Page:Rivers, Canals, Railways of Great Britain.djvu/123

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BUDE HARBOUR AND CANAL

called Crymlin Burrows, in a direction parallel with the north shore of Swansea Bay. It terminates in the pool called Swansea Harbour, in the River Tawe, a short distance below Swansea and close to Salthouse Point, and is four miles and a quarter in length.

As the principal object of the proprietor was the improvement and drainage of his own estate, it was made without having recourse to any parliamentary enactment.


BUDE HARBOUR AND CANAL.

14 George III. Cap. 53, Royal Assent 24th May, 1774.
59 George III. Cap. 55, Royal Assent 14th June, 1819.

THE original design for this navigation was made by Mr. Edmund Leach, (the Author of "A Treatise on Inland Navigation,") and an act was obtained in the 14th George III. for that purpose, entitled, 'An Act for making a navigable Cut or Canal from the Port or Harbour of Bude, in the hundred of Stratton, in the county of Cornwall, to the River Tamar, in the parish of Calstoke, in the said county.' It was intended to commence in the tideway of Bude Haven, in the Bristol Channel, and thence, by the course of the Tamar, by Launceston, to the tideway of the Tamar River and Navigation, in tile parish of Calstoke. From the sea at Bude Haven there was to be an inclined plane of 54 feet rise; then, a level pool of six miles and a half; another plane of 120 feet rise, and a level pool at the end of it four miles in length; from this, a third plane rising 66 feet, to the summit level, being a total of 240 feet above the level of the sea. This summit level was maintained for the distance of sixty-eight miles, by a very circuitous course, occasioned by the necessity they were under of continuing on the level of the natural face of the country, by a clause in the act, which prohibits them from cutting more than 39 inches in depth on the lower side of tile canal. From the end of the summit, only two miles and a half from the termination of the proposed canal, there was to be a plane of 120 feet fall; then a level pool of two miles and a half in length, with a fifth plane, at Kelly Rock, of 120 feet fall. The total length of the canal was eighty-one miles, though the direct distance, between the two