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The Llangollen branch
of the Shropshire Union Canal must be one of the most spectacular and
scenic canals in Britain. The canal is fed from the River Dee at the
Horseshoe Falls just out of Llangollen. You can walk through Darkie Tunnel
but beware it is some 1200 feet in length, so a flashlight is recommended,
it is one of two tunnels at Chirk, the other is the shorter Whitehurst
Tunnel.
A quote in "the
Life of Thomas Telford" publication says "...Aqueduct is
situated in a finely wooded valley, having Chirk Castle as an eminence
immediately above it, with the Welsh Mountains and Glen Ceiriog as a
background and the village of Chirk with Lord Dungannon's Ceiriog Bridge
occupying the intermediate space. These combined objects compose a
landscape seldom surpassed."
The 70 feet high
aqueduct built between 1796 and 1801 by Thomas Telford and William Jessop
was built, like the Pontcysyllte, to carry the Ellesmere Canal.
The ten circular
masonry arches of the structure, each spanning 40 feet, have piers carried
between them as pilaster strips. There is no cast iron trough carrying the
water of the canal, as at Pontcysyllte. Instead, the bed is of iron
plates, bolted together, with the side walls built of stone quarried
locally at Pont Faen.
The relationship of
the sets of arches running parallel with one another conjures up images of
"Roman grandeur" as the architect, Edward Hubbard says in
"Buildings of Wales, Clwyd" and one perhaps thinks particularly
of the aqueduct at Tarragona, Spain. The view as one walks towards them is
certainly romantic, particularly in strong sunlight and has caught the
imagination of artists and writers in the past. There are drawings of the
aqueduct by G.Pickering and Henry Gastineau of the early 19th
century.
The vast amount of
material excavated in the late 18th century to form the cutting for the
canal was taken to make up the massive embankments for the aqueduct
constructed by Telford over the River Dee at Pontcysyllte.
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