The Seven Wonders of the Waterways is a list of landmarks on the navigable waterways of the United Kingdom. The list was originally compiled in 1946 by Robert Aickman, co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association (IWA), at a time when the waterways network was largely derelict. Today, the Canal & River Trust—formerly British Waterways—has jurisdiction over (and responsibility for) all of the sites except for the

Barton Swing Aqueduct The Barton Swing Aqueduct is a moveable navigable aqueduct in Barton upon Irwell, Greater Manchester, England. It carries the Bridgewater Canal across the Manchester Ship Canal. The swinging action allows large vessels using the ship canal to p ...

, which is owned and operated by the Bridgewater Canal Company.

Background

In 1946, the Inland Waterways Association was formed to campaign for the conservation of navigable waterways in the United Kingdom. Robert Aickman, one of the co-founders of the association, proposed the list in his book ''Know Your Waterways'' as a method of highlighting significant feats of engineering on the canal network, as well as bringing attention to those at risk of becoming derelict. At the time of the list's publication, six of the locations were navigable. The London Midland and Scottish Railway Company Act of 1944 formally closed the Llangollen Canal, although the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct remained in use as a water feeder for the wider

Shropshire Union Canal The Shropshire Union Canal, nicknamed the "Shroppie", is a navigable canal in England. The Llangollen and Montgomery canals are the modern names of branches of the Shropshire Union (SU) system and lie partially in Wales. The canal lies in ...

network. Aickman successfully passed through the

Standedge Tunnel The Standedge Tunnels () are four parallel tunnels through the Pennine hills at the Standedge crossing between Marsden in Kirklees, West Yorkshire and Diggle in Oldham, Greater Manchester in northern England. Three are railway tunnels (cont ...

in Yorkshire with L. T. C. Rolt in 1948, at a time when it was closed to all other traffic and awaiting restoration from its state of disrepair. The Caen Hill Locks in Wiltshire became derelict shortly after the list's publication, with the last boat passage before restoration occurring in 1948. The Anderton Boat Lift only became inoperational for a sixteen-year period beginning in the 1980s, and the

, the Bingley Five Rise Locks, and the

Burnley Embankment The Burnley Embankment is an Embankment (earthworks), embankment carrying the Leeds and Liverpool Canal across the River Calder, Lancashire, Calder and River Brun, Brun valleys in Burnley, Lancashire. Also known as the Straight Mile, the embankm ...

have always—except for general maintenance—been navigable.

List

The original list comprises two aqueducts, two lock systems, one tunnel, one boat lift and one embankment. All but two of the sites date from around the Canal Mania period:

Additional wonders

A number of other canal locations have been proposed to expand or amend the list. In 2002, British Waterways published an alternative list based on the results of a poll, which removed the

and the

. This list saw the first inclusion of a Scottish location, the Falkirk Wheel: A list published by canal multimedia production company Videoactive proposed the "New Seven Wonders of the Waterways", replacing the Caen Hill Locks,

and

and introducing the only non-navigable location: In 2015, the Canal & River Trust ran a competition to establish the Lost Wonders of the Waterways World. The resultant list highlighted three locations where canal restoration schemes are planned or underway:

Notes

References

{{portalbar, United Kingdom, Water Canals in the United Kingdom