Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead.
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Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead. |
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Engineer.
1845 | He was asked to "survey the line of Canal and ascertain the practicability of converting the whole or any part of it into a Railway". He recommended against conversion instead suggesting a new canal to replace the Calder & Hebble Navigation. |
Engineer.
1796 | He is given charge of the works except for Lappal Tunnel and Leasowes Aqueduct, which were being supervised by William Underhill. |
Resident engineer of the Aire & Calder Navigation.
After July 1821 | He rebuilt locks on the navigation with a six foot depth over the sills even though it had been decided that the Goole Canal locks would have a 7 foot sill depth. He seems not to have been told but it cost him his job. |
Engineer.
1772 | He and Isaac Milbourn were employed by local landowners to advise on improving the river for drainage. They also considered seeking new powers for completing the original proposed navigation from Malton to Scarborough. | |
August 1792 | He was asked to assist John Thompson to make a survey for a canal from the river near Stainforth to the Trent near Althorpe, 1.5 miles below Gainsborough. |
Engineer.
September 1838 | He was appointed engineer. |
Engineer.
Early 1797 | He is appointed resident engineer. | |
Late 1802 | He left the company. |
Surveyor.
1793 | He surveyed a line for the canal. |
Engineer best known for his steam engines.
1804 | His locomotive ran on the canal company's Penydarren Tramroad. | |
1808 | One of his 4 horse-power steam engines was ordered for pumping out water during repairs. |
Engineer of the Exeter Canal from 1563. From Glamorgan.
1563 | He was engaged to make a canal alongside the River Exe for a fee of £225 and a share of the tolls. This was the first canal to be built in Britain since the Roman occupation. |
Engineer.
May 1853 | He was appointed engineer to build a short Canal Extension Railway from the canal basin to the Sneyd's railway. This line was worked by horses and cost £1,725. |
Engineer. Worked with John Duncombe.
31 August 1791 | At a meeting at the Royal Oak in Ellesmere the estimate he produced with John Duncombe was presented. They estimated £67,456 for the main line from Netherpool on the Mersey to the River Dee then on to Overton and Shrewsbury. Branches to Llangollen, Bersham and Llanmynech brought the total to £171,098. |
A Warrington architect who produced a route for the Ellesmere Canal in 1791. Worked with Arthur Davies.
1791 | At a meeting on 31st August he suggested an alternative line for the canal which would make use of the Chester Canal and then cut westwards near Whitchurch. Later that year he became one of William Jessop's assistants on the canal. | |
1793 | Prepared plans and estimates for the aqueducts at Pontcysllte and pont faen, together with Arthur Davies and John Duncombe. |
Engineer from Wisbech.
March 1796 | He was briefly appointed engineer. |
Engineer.
1796 | He is given charge of the works for Lappal Tunnel and Leasowes Aqueduct. | |
March 1802 | He was perhaps the "Underhill" who reported to the shareholder's meeting on the cost of completing the Frome branch and on the present and future supplies from local collieries. |
Worked for the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal Co. as clerkand became temporary engineer in 1815.
Engineer.
July 1813 | He began work on building the canal as resident engineer. | |
1825 | He estimated a cost of £5,958 to widen the River Adur in places upstream of Bines Bridge and to straighten the channel, provide new cuts over a length of 3 miles and 3 furlongs and to re-build Bines Bridge. This was to produce a navigation 28 feet wide, 4 feet deep with two 7-feet deep locks 75 feet long by 12 feet 6 inches wide. |
Engineer.
1771 | He ageed that no permanent solution to flooding on the river could be found until the obstructions at Wisbech were removed. |
An engineer once one of Brindley's team. Worked on several canals but never enjoyed a high reputation.
1769 | He was commissioned to survey and estimate a canal from the Don to Cinder Bridge (Greasbrough Ings) on the road from Greasbrough to Rawmarsh or to the nearby Sough bridge. He proposed a 1½ mile canal with three locks each with an 8 to 9 foot fall. | |
Late 1772 | Following Brindley's death he moved from his post of Clerk of Works to become resident engineer with Hugh Henshall. | |
Late 1773 | The committee found that his books were in a muddle and that the tunnel contracts "have been improvidently made and at prices greatly exceeding the real value thereof and in a collusive manner". One of the contractors was his brother Thomas Varley. He (John Varley) was kept on but three other Varleys were dismissed and his co-resident engineer, Hugh Henshall, became chief engineer. | |
1777 | He was appointed engineer at a salary of £220 a year. | |
August 1778 | The top lock had to be taken down and rebuilt following his error in the levels. He was ordered to pay the £78 costs less the value of the bricks. | |
May 1780 | He was dismissed following his failure to keep proper accounts for land and damage compensation payments, and mistakes in the levels for the top lock. | |
1791 | He surveyed the line of this proposed branch to be built by the Erewash Canal company. | |
Late 1792 | He did the survey for the canal and recommended a line to join the Grand Junction Canal at Gayton, with a branch to the Nene at Northhampton if the cost were reasonable. He did the final plans for the Bill together with Christopher Staveley. | |
1793 | He and Christopher Staveley both started work as engineers at the Leicester end of the canal. | |
24 October 1794 | The canal was open to Blaby and the committee "Ordered that Mr Varley the Engineer do contract for a Boat load of good coal to be conveyed as far as it will pass on the Union line on Monday to be sold for the benifit of the company". | |
July 1796 | It was suggested that Saddington Tunnel was out of straight. He offered to pay the costs if it was and entered into a £2,000 bond. The problem was not found to be very serious. | |
1800 | He was doing some flood repair work for the company and they considered him for work on the Standedge Tunnel. They were satisfied with his character but all his sureties backed out (his engineering reputation was not the best) so he was only used for some limited tunnelling work. |
Engineer.
23 September 1818 | At a meeting the proposals he developed with the promoter E Y Hancock were presented. | |
1824 | He announced a new plan for the canal with an estimated cost of under £60,000 with locks to admit the largest lighters navigating the Thames, Lee and Regent's Canal. |
A Dutchman from Tholen in Zeeland narturalised in England in 1626. Worked extensively on the drainage of the Fens and on the River Don.
1626 | He consentrated the waters of the river into a single channel and washland running into the River Aire. | |
1633 | He started work on the Dutch River which, by providing a direct route to the Ouse, was to reduce the waters of the Don that were flowing into the Aire and thus prevent flooding. | |
1634 | He was employed by a company lead by Francis, Earl of Bedford to drain a large area of land now known as the Bedford Level. The work included the Bedford River and nine other major drains. | |
1637 | His task was declared complete by the Commission of Sewers. | |
April 1638 | Charles I wrote to Derby corporation asking for him to be accomodated as "with his partners, has undertaken a work very acceptable to the King about the lead works at Wirksworth, and to make the river of Derwent to be navigable till it fall into the Trent". | |
1649 | He started drainage works that included the cutting of the New Bedford or Hundred Foot river parallel to the Old Bedford River. | |
1649 | He cut this river from Ramsey to the Old Bedford River at Weches Dam. | |
1649 | He started cutting this river fromWell Creek to the Forty Foot river to drain the area around Chatteris. | |
1649 | He completed works on the outfall and improved Morton Leam. | |
1652 | He completed drainage works that included the cutting of the New Bedford or Hundred Foot river parallel to the Old Bedford River. |
Engineer and author of "A Treatise on Rivers and Canals" (1882).
1889 | He suggested a half-tide lock at Kelfield below the River Wharfe junction. |
Engineer.
1829 | He surveyed a shortened and improved line for the canal. | |
1829 | He was commissioned to to make a survey for a route from St Helens to the Mersey. | |
1843 | He was engaged to examine the plans of the Liverpool & Bury Railway where it proposed to cross the canal in Liverpool. |
Engineer who reported on the Calidonian Canal in 1839. Nephew of Ralph Walker and worked with Captain Beechey.
After 1818 | His view was that improving navigation to Norwich would not harm Yarmouth's interests. | |
April 1826 | Between 10 April and 1 May he, and five other leading civil engineers, gave evidence to parliament on the Bill to build the cut. | |
1829 | Around this date he became engineer for the Penhurst Canal Company who were extending the Medway Navigation by six miles to Penhurst. | |
October 1830 | He was engineer, with George Stephenson, for a proposed Manchester To Sowerby Bridge railway that was to run parallel to the canal between Todmorden and Littleborough. | |
1835 | He was asked to report on improving the river and recommended enclosing the channel below Fosdyke Bridge in a straight line towards a meeting with the Witham outfall at or near Clayhole and embanking both sides of the channel. The estimate for this was £13,000 together with his other proposals for dredging, deepening and embankments the total estimate was £70,000. | |
31 May 1838 | He reports to the Exchequer Bill Loan Commissioners on the canal and says of the inclined planes "Every means appears to be taken to avoid accident; the machinery though complex - and perhaps necessarily so - is ingenious. It has, I understand, given trouble but not lately, and it does not appear with care which is indispensable, likely to do so to any extent, although with such heavy machinery accidents are unavoidable occasionally". | |
October 1838 | He surveyed the progress made in deepening and extending the channel below Fosdyke Bridge. This was being done by using fascine training walls as he recommended and was the only part of his 1835 recommendations currently being pursued. He found that vessels with 8 feet draught could get through up to the bridge whereas those with a 3 foot draught had some difficulties three years before. | |
1840 | He supervised a survey of Southwold Harbour, carried out by John R Wright. It was found that the scouring effect of the tide had been reduced by no less than 148,296,490 cubic feet of water on each tide due to the reclaimation of 1,504 acres of marsh land. | |
1840 | He said that in this year there was traffic above Gloucester of 3,328 laden canal boats and 84 empties, 405 partly-laden barges, 296 laden trows and 253 partly-laden craft. Craft from Shorpshire remained aground at Ironbridge during droughts; when the river rose they came down to Gloucester in fleets of 20 or 30, taking 11 to 16 hours on the journey and unloading as quickly as possible so they could return before the water level fell. | |
1844 | About this time he built Marmont Priory sluice to enable vessels of 4 feet draught to navigate through Upwell and Outwell. | |
28 October 1845 | He reported to the committee on their proposal to convert the towing path or the canal into a railway. He said that by rough walling the sides of the canal there would be enough room for two broad gauge lines and a better canal than at present. He estimated the cost as £800,000. | |
1852 | Reported on behalf og the Admiralty. with Captain Beechey, recommending a lock at Lower Parting at Gloucester but not at Tewkesbury. |
Surveyor,
1807 | He resurveyed the route for a 35 mile barge canal from the Itchen at Winchester through Alresford, Alton and Farnham to either Aldershot on the Basingstoke Canal or Godalming on the Wey Navigation. The summit was to crossed either by a 7 mile railway or (as was later proposed) a two mile tunnel. The cost was estimated at £140,000 with a railway or £200,000 with a tunnel. |
Canal and railway engineer. Uncle of James Walker.
1803 | He surveyed the uncompleted canal and found that much more money was needed to complete the work. He also suggested a a line ¾ mile shorter than planned with cutting depths of up to 100 feet . | |
1805 | An Act was passed based on his proposal to extend the main line and then build a branch to Hock Crib. £80,000 in shares was needed to finance the work. | |
Autumn 1808 | He surveyed the canal again and recommended that much of the line proposed by the Act should be abandoned in favour of a route with a long tunnel further west which would "be attended with much advantage in point of saving considerable Expence, and upwards of one Mile and one quarter less in length". | |
28 September 1809 | He signed a map entitled "Plan for Proposed Canal from Romford to the River Thames". This scheme was for a canal from Rainham Creek with an entrance lock and basin from the Thames connecting to the River Beam by a cutting. The route to Romford would then have followed the river valley. | |
1810 | He increased his estimate from £40,000 in total to £37,715 for the tunnel and £16,989 for other work, telling the Parliamentary committee that this would be half the cost of building the previous line. | |
1812 | He was probably the Walker called in to advise on increasing water supply to the summit around this time. | |
September 1812 | He produced a map showing a 4¾ mile canal with six locks rising 34 feet in total from Rainham Creek to Romford. | |
1829 | He surveyed a railway from Leeds to Selby and recommended the use of locomotives. His proposal was opposed by the Aire & Calder company but the Act for the railway was passed in June 1830. | |
1838 | He made a survey and supported the original Parliamentary line and tunnels rather than the proposed alterations. |
Engineer.
12 November 1801 | At a meeting it was recommended that he (being one of the shareholders not present) "from his great knowledge of mathmatics and numberless other reasons is a very proper man to superintend the execution of the works necessary to complete the canal". |
Engineer.
1836 | It was proposed that, if Sir John Rennie was not available, he should check Charles Bartholomew's routes and estimates for the proposed canal from the River Don to Swinefleet. |
Engineer and inventor of the separate condenser for steam engines. Born in Greenock, died in Heathfield, Birmingham. In 1785 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London.
1785 | Around this time he gave the company engineering advice at a time when the junction with the Dudley Canal was being discussed. | |
After June 1788 | He helped to judge the models submitted in response to the company's offer of a £50 reward for "the best Means of raising and lowering heavy Weights from one Navigation to another". | |
June 1790 | The canal company invited him to come to advise on using a steam engine to improve their water supply. | |
1804 | He became a member of the canal company committee and remained so for the rest of his life. |
Mecanical engineer for the London & North Western Railway (L.N.W.R).
May 1888 | An experiment, started at his suggestion, for hauling boats using Crewe locomotives running on 18 -inch gauge track over about a mile of the branch. First two then four boats were pulled at 7 mph. Later eight boats were pulled by one engine. |
Surveyor. Was supervised by John Rennie.
1792 | He surveyed a line to Heybridge Basin under the direction of John Rennie. |
Engineer. In 1798 the builder of an unsuccessful 46 foot lift on the Somerset Coal Canal.
Engineer.
1882 | As company engineer he had discussions with Sir Edward Leader Williams and Emerson & Co following a burst of a press and caission on the Anderton Lift. Thicker cast iron and modified presses were installed. |
An engineer who surveyed the later Monmouthshire tramroads, from Abereeg to Nant-y-glo and from Crumlin to Risca (one that he also built).
Late 1823 | He was asked to survey a tramroad from the Beaufort tramroad at Crumlin to Risca, where it was to connect with the Sirhowy tramroad thus providing a tramroad route from Beaufort and Ebbw Vale to Newport. |
Engineer.
1855 | He was asked to report on how to improve the navigation and found the worst part tp be from Hull bridge to Struncheonhill. He reported that "from the insufficient depths of water in this part. . . the traffic is nearly always interrupted and delayed; and these interruptions are frequently of such duration as to make the passage from Hull to Driffield occupy from four to eight days; whereas" on a spring tide "the passage may be effected in twenty-four hours". He suggested three options: firstly a long cut across the sharp bend near Arram from Eske to a point below the Leven Canal, with a lock on it where the tidal effect was small; secondly a short cut and lock above Eske; and lastly a second lock at Struncheonhill and dredging below it, this being much the most expensive option because of the dredging required. |
Engineer.
1803 | For some years he had given the company satisfactory service as engineer at very moderate fees so now he was given a gratuity of 5 guineas. | |
1815 | Following a £1,670 bill for repairs he was censured for not producing reports on the defects at Outwell and not attending meetings. |
Contractor, surveyor and engineer working between 1770 and 1796.
April 1772 | He was appointed engineer. His prevoius experience having been as surveyor and as a contractor for cutting. | |
1774 | He left his post as engineer. | |
1778 | He said that the error in taking the levels which resulted in the canal being about 6¾ inches higher than the Coventry Canal was "a most egregious error where a canal is so distress'd for Water". Of the 33 yard tunnel at Wolfhamcote he said "a Bridge wou'd have answered the purpose". | |
June 1785 | He was commissioned by the company to survey the Cherwell from Banbury to Oxford (as well as the Swift from Cocford to Lutterworth) to see if it could be made navigable. He thought it could. | |
1786 | A provision in the canal Bill gave him, Samuel Simcock and four others connected with the canal, exclusive carrying rights and two-thirds of the profts in return for building the canal from Banbury to Oxford for £29,000. This was rejected by Parliament. | |
Mid 1788 | He made a survey for a branch to Saffron Waldon. | |
Late 1788 | He, Samuel Simcock and James Barnes made surveys for narrow and barge canals from Newbury to Bath. | |
1792 | He surveyed a route, with Samuel Simcock, for a canal from Hampton Gay, six miles north of Oxford, to Thame, Wendover, Amersham, Uxbridge and Maylebone (later changed to the Thames at Isleworth). The 60-mile canal was also to have a branch to Aylesbury. |
Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead.