James Brindley: The First Canal Builder

by Nick Corble

James Brindley essentially invented the canal in Britain, engineering the Bridgewater Canal in 1761 and creating the spark for the industrial revolution. This is the first 20th-century Brindley biography.

176 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[Dale Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

How it all started

I sought out a book on Brindley on the tardy realisation that without canals, the industrial revolution may never have happened. Corble’s book gave me exactly what I was looking for: an appreciation of this country before canals arrived and sewed the country together, of how Brindley emerged from that near-medieval world, and how his genius - and the wily determination of the then Duke of Bridgewater - changed the entire country, and thence the world.

Easy to read and involving (ok, few typos!), this book is hard to put down!

[Stephen Dawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tells the story of James Brindley, remembered as the pioneer of canal building in England. The style is light and very readable. Perhaps it is occasionally a little too light in the effort to get the reader to empathise and put himself in the mid 18th century, with quite a few references to "they would have" and "it would have been", or "he probably met no one on his trek, pausing occasionally to refresh himself in one of the many small brooks that gabbled down the hills, perhaps tossing a few blades of grass into the water to see them race". Evocative stuff, no doubt, but I'm not sure it belongs in a biography, being pure speculation. Getting the criticisms out of the way early, the photographs chosen to illustrate the book are pleasant enough, but while the historic ones are fine, many of the modern pictures give the impression of having been rather thrown in at the last minute when the editor complained that there weren't enough, without sufficient time given to selection and placement. But it's not a major problem since the focus is the text.

However, those relatively minor quibbles apart, the book tells Brindley's story, from poverty through apprenticeship and his earlier engineering efforts on mills and mines, to perhaps his greatest contribution, the Bridgewater Canal. The story of its construction is really brought alive, the focus very much being on Brindley's leadership with the Duke of Bridgewater coming in second.

The story goes on to address the Grand Cross of canals, often considered Brindley's most lasting impression, as well as the other canals he worked on, but the author clearly relegates these other canals to second place behind the Bridgewater, and while the Trent & Mersey in particular is covered in some depth, there isn't the warmth of enthusiasm in this section that one feels reading about the Bridgewater Canal.

Having spent more than three-quarters of the book on a generally chronological account of Brindley's lift, the author concludes with two chapters of more general analysis and comment which wraps up the book and the story rather nicely.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting biography, I read it primarily as background for my appearance on MasterMind where my specialist subject was The Life & Works of James Brindley.