Canals of the United Kingdom

The Romans also created several navigable canals, such as Foss Dyke, to link rivers, enabling increased transport inland by water.

As trains, and later road vehicles, became more advanced, they became cheaper than the narrow canal system, being faster, and able to carry much larger cargoes.

There was a late burst of wide-waterway building (e.g. the Caledonian Canal, and the Manchester Ship Canal), and of invention and innovation by people such as Bartholomew of the Aire and Calder company, who conceived the trains of nineteen coal-filled "Tom Pudding" compartment boats that were pulled along the Aire and Calder Navigation from the Yorkshire coalfields, then lifted bodily to upturn their contents directly into seagoing colliers at Goole Docks (their descendants, Hargreaves' tugs pushing three coal-pans trains to be upended into hoppers at the Aire power stations lasted as late as 2004).

As competition intensified, horse-drawn single narrowboats were replaced by steam and later diesel powered boats towing an unpowered butty, and many of the boatmen's families abandoned their shore homes for a life afloat, to help with boat handling and to reduce accommodation costs – the birth of the "boatman's cabin" with bright white lace, gleaming brass and gaily-painted metalware.

[citation needed] Constant lowering of tolls meant that the carriage of some bulky, non-perishable, and non-vital goods by water was still feasible on some inland waterways – but the death knell for commercial carrying on the narrow canals was sounded in the winter of 1962–63, when a long hard frost kept goods icebound on the canals for three months.

Other narrowboat traffic gradually ceased with the change from coal to oil, the closure of canalside factories, and run-down of British heavy industry.

Regular narrowboat traffics continued, such as lime juice from Brentford to Boxmoor (until 1981) while aggregates were carried on the River Soar until 1988.

The last major investment development of the inland waterways was the enlargement of the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation in the early 1980s to cope with barges of standard European dimensions that never came.

[6] In the latter half of the 20th century, while the use of canals for transporting goods was dying out, there was a rise in interest in their history and potential use for leisure.

A large amount of credit for this is usually given to L. T. C. Rolt, whose book Narrow Boat about a journey made in the narrowboat Cressy was published in 1944.

Canal-based holidays became popular due to their relaxing nature, self-catering levels of cost, and variety of scenery available; from inner London to the Scottish Highlands.

Local authorities began to see how a cleaned-up and well-used waterway was bringing visitors to other towns and waterside pubs – not just boaters, but people who just like being near water and watching boats (see gongoozler).

However, long-term proposed and already underway restorations and constructions of new routes would eventually link these sections, enabling wide boats to move freely between them and create a true north–south east–west network.

[citation needed] The speed limit for the majority of inland waterways in the United Kingdom managed by the Canal & River Trust is 4 mph (6.4 km/h).

Three Bridges, London is an arrangement allowing the routes of the Grand Junction Canal, a road, and a railway line to cross each other.