A COMMON sight when the Leeds-Liverpool Canal carried commercial traffic, this laden barge was photographed one wintry day behind the Riddlesden War Memorial Institute.
The Leeds-Liverpool Canal was one of the factors leading to Keighley’s development in the Industrial Revolution. The Bingley to Skipton stretch had opened in 1773, celebrated with “bonfires, illuminations, and other demonstrations of joy”, the ringing of church bells and the sale at half-price of the first two boat-loads of coal.
By 1819, however, the mile separating Keighley town centre from its nearest wharves at Stockbridge was proving a drawback. An estimated 400 loads of coals per day were having to come into town by cart.
A proposed branch canal from Utley into a central Keighley basin came to nothing, but provided a striking environmental might-have-been: “To pass the River Aire at or near Uttley,” the planners warned, “it will be necessary to build an Aqueduct of Twelve Arches over the River, besides Two smaller ones for roadways.” The estimated cost, in 1819 money, would have been £31,455.
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