've got to line the bottom of this canal. They did that using clay.
17:06That was watertight, was it?
17:08It was watertight, yes. It's just pure clay that they actually work, take out all the big rocks and other impurities,
17:13mix it with a little bit of water to make it fluid, and then put it into the canal, maybe up to three foot deep,
17:18and then compact it down, trample it down very firmly. And that does provide this impermeable layer that keeps the water in.
17:23Who did the trampling?
17:24Ah, well, interesting. The navvies did some of it, but in a longer section there's documents that talk about herds of cows,
17:31and even herds of sheep being hired to run up and down the channel, to compact it down tightly,
17:36which seemed to work very, very well indeed, very efficient.
17:39Well, respect to the navvies, and of course John Longbottom, the man who managed the enterprise.
17:44By delegating one-mile lengths to separate contractors, and by employing the local bovine population,
17:52in four years Longbottom completed the initial 24-mile Lancashire stretch he'd promised to the Liverpool sponsors.
18:02From 1774 onwards, this new highway through the countryside began to transform lives in this agricultural backwater.
18:10Families with farming backgrounds started to up sticks and build new lives, based in housing right beside the canal.
18:21And it was cottages like these that housed the real superheroes of the canal, the horses.
18:28In fact, horses were gainfully employed here towing boats until 1960.
18:33But I found out that a barge towed by a horse actually travelled the entire 127 miles of the canal just a year ago.
18:45It's one of only five left in the country, and apparently it's back on the canal again, just not this bit.
18:52So I thought, well, can't waste that opportunity.
18:54So a bit of a cheat, but I'm making a brief detour from my walk by jumping east to Bingley on the Yorkshire side of the canal to meet Bilbo.
19:07All you want to do is eat the grass, isn't it?
19:10All you want to do is eat the grass.
19:12Yes, I know.
19:13Though standing 15 hands tall, not so much a hobbit as a giant.
19:19250 years ago, one of Bilbo's predecessors became the first horse to pull a boat through these locks.
19:26It was a technological marvel that attracted a crowd of 30,000 people, and allegedly took just 29 minutes to complete.
19:34Mind you, Bilbo's pretty fast on his feet. Well, hooves.
19:38It's an inordinately long way from the front of the barge to the actual horse.
19:48Sue, why is it so long, this rope?
19:52To make sure that Bilbo doesn't fall in the canal.
19:55Why would he fall in if it was shorter?
19:58Well, the sideways pull would be really very strong on him.
20:02Particularly if the boat was loaded, because if the boat was loaded, it would sink into the water with some of the cargo,
20:06and it really grips in the water, but the short line just pulls the horse sideways.
20:12Is that barge like the barges that would have been plying their trade up and down here?
20:17No, not the typical boat. The more commonly used boats on this canal would have been wide beam.
20:22This is a narrowboat. But in actual fact, the bigger type of horses used on this canal often would have had to pull two narrowboats or one wide beam.
20:28How were they treated?
20:31There's dreadful stories of some cruelty going on. Horses that were deliberately pushed into the water.
20:37If you didn't like a horse, it was a biter or a kicker.
20:39But on the other hand, you know, generally, generally, you had to look after your horse really, really well in the sense of feeding it well, making sure it didn't get injured.
20:47Because we're back to this problem, it was your economic tool to help you get paid.
20:54Where would they have gotten them from?
20:56Well, some horses were specially bred for canal work.
20:59I'm afraid other horses were worn out horses.
21:02Because working in the cities, on the streets, on the cobbles, is very, very damaging to horses' legs.
21:07By 1774, horses were pulling boats along both the Yorkshire and Lancashire stretches of canal.
21:20All hours, seven days a week.
21:29At this point, the Yorkshire Canal stretched 28 miles from Leeds to Skipton,
21:34while in Lancashire, there were 29 miles from Liverpool to Parbold.
21:40Longbottom, the man in charge, simply had to complete the 70-mile stretch in the middle.
21:47Sounds simple, doesn't it?
21:49Well, this afternoon, I'll be finding out what actually happened
21:53as I continue my towpath trek back on the Lancashire side.
22:04I've reached the halfway point in my walk along the Lancashire side of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.
22:1120 miles outside Liverpool, I'm now heading to Parbold,
22:15the town which, in 1774 at least, was as far as the Lancashire end stretched.
22:22And even before this waterway ran all the way to Leeds,
22:26it was changing the lives of the people of Lancashire.
22:29This is the village of Bursko up ahead.
22:32It's got very ancient roots.
22:35The word Bursko's Viking for fortress in the woods.
22:39And like so many of the villages that I've encountered on this walk,
22:42the canal completely transformed it.
22:48As soon as the canal opened, Bursko became an important boating hub
22:53because the canal connected the locals with Lancashire's road network.
22:58That's a pub there that used to be called the Packet Inn
23:01because it's where passengers used to buy their tickets
23:04and get on the packet boats in order to go to Liverpool.
23:07Packet Inn.
23:08From its very beginnings, the barges not only carried cargo,
23:14but paying passengers,
23:16providing a quick and easy passage for businessmen and visitors
23:20to and from Liverpool.
23:25But while the packet boat service ended nearly a century ago,
23:29many of the canal-based industries survived for an incredibly long period.
23:34The coal barges, for instance,
23:35were still stopping off here in 1981.
23:41Hi, Reg.
23:43The last of Bursko's working boatmen still live here today.
23:45So I'm meeting the owners of Ribble,
23:48the Lawson family,
23:50whose traditional Leeds-Liverpool short boat
23:53has been in their family since it was built in the 1930s.
23:55I'm glad to be out of that wind.
23:58It's a bit parky up there, isn't it?
24:00Well, who are these reprobates then?
24:02Oh!
24:03Hiya!
24:05Hi, I'm Geoff Raper.
24:06Hi Geoff.
24:07Nice to meet you, Tony. George Lawson.
24:08Hi. Frank Lawson.
24:10Frank Lawson.
24:11So they all related to you?
24:12Yes.
24:13So you're a big boating family?
24:15We're a big boating family.
24:16We're a big boating family.
24:17Yeah.
24:18Well, it's finished now, actually.
24:19Yeah.
24:20This is probably one of the last iron boats left on the canal.
24:23What was it like on the barges when you were kids?
24:26When you were coming back from Liverpool empty,
24:28the hold of the boat then became a play area for the young children.
24:32Yeah.
24:33You'd have a swing on the beams and all that, you know.
24:36Is that you?
24:37No.
24:38This is a photograph of my father going into Liverpool.
24:41You see, he looks like you, doesn't he?
24:43Yeah.
24:44I look like him.
24:45Yeah.
24:46That's myself there.
24:47Mum and Dad and Cousin Barry.
24:49This is Tate and Lyles.
24:51Loaded and was waiting to be unloaded.
24:53What would the barges be carrying?
24:55Coal.
24:56When I was working, they were coal, yeah.
24:58The thing is with this, you got paid on tonnage.
25:00The more you got in it and the more trips that you did per week,
25:03the more you got paid.
25:05It was long hours.
25:07Probably start at four o'clock, five o'clock in the morning.
25:09In the summer months, it worked right through
25:11till probably eight or nine, you know, evening time.
25:14Could be dangerous, couldn't it?
25:16Could be very dangerous, yes.
25:17My uncle Tommy is a lad of about four,
25:20went with his father, my granddad,
25:22to chop some hay for the horse that was pulling the barge.
25:26And my granddad's turning the wheel,
25:28turning this hay up and beans and oats.
25:31And Uncle Tommy stuck his fingers in.
25:33Chopped them off.
25:35Well, what you do is about four years old,
25:39they took him back home
25:41and the district nurse came out on a bike, I believe,
25:44and just tidied the ends up.
25:46But it never seemed to trouble him all his life after that.
25:50He was a working bargeman and I don't...
25:52Have you cracked him in half?
25:53He would say,
25:54Legion, Liverpool, Canal.
25:55You know.
25:56He was that type of guy, Uncle Tommy.
25:58I don't want to be rude about your lovely barge,
26:01but it's a bit rough in here, isn't it?
26:07Is it all like this?
26:08Well, it's pretty cosy on forehead.
26:09Would you like to take a look?
26:10Oh, yeah.
26:11Look at that.
26:13Oh, that's really cosy, isn't it?
26:16I like that.
26:17And this fire, I'm on a parky day like this.
26:20Oh, I could live in there.
26:26People like the Lawsons depended on the canal
26:28for their livelihoods less than 50 years ago.
26:31Up and down the canal,
26:34they were mostly transporting the same goods
26:37as generations had done before them since 1774.
26:44Now, suddenly,
26:45the evidence of that industrial legacy
26:47is rapidly disappearing,
26:49or at least being transformed,
26:51for our 21st century world.
26:56One aspect of the canal's heritage seems safe enough, though.
26:59My walk's turning into a bit of a pub crawl.
27:03Two miles further on,
27:04I've reached a favourite boating haunt,
27:06the Ring of Bells.
27:09It wasn't simply a watering hole for thirsty bargees.
27:13It was a focal point
27:14for perhaps the most unexpected
27:16of the Leeds Liverpool's many products.
27:20All this cobbled surface here
27:23was a wharf unloading a very special kind of cargo,
27:27manure.
27:29Well, sewage, actually,
27:30or as it was euphemistically known in those days,
27:33mite soil.
27:37Liverpool's population explosion after the canal opened
27:40caused a number of knock-on effects.
27:4480,000 people produce a lot of waste.
27:49And in a move surely not foreseen by the original planners,
27:52the canal became the perfect solution.
27:57Sewage was collected every night to avert a disease pandemic.
28:02It was shipped out by canal into the Lancashire countryside.
28:06Up to 3,000 tonnes of it a week.
28:09From a Liverpudlian point of view, this sounds great.
28:13But what seems a bit more odd
28:15is that the local people welcomed the commodity
28:18with open arms, so to speak.
28:20In fact, sewage was one of the few commodities
28:23on which you didn't have to pay toll charges,
28:26because it was good for the fields
28:28and the Lancastrian farmers loved it.
28:31So who'd have thought it?
28:34The transportation of raw sewage,
28:37a measure of Liverpool's success
28:39and a key factor in Lancashire's agricultural wealth.
28:43Thankfully, the bottom's fallen out of the night soil market.
28:47In fact, people plying a trade on the canal
28:50are now few and far between.
28:52Hello. Hello.
28:54Well, nice to see there are still people working on the canal.
28:57What are you doing?
28:58I'm knitting based on traditional Gansies.
29:02What do you mean? What's a Gansie?
29:04It's an old name for a jumper, a working men's jumper.
29:08Fishermen used them and canal boatmen used them as well.
29:11They were made out of heavy oiled wool
29:14that kept them warm in the winter and kept them waterproofed.
29:18They had a pattern from the waist upwards.
29:21Why only from the waist upwards?
29:23Because when they got damaged, and they did get damaged
29:25on the bottom and on the sleeves,
29:27it was easy just to do a plain sleeve, a plain bottom,
29:30rather than carry on with the pattern all the time.
29:32That's really nice.
29:33Sorry to interrupt you.
29:34No problem. Bye.
29:36Bye.
29:38Well, some 25 miles from Liverpool,
29:41I'm approaching my final destination for the day, Parbold,
29:45where in the mid-1770s, the canal from Liverpool simply ended.
29:50Given the 200 years of industrial service that would follow,
29:56it's strange that for a few years,
29:59it seemed the Leeds-Liverpool canal would never be finished.
30:03I'm meeting leading canal expert Mike Clark to find out why.
30:08Hiya. How are you?
30:09It seems to be pretty appropriate that we met up here,
30:13because even though the canal was doing so well,
30:16it ground to a halt here, didn't it?
30:18Well, it did. It opened here in 1774,
30:21and then they did a little bit more over in the Yorkshire side,
30:24but basically, by the end of the 1770s, they'd run out of money.
30:29Why?
30:30Well, partly because, you know, building canals was such a new thing,
30:35and they really underestimated the cost that that was going to be.
30:38Was there financial mismanagement? Was it organised badly?
30:43Possibly. I mean, the engineer, Longbottom,
30:47seems to have overstretched himself as well,
30:50that he got involved with running packet boats here,
30:53he was involved with coal mines, and...
30:56Investing on the side.
30:57Yeah, and all of the accounts got sort of jumbled up.
31:01Yeah.
31:02And that's really why he was pushed out in the mid-1770s.
31:05He got the sack?
31:06He got the sack.
31:08How were things going financially in the country at that moment?
31:11Well, things were on a downhill track by then,
31:14because we were getting the...
31:16Well, we were always fighting the French at that time,
31:19but we were also having the American War of Independence,
31:23and it wasn't until about 1790
31:25that money was then available for starting building the canal again.
31:30By 1794, new Acts of Parliament had raised a further £200,000 to restart work.
31:39But after this decade-long hiatus,
31:41the planned route was now to be fundamentally changed.
31:44The main line of the canal was originally meant to head north-east to Leeds,
31:51with a sudden spur simply to give the Liverpudlians their much-needed access to the coal of Wigan.
31:57But, as you can see, the original route was never finished, and it's now a dead end.
32:02The original canal was supposed to get lots of limestone.
32:07Yeah.
32:08That was going to be the main traffic.
32:10By the 1790s, we've gone out of the age where limestone's become really important,
32:17and the main traffic was then coal.
32:20So we're right into the Industrial Revolution.
32:21So this spur heads up to the coalfields?
32:24It heads up to the coalfields, and the spur then becomes the main line of the canal.
32:29So, ironically, the ten-year delay, a disaster for most projects,
32:34actually ensured the canal's future success within an increasingly industrialised Britain.
32:39There is one sad story that needs to be told, though,
32:53and it's about poor old John Longbottom, the canal's original surveyor.
32:58After the canal company sacked him, he rather lost his way and ended up in poverty.
33:04He wrote to the canal company and asked them whether they would help him
33:07because of the contribution he'd made to its success,
33:11but they were slow in replying.
33:13He died, and all they could do was pay for his funeral.
33:17But as far as everyone else was concerned, the whole thing was a triumph.
33:22Whether they came from Leeds or Liverpool or Wigan, everyone felt that.
33:27And tomorrow, I'm going to find out how it turned Lancashire's coalfields
33:32into the mining capital of Britain.
33:37After a good night's sleep at the canal side village of Nuba,
33:49I'm looking forward to my final day on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.
33:54I'm really intrigued by what I might find today,
33:56because I'm heading off into Lancashire's coal country,
34:00and coal was the whole reason why the city of Liverpool wanted the Liverpool Leeds Canal in the first place.
34:07I'm picking up the canal again just outside Parbold,
34:11walking to the village of Crook before heading on to the coal capital of the region
34:15to find the iconic Wigan Pier,
34:19see the remains of Wigan's massive industrial works,
34:22and reach the locks where the Leeds-Liverpool Canal was finally completed.
34:27So, yes, I've been dying to say this for two days now,
34:31I'm on the road to Wigan Pier.
34:34And it's a rather lovely start.
34:38Morning.
34:39This picturesque stretch to Crook was originally intended as an offshoot from the main canal,
34:46supplying Liverpool with enough coal to service its industries.
34:50But once canal construction had recommenced in the 1790s,
34:55this stretch became part of the Leeds-Liverpool proper.
34:58The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, and this area was now coal country.
35:08This is Crook up here.
35:10I'm not sure what I was expecting,
35:13but probably something a bit more like Dante's Inferno
35:17than this gorgeous little chocolate box village.
35:21Before the canal arrived, Crook didn't even exist.
35:24But then, right through till the 1970s, when the coal ran out,
35:30this village was focused entirely on mining the six surrounding pits
35:35and bringing the coal to the canal.
35:40Almost two centuries of industry that's still vivid in the minds of Crook's residents.
35:47Hi, guys. How are you doing?
35:49All right. Such a lovely little place, particularly with the sun shining.
35:52It doesn't look like a pit village at all.
35:55Yeah, well, I suppose it doesn't, really, is it?
35:58But it was quite different at one time.
36:00What was it like?
36:01It was black and dirty.
36:03I mean, I moved here. I must have been about six years old.
36:07And it was ash.
36:09Just treading on ash going up, like, you know what I mean?
36:12How far away were the actual pits?
36:15Well, the nearest pit was probably about three or four hundred yards away,
36:18just past where Woodcock Row used to stand.
36:21That's Woodcock Row.
36:23Yeah, that's...
36:25We lived at 25 and then we moved to 18, I think.
36:29When work was at its height, how often would they have been loading a barge?
36:32Oof.
36:34I think they've probably had 20 minutes, 25 minutes turn around.
36:37Wow.
36:38Till old, a full barge, which was 80 tonnes.
36:41How did you get the coal from the loading points onto the barges?
36:45They all had their own tippers.
36:47And what they did, they just tipped the trucks up and the coal would fall into the barges.
36:51This is the tip that used to be right behind me, over here, on this high-raised ground.
36:57So that would have been right here?
36:59It would have been right there.
37:00Yes, where that black building is.
37:03So this tipper was right behind us.
37:06You've got a village which was black with soot.
37:10It's extraordinary, there's not sight nor sound of it.
37:13No.
37:15Thanks ever so much, Ollie.
37:16Cheers.
37:17Bye.
37:18This is all that's left of Crook's Collieries.
37:30You've got a mine shaft here and another one over there.
37:37But just imagine, when this place was in full spate, there would have been masses of tall chimneys,
37:42belching out smoke, there would have been coal dust everywhere, guys working all over the place.
37:49The noise would have been deafening.
37:51And all that has disappeared and been expunged from this landscape in my lifetime.
37:59Mind you, I need to be quite careful wandering around here.
38:03Apparently there were over a thousand shafts in the Wigan area.
38:10Many of which, no one knows where they are now.
38:13There's a story of a guy who was riding along on his horse and he was unseated and crashed to the ground and saw his horse disappear down a mine shaft.
38:22And apparently in 1945, a whole train disappeared down a mine shaft.
38:29I don't know quite how that happened, but I'm certainly going to tiptoe quite cautiously back to the towpath.
38:37Crook may have thrived as a coal town off the back of the canal, but it was my final destination, Wigan, that was the real coal capital of Lancashire.
38:46And what better way to arrive in the town than by canal boat.
38:53I'm catching a lift with former boatman, Derek Bent.
38:56Although I didn't expect to get a driving lesson.
39:00I mean, you've got the width. She's 14 foot five wide.
39:05He's going to show me up and he's not going to touch.
39:08He's not going to touch.
39:11Well, through.
39:12You're through and you didn't touch.
39:14Ten out of ten.
39:16OK, it's not too bad on a quiet day like this.
39:19But just imagine what it would have been like in heavy traffic when hundreds of these beasts were travelling up and down the canal.
39:27Used to have a saying.
39:29Wooden boats, iron men.
39:31And iron men and iron boats.
39:33And it's true. I've done it.
39:35You've got to be hard. You've got to be hard to work these.
39:38So that's why I'm a natural then.
39:39See you all. Bye.
39:41Bye.
39:43So here I am, the outskirts of Wigan.
39:44A town that once boasted a sixth of all Lancashire's collieries.
39:45And amongst the 19th century factories and covered warehouses, it still boasts the most famous loading stave in the country.
39:46So here I am, the outskirts of Wigan, a town that once boasted a sixth of all Lancashire's collieries.
40:03And amongst the 19th century factories and covered warehouses, it still boasts the most famous loading stave in the country.
40:16Believe it or not, this is it. This is Wigan Pier, as immortalised by George Orwell in his book The Road to Wigan Pier.
40:23Of course, it's not really a pier at all, is it? You can see this rail here flipping up like this.
40:31It's another of those coal tippers with the big tipper on the top there to tip the coal into the barge down in the canal.
40:39It was just rather sarcastically called a pier to compare it with the glorious seaside piers at Southport and Blackpool.
40:46Orwell wrote his essay about Wigan in 1936 to raise awareness of the social conditions in the industrial north.
40:57And after two months spent in cheap lodgings, he certainly didn't hold back.
41:03He says, there are filthy slums, belching foundries, stinking canals and slag heaps.
41:10Well, fair enough, at the time, Britain was recovering from a terrible depression.
41:17But Orwell's depiction of Wigan has kind of stuck, which is a bit unfair, really,
41:23because although it was never a place of sea, sand and surf,
41:27it was one of the driving forces behind the region's economy because of the canal.
41:33Timing was everything here in Wigan.
41:41The coal had always been here, of course, but that fateful delay in the canal's construction
41:46meant the town became key to the success of the canal.
41:50And the canal became key to the success of the town.
41:54Wigan also became the last chapter in the canal's construction.
41:57And the final stretch was one of the most difficult they faced.
42:04Over the whole 127 miles of the canal, it rises just 487 feet.
42:10But over the next three miles, it rises 200 of those feet, over 21 lots.
42:16The canal had started under George III,
42:20but Britain was almost Victorian by the time it was finished.
42:22It was still a magnificent achievement, stretching 127 miles with 91 locks and 504 bridges.
42:35See that date there? That is hugely significant.
42:40Opened 1816, October 22nd.
42:44That is the moment when the Liverpool part of the canal
42:47and the Leeds part of the canal finally joined together.
42:50So finally, after 46 years and five times over budget,
42:55the canal could justifiably call itself the Liverpool to Leeds Canal.
43:03With the canal's completion, it wasn't just Liverpool and Leeds that benefited.
43:08Everywhere along its route reaped the rewards.
43:11Nowhere more than Wigan.
43:12From up here, you can see all the way down the flight of locks back into Wigan.
43:27And you can see how it exploded in the 19th century.
43:30And the reason why it exploded is the reason why I can see it in the first place.
43:35Because what I've just climbed isn't a hill, it's a great big mound of slag.
43:41One of the biggest slag heaps in the country.
43:44All made out of local debris, a product of the Wigan Iron Coal Company.
43:49By the middle of the 19th century, this outfit had built up a monopoly on mining in this area.
43:59And at sites like the Kirkless Hall Ironworks, they were turning Wigan into an industrial megacentre,
44:06exploiting coal in every possible way.
44:08Kirkless became one of the biggest coal and iron works in Europe.
44:13And right up till 1985, was an engineering headquarters of the National Coal Board.
44:19In its time, this place was legendary, wasn't it?
44:22Very much so, yes, it was.
44:24What did you do?
44:26I was an engineer on locomotives.
44:28Which one's you?
44:30The young boy, the nice looking one behind me.
44:32The one right at the back?
44:33That's right, that's right.
44:35What was here?
44:36This is a photograph of the top place as it was prior to the Second World War.
44:41So where are we standing?
44:42We're standing quite close to those two buildings.
44:44These are the two workshops behind it. It's only a part.
44:47So what was all this for?
44:49This is caulking plants, rolling mills, there was foundries, there was steel-making plants,
44:55flag plants, paint, benzene, the other flag works.
45:00Everything went on here.
45:02It's slap bang by the canal then?
45:03That's right, that's right, it is.
45:06Through a century of growth, the canal was at the heart of everything that went on at Kirkless.
45:12The artery that spread Wigan's industrial output far and wide.
45:17Did you have a good time when you were here?
45:18Absolutely, absolutely. I enjoyed every minute of it.
45:22Good to meet you both.
45:23Pleasure to meet you, Tom.
45:24Nice to meet you. Cheers.
45:25Today, just a few buildings here remain.
45:33And for me, its loss rather sums up the bittersweet feeling I've got about this walk.
45:38Life on and by the canal must have been bleak, dirty and harsh in its heyday, but the astonishing figures about the wealth it helped create, and the fond memories the people have of their working lives, are reminders of just how much has been lost here in Lancashire.
45:56George Orwell wrote, the road to Wigan is a long one, and the reasons for taking it are not immediately clear.
46:05Well, I'd agree with the first part of that, but I'd take issue with the second.
46:08I much prefer a 19th century appraisal I came across, which went, no part of our kingdom has benefited more from a public work of any kind than the country through which the Leeds to Liverpool Canal passes.
46:25And I reckon that's just about right.
46:29If you want to follow in my footsteps, you can download a guide to my walk by going to www.channel4.com.
46:38No more walkin' next Saturday from eight.
46:44Original new comedy drama directed by Danny Boyle.
46:47Modern day coppers in all their glory.
46:49Babylon tomorrow night from nine o'clock.
46:52Ellen's Choice next on four.
46:54Protect her husband, or save the kids.
46:56Just as well as not my house, IP for the chop.
46:58Hostages coming up.
46:59.