10.1.8

Canals

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Canals

The Industrial Revolution also prompted the use of canals to transport goods around the country. This also provided many jobs.

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Canals

  • Canals were another key method of transport, that became much more widely used during the Industrial Revolution.
  • Floating barges on canals, and having horses pull those barges along the canals, allowed goods to be transported much more quickly than on land.
  • The horses walked alongside the canals on tow-paths.
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Canal network

  • Obviously, wherever there was a mine or factory, there were calls for a canal nearby, so that goods could be easily transported to and from the factory.
  • By the mid-nineteenth century, Britain had a huge network of canals running across the country, totalling about four thousand miles.
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  • The creation of thousands of miles of canals and railway track also created thousands of jobs.
  • Labourers were required to build Britain’s canals and railways, and these labourers became known as navvies (taken from the word ‘navigators’).
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Work done by navvies

  • A large proportion of these navvies were Irishmen, who had been driven from Ireland due to the potato famine (1845-1852) and found work in other parts of Britain.
  • The job was hard manual labour, but was well paid.
  • By the mid-1800s canals and railways were being built by 200,000 navvies across Britain.

Jump to other topics

1The Medieval World: 450-1450 AD

1.1Anglo-Saxon England

1.2The Contest for the English Throne

1.3Conquering the Holy Land, 10-96-1396 AD

1.4King John

1.5The Magna Carta & Parliament

1.6The Black Death

2Worldviews

3The Empire of Mali

4The Renaissance & Reformations, 1500-1598 AD

5The British Empire, 1583-1960 AD

6The Peasants' Revolt

7Religion in the Middle Ages

8Slavery, 1619-1833 AD

9The English Civil War, 1642-1660

10The Industrial Revolution, 1750-1840

11US Independence, 1775-1783

12The French Revolution, 1789-1815

13The British Empire, 1857–1930

14Suffrage

15World War 1, 1914-1918

16The Inter-War Years, 1919-1939

17World War 2, 1939-1945

18The Cold War, 1947-1962

19Civil Rights in the USA, 1954-1975

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