History
The Coventry Canal Company was formed in 1768. James Brindley was commissioned to build the canal, and work started on it in December that year. Due to the high standards of construction demanded by Brindley, the canal company ran out of money by the time the canal had reached Atherstone in 1769, and Brindley was replaced by Thomas Yeoman.
Thomas Dadford advised on the Canal's aqueduct over the River Tame (now known as Tame Aqueduct) in 1784 and in June 1785, Thomas Sheasby was awarded the contract to connect the Coventry Canal to the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Although the canal reached the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal at Fazeley, the final Parliament-approved stretch to the Trent and Mersey at Fradley was not finished until 1789.
The Trent and Mersey company, and the Birmingham and Fazeley company, anxious to allow through traffic from Birmingham to the Trent and Mersey canal, gained permission to complete and operate the approved but unbuilt section from Fazeley to Fradley. The B&F worked North from Fazeley, and the T&M worked south from Fradley. The full length from Coventry to Fradley was opened in 1789.
The middle section remained part of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, but the Coventry Canal company later bought the northern section, nowadays sometimes referred to as Coventry Canal (detached portion).
Read more about this topic: Coventry Canal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)