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About
The Trent and Mersey Canal is a 93.5-mile long “narrow canal” that runs through the East Midlands, West Midlands, and north-west of England. The canal links the River Trent near Derby with the Mersey at Runcorn.
The canal runs through Stoke-on-Trent from the Harecastle Tunnel in the north of the city to Barlaston in the south of the city.
The route was designed to feed the Industrial Revolution and to enable manufacturing towns such as Stoke on Trent and the Potteries to benefit from improved means of transport. Josiah Wedgwood was one of the chief instigators of the canal. Wedgwood saw the obvious economic benefits of cheap and rapid transport and he commissioned the local engineer James Brindley to create the Trent and Mersey Canal which enabled china clay to be brought from Cornwall right to the door of his Etruria factory. It also meant that the finished pottery products could be taken away smoothly, with the minimum of breakages.
The Harecastle Tunnel at Kidsgrove is an amazing feat of engineering in the form of a tiny narrow hole through a hillside. In the first tunnel, 2880 yards long and built in 1766-77, barges had to be 'legged' through the tunnel by men lying on their backs and pushing against the roof with their feet to give the boat momentum. Thomas Telford modernised the tunnel in 1827 by building a new wider tunnel alongside it, complete with a towpath. Telford's tunnel is still used by pleasure boats, as is the whole canal.
Today the Trent & Mersey canal serves the growing industry of leisure and tourism, providing superb opportunities to explore open spaces and the countryside, either by boat or a gentle stroll or cycle along the towpath. There are lots of attractive and interesting features of the canal in Stoke-on-Trent including many heritage sites such as Middleport Pottery, an award-winning pottery visitor destination. Along the canal you will also find Westport Lake, which is Stoke-on-Trent’s largest expanse of water and consists of two lakes, and a nature reserve. It’s one of the best places in the area for bird-watching and walking. A great place to relax and watch the colourful boats pass is at the marina in Etruria which is a popular mooring place for pleasure craft, with the China Gardens pub alongside.
