The Leeds and Liverpool Canal was to have crossed this canal by an aqueduct 60 feet high at Bark Mill near Wigan; and the Lancaster Canal itself was to have been conducted by an aqueduct over the Ribble at Preston; there is one over the Wyre at Garstang, the Beeloo near Bethorn, and the Lune near Lancaster, the last of which is a most wonderful piece of workmanship, being 51 feet high above the river, having five arches of 70 feet span each, and is supposed to be the largest aqueduct of the kind in England.
Mr. Brindley surveyed part of the line of the Lancaster Canal in 1772, and Mr. Whitworth soon after completed the survey. But it was not till 1791, that the promoters of the scheme resumed the subject; when they appointed Mr. Rennie engineer to the undertaking, and this was the first great work of the kind in which he had taken the direction; the magnificent aqueduct over the Lune at Lancaster, and other immense works upon this canal, established his reputation as a civil engineer.
It would be almost impossible to enumerate all the advantages accruing to the public from the execution of this undertaking. The interchange of the coals and cannel of Wigan and the southern extremity of the line, with the stone, lime and slate of its northern parts, is not amongst the least beneficial effects of its completion; whilst liquors and various other articles of foreign merchandize introduced at the port of Lancaster, are by its means conveyed with expedition and at a trifling expense to the various populous manufacturing places on its line.
LAPWORTH AND RINGWOOD CANAL.
(SEE STRATFORD-UPON-AVON CANAL.)
LARKE RIVER.
11 & 12 William III. Cap. 22, Royal Assent 11th April, 1700.
57 George IlL Cap. 71, Royal Assent 10th July, 1817.
THE navigation of the River Larke or Burn extends for the distance of about fourteen miles from a place called Long Common, a little below Milden Hall Mill, to Eastgate Bridge in
