Aire and Calder Navigation - History

History

In the early 1600s, the river Aire was navigable to Knottingley, and boats carrying up to 30 tons traded on the river, which was tidal up to this point. The traders of Leeds were keen to have a navigable link to the town, to make the export of woollen cloth easier, but bills presented to Parliament in 1621 and 1625 had failed. William Pickering, who was mayor of Leeds, had made further attempts to obtain an act of Parliament for improvements to the river in 1679, again without success, but as the 1600s drew to a close, a number of bills were passed for other rivers, and there was general support for river navigations. A bill was drawn up in 1698, with support from wool traders in Leeds and general merchants in Wakefield. John Hadley surveyed the Aire, and Samual Shelton surveyed the Calder. Although the bill had a lot of support, it was opposed by the City of York, who feared that the River Ouse would be damaged by the scheme.

The parliamentary bill was hotly contested, and the House of Lords asked Trinity House to produce a report on the three rivers. This favoured the scheme, and in May 1699 the act of Parliament was granted. It named 18 undertakers, nine from the Corporation of Leeds, and nine "gentlemen of Wakefield", who would oversee the improvements to the River Aire (from the River Ouse at Airmyn via Castleford to Leeds) and the River Calder (from Castleford to Wakefield). The act gave them powers which included the creation of weirs bypassed by short "cuts" equipped with locks, the creation of a towpath, and the right to buy and demolish mills and weirs. John Hadley was engaged as the engineer immediately, and by 1704 the original work was completed, including 12 locks on the Aire between Haddesley and Leeds and 4 on the Calder. The locks were 58 to 60 feet (17.7 to 18.3 m) long by 14.5 to 15 feet (4.4 to 4.6 m) wide with 3.5 feet (1.1 m) depths over the sills.

Capital to fund the scheme had been raised separately by the Wakefield and Leeds committees. A complicated restructuring of the finances in 1721 fixed the nominal capital at £26,700. Regular dividends at 7 per cent were paid to the shareholders from 1718, and the navigation was leased to various groups, who would be responsible for collection of tolls and repairs. The lease rose from £800 in 1704 to £2,600 in 1729, when receipts from each of the previous five years had averaged £6,016. The early trade consisted mainly of woollen goods from Leeds, Wakefield, Halifax and Bradford, with wool and corn from Lincolnshire and East Anglia travelling in the opposite direction. By the 1720s there were also significant quantities of coal.