History
In the late 1760s, there was dissatisfaction with the state of the Aire and Calder Navigation, and there were several schemes to bypass part or all of it. John Longbotham was employed by some of the backers for the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to survey a route from Leeds to Selby, although the Leeds and Selby Canal was not officially supported by the Leeds and Liverpool undertaking. The canal would have been just over 23 miles (37 km) long, with ten locks, a ten-arched aqueduct over the River Aire at Hunslet, and a 400-yard (370 m) tunnel at Fairburn. The estimated cost of £59,468 was raised in two months, and a bill was presented to Parliament in December 1772, as was another by the Aire and Calder Navigation for improvements to the Aire below Haddlesey. The Parliamentary committee found a number of issues with the Leeds and Selby scheme, and generally favoured improvements to the Aire, but no decision was made on either proposal.
Following the impasse, the Aire and Calder decided that a route to Selby might be a better solution than improvements to the lower Aire, and William Jessop, working for John Smeaton, surveyed a route that ran from Haddlesey to Selby, which would require a lock at Selby, where the canal joined the River Ouse, and floodgates at Haddlesey. By the spring of 1774, the Leeds and Selby Canal was supported by the Leeds and Liverpool company, and rival bills were presented to Parliament. The Leeds and Selby proposal was defeated, but the Aire and Calder bill became an Act of Parliament on 14 June 1774.
The company employed Jessop as engineer on a part-time basis, with John Gott acting as the resident engineer. James and John Pinkerton were the main contractors, and construction began in early 1775. A great celebration was held at Selby on 29 April 1778, when the canal opened, having cost £20,000. The town of Selby flourished following the opening, with a custom house which enabled traffic to proceed straight to the North Sea without stopping at Hull. While the canal was fairly successful, there were some problems. There was a 2-mile (3.2 km) section where the banks consisted of loose sand, which had to be regularly dredged to prevent the sand blocking it, and Elias Wright, who was the engineer in 1797, complained that the depth of only 3.5 feet (1.1 m) was too shallow, and that extra boards had to be kept on Haddlesey weir to maintain the water levels. As cargoes increased the canal became too shallow for the larger barges.
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