Forth and Clyde Canal - Contemporary Description

Contemporary Description

Priestley wrote in 1831,

Besides the fine rivers above-mentioned, is joined by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal, near Falkirk; with the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway at its summit, near the last-mentioned village; and with the Monkland Canal and the Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway, at Port Dundas, near the city of Glasgow. This magnificent canal commences in the River Forth, in Grangemouth Harbour, and near to where the Carron empties itself into that river. Its course is parallel with the Carron, and in nearly a westwardly direction, passing to the north of the town of Falkirk, and thence to Red Bridge, where it quits the county of Stirling, and enters a detached portion of the shire of Dumbarton. Hence it passes to the south of Kilsyth, and runs along the south bank of the River Kelvin, and over the Logie Water, by a fine stone aqueduct, at Kirkintilloch; it then approaches within little more than two miles of the north-west quarter of the city of Glasgow, to which there is a branch communicating with the Monkland Canal at Port Dundas, near that city. The remaining part of the line is in a westwardly direction, crossing the Kelvin River by a noble aqueduct, and thence to the Clyde, into which, after running parallel with it for some distance, it locks down at Bowling's Bay, near Dalmuir Burnfoot. The canal is thirty-five miles in length, viz, from Grangemouth to the east end of the summit pool, is ten miles and three quarters, with a rise, from low water in the Forth, of 155 feet, by twenty locks. The summit level is sixteen miles in length, and in the remainder of its course, there is a fall to low water, in the Clyde, at Bowling's Bay, of 156 feet, by nineteen locks. The branch to the Monkland Canal at Glasgow is two miles and three quarters; and there is another cut into the Carron River, at Carron Shore, in order to communicate with the Carron Iron Works. Though this canal was originally constructed for vessels drawing 7 feet, yet by recent improvements, sea-borne craft of 10 feet draught may now pass through it, from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean. The locks are 74 feet long and 20 wide; and upon its course are thirty-three draw-bridges, ten large aqueducts and thirty-three smaller ones; that over the Kelvin being 429 feet long and 65 feet above the surface of the stream. It is supplied with water from reservoirs; one of which, at Kilmananmuir, is seventy acres, and 22 feet deep at the sluice; and that at Kilsyth is fifty acres in extent, with 24 feet. water at its head.