Powers to increase its depth were obtained in 1828, and the residents of Selby used legal action to ensure that the company complied with its own act of Parliament.

The locks were enlarged in 1885, and subsequent history was uneventful, with the canal eventually coming under the control of British Waterways in 1962.

When British Waterways also took control of the River Ouse, the canal was marketed as part of a through route to York, and the number of boats using it have steadily increased.

The canal would have been just over 23 miles (37 km) long, with ten locks, a ten-arched aqueduct over the River Aire at Hunslet, and a 400-yard (370 m) tunnel at Fairburn.

The parliamentary committee found a number of issues with the Leeds and Selby scheme, and generally favoured improvements to the Aire, but no decision was made on either proposal.

The town of Selby flourished following the opening,[5] with a custom house which enabled traffic to proceed straight to the North Sea without stopping at Hull.

[6] Ten years later, John Foster built a private dry dock at Selby, where many of the boats of the Aire and Calder were repaired.

Although some of the barges which used the canal travelled up the Ouse to York or down to the Humber Ports and the River Trent, this traffic was mainly restricted to coal, and other cargoes were transhipped at Selby.

The engineer George Leather, writing in 1822, noted that the route to Goole via Selby was much better than the lower Aire, but that it still suffered from problems.

A petition was presented to Parliament in late 1819, and as a result of opposition, clauses were inserted to maintain the lower Aire and the Selby Canal, and to ensure parity of tolls on the new cut and the old routes.

John Rennie, the engineer for the project, died in 1821, and the following year George Leather, who took over this role, revealed plans for a ship dock at Goole, while in 1824 the start of the new cut was moved to Ferrybridge.

[3] This act included a provision to increase the navigable depth of the Selby Canal to 5 feet (1.5 m), which the company hoped to achieve by raising the dam boards on the weirs at Haddlesey and Beal.

They knew that this was not actually legal, and a case brought before the Quarter Sessions upheld this position, so they started to make the channel wider and deeper.

The partially derelict wharf wall at Selby was replaced in 1836, allowing fully laden ships to moor alongside it.

In January 1948, private ownership of the canal ceased, when it was taken over by the British Transport Commission, as part of the post-war nationalisation.

The river follows a meandering course to Beal, where a bridge carries Intake Lane over it, and a large weir drops the level by another 8 feet (2.4 m).

After a further 3.7 miles (6.0 km), the Aire continues straight ahead, and there is a sharp left turn into Haddlesey Flood Lock and the start of the Selby Canal.

There are two semi-circular ponds, one on either side of the channel to the north of the bridge,[27] a feature known as a 'Lund Tunnel' which serves to carry a drain under the canal.

It is made of millstone grit, and retains an iron roller on the north-west corner of the arch, to protect the structure from towing ropes.