The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

- April 22, 2010

The start of our short break! First a family visit, and then onto the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. The pictures and write-up sounded good. so we were looking forward to seeing it.

Approaching our destination, we stopped for a while to admire the river Dee as it flowed through the town. Noisily (above) and peacefully (below).

And then our first sight of our objective.

Designed and built by Thomas Telford and Williams Jessop, Pontcysyllte means 'the bridge that connects', a magnet for those who want to experience one of the most remarkable achievements of the industrial revolution.

You can walk across Pontcysyllte, or save your legs and take a leisurely boat ride - we did neither! Well, we did walk underneath and along the path to the edge of the bridge.

The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is a navigable aqueduct that carries the Llangollen Canal across the River Dee in the Vale of Llangollen in north east Wales. The 18-arched stone and cast iron structure is for use by narrowboats and was completed in 1805 having taken ten years to design and build. It is the longest aqueduct in Great Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world.

The aqueduct was to have been a key part of the central section of the proposed Ellesmere Canal, an industrial waterway that would have created a commercial link between the River Severn at Shrewsbury and the Port of Liverpool on the River Mersey. Although a cheaper construction course was surveyed further to the east, the westerly high-ground route across the Vale of Llangollen was preferred because it would have taken the canal through the mineral-rich coalfields of North East Wales. Only parts of the canal route were completed because the expected revenues required to complete the entire project were never generated. Most major work ceased after the completion of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in 1805.

The structure is a Grade I listed building and a World Heritage Site, so an important site and well worth the visit.