"
At the entrance to this a door was so placed at the bottom of the canal
that if any undue current should appear, such as would occur if the
embankment gave way, one end of it would rise into a socket prepared for
it in the stop-place, and so prevent any water leaving the canal except
that in the broken section, a remedy simple but ingenious. On arriving
at Runcorn the boats were lowered by a series of locks into the River
Mersey, a double service of locks being provided so that boats could
pass up and down at the same time and so avoid delay.
[Illustration: JAMES BRINDLEY.]
When the water was first turned into the canal, Brindley mysteriously
disappeared, and was nowhere to be found; but as the canal when full did
not burst its embankments, as he had feared, he soon reappeared and was
afterwards employed to construct even more difficult canals. He died in
1772, and was buried in Harriseahead Churchyard on the Cheshire border
of Staffordshire. It is computed that he engineered as many miles of
canals as there are days in the year.
[Illustration: THE BOTTOM LOCKS AT RUNCORN.]
It must have been a regular custom for the parsons in Derbyshire to keep
diaries in the eighteenth century, for the Vicar of Wormhill kept one,
like the Vicar of Castleton, both chancing to be members of the Bagshawe
family, a common name in that neighbourhood.
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