Monday 26 November 2012

On this Day: 26th November 1805 – Official opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct



The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct  is a navigable aqueduct that carries the Llangollen Canal over the valley of the River Dee in Wrexham County Borough in north east Wales. Completed in 1805, it is the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain, a Grade I Listed Building and a World Heritage Site.

The aqueduct, built by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, is 1,007 ft (307 m) long, 11 ft (3.4 m) wide and 5.25 ft (1.60 m) deep. It consists of a cast iron trough supported 126 ft (38 m) above the river on iron arched ribs carried on nineteen hollow masonry piers (pillars). Each span is 53 ft (16 m) wide. Despite considerable public scepticism, Telford was confident the construction method would work: he had previously built at least one cast iron trough aqueduct – the Longdon-on-Tern aqueduct on the Shrewsbury Canal, still visible in the middle of a field, though the canal was abandoned years ago. Part of what was originally called the Ellesmere Canal, it was one of the first major feats of civil engineering undertaken by Telford, by then a leading civil engineer, supervised by Jessop, the more experienced canal engineer. The iron was supplied by William Hazledine from his foundries at Shrewsbury and nearby Cefn Mawr. It was opened on 26 November 1805, having taken around ten years to design and build at a total cost of £47,000. Adjusted for inflation this is equal to £2,930,000 as of 2012, however a structure of this type would cost more to build today due to other factors that didn't exist in the early 19th century such as higher wages (adjusted for inflation), safety measures, new regulations and taxes, financing fees and so on.


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Research courtesy of Wikipedia

Images courtesy of  The Library of Congress Under the Commons agreement on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/3752424226/

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