The first plans to provide a navigable route to Bradford were made in 1744, when a number of Gentlemen and Farmers sought parliamentary approval for improvements to 18 miles (29 km) of the River Aire, starting at Inghay Bridge, near Skipton, and ending at Cottingley Bridge, near Bingley, which was the nearest point on the river from which an existing road ran to Bradford.

It was authorised in 1770, and in the same year fourteen merchants, including six who were already on the committee for the Leeds and Liverpool, planned a branch which would serve the town of Bradford.

They could raise £6,000 in capital by issuing shares, with a further £3,000 if needed, to be used to construct a canal from Shipley to a place in Bradford called Hoppy Bridge, which is now below Forster Square.

[2] The work was completed by March 1774, when Mr Balme paid for the bell ringers of Bradford to ring out his arrival by boat.

Coal pit owners on the south side of Bradford in Broomfields and Bowling built tramways into the town, but there was no direct connection with the canal as possible routes were blocked by buildings.

The carriage of wool from Australia was an important source of revenue from the 1820s, and from 1828, packet boats carried passengers to Selby and Leeds.

The Bradford Board of Surveyors commented on the filth and stench in a report made in 1844, and an outbreak of cholera five years later, in which 406 people died, prompted the city council to take action.

[6] Hot weather in 1864 led to a fund being opened, so that a court order could be used to close the canal, on the basis that it was a public nuisance.

Closure was postponed until 1 May 1867, while both the Bradford Company and the Leeds and Liverpool attempted to obtain an act of Parliament, but both failed, and so the canal closed and was drained.

[6] With no means to transport their stone, several merchants started to negotiate with the Leeds and Liverpool, the Aire and Calder and Bradford Council.

The new company expected to get a water supply from two reservoirs and three streams, and hoped to supplement this with a pipeline running from the top of the Leeds and Liverpool's Bingley locks.

Closure occurred on 25 June, with just the section from the Leeds and Liverpool canal to the bottom of the first lock being retained, to be used as moorings.

[10] According to a newspaper article of April 2006, "Ambitious plans for a new canal between Shipley and Bradford have been given a cautious welcome by members of the construction industry.

"[11] By April 2010, Bradford Council owned 63 per cent of the route of the renewed canal, and was considering how best to acquire the rest, which was in private ownership at the time.