Search This Blog

Monday 4 January 2010

Great British Railway Journeys


Unfortunately I only managed to catch a few minutes of Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys (BBC2) tonight, which is a shame as there was some smashing archive footage of the underground network of canals in the Duke of Bridgewater 's mines at Worsley. In Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives, I covered a lot of the territory Mr Portillo will be visiting in his series. The Duke of Bridgewater's success with his novel canal linking Manchester and Worsley inspired a huge growth in canal building, although Cheshire rather lagged behind; the county's canal network was still being completed in Regency Cheshire . I will look out for the first programme again when it is repeated.

Image: Worsley Basin and ‘starvationer' boats,
Lives of the Engineers: Brindley and the Early Engineers, Samuel Smiles, (John Murray, 1874.)

No comments: