place to Gloucester, where it terminates, there is a fall of 195½ feet in the remaining eighteen miles. The proposed cut from Newent to the canal has a fall into it of 10 feet in a length of three miles. The total lockage is 226 feet nearly; and the number of tunnels on the canal three, all of considerable size; the first, near Hereford, being four hundred and forty yards long; the second on the high ground at Asperton, near Frome Cannon, the middle of the summit level, thirteen hundred and twenty yards; and the third at Oxenhall, two thousand one hundred and ninety-two yards.
In 1796 the line from Newent to the Severn was completed; and, after two years' interval, the Oxenhall Tunnel was opened, by which means the navigation became practicable to Ledbury. The expense of cutting, &c. was very great; but the advantages derived from this work are great in proportion; as an instance, we may mention, that the opening of the Oxenhall Tunnel effected an immediate reduction in the price of coals at Ledbury of no less than l0s. 6d. per ton; that quantity being sold for 13s. 6d., when, before the opening of the navigation, 24s. was the price. Nor is it with the coal mines alone that this canal opens a ready communication; lime-stone, iron, lead, and other productions of South Wales, as well as those of the immediate neighbourhood of Hereford, may, by means of this canal, be conveyed to London, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, and various other parts of the kingdom, entirely by water carriage.
HERTFORD UNION CANAL.
5 George IV. Cap. 47, Royal Assent 17th May, 1824.
THIS canal, designed to make a communication from the River Lea Navigation at White Port Bridge, in the parish of St. Mary Stratford Bow, with the Regent's Canal at Old Ford Lock, Bethnal Green, was projected by Sir George Duckett, Bart. who, in 1824, obtained the sanction of parliament by the following act, entitled, 'An Act for making and maintaining a navigable Canal from the River Lee Navigation, in the parish of St. Mary Stratford Bow, in the county of Middlesex, to join the Regent's Canal at or near a Place called Old Ford Lock, in the parish of St. Matthew Bethnal Green, in the said county of Middlesex.'
