Barton Swing Aqueduct
Water-filled iron canal trough that pivots on an island to let ships pass beneath the canal it carries.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Barton Swing Aqueduct, on the western edge of Manchester, starts with a duke, his coal, and the engineer James Brindley, who set out in seventeen sixty-one to carry a canal over a river when many said it could not be done. It moves on to the eighteen-eighties, when the Manchester Ship Canal arrived along the Irwell and Edward Leader Williams faced a problem nobody had solved before. Best heard from the road bridge, with the control tower on its island in view.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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