Canals: The Making of a Nation
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30:00Canals: The Making of a Nation
How Birmingham led the way in urban regeneration, turning canals and their immediate surroundings from places to be avoided to places to be enjoyed.
30:00Liz McIvor tells the story of the people who operated the canal boats, who during the Victorian era gained reputations for criminality, violence and drinking.
30:00Liz McIvor examines the Manchester Ship Canal. Hailed as the greatest engineering feat of the Victorian age.
30:00Liz McIvor recounts the story of 'canal mania' - a boom period of frenzied activity that helped develop Britain's modern financial economy, now centred in London.
30:00Liz McIvor discovers how carving up the landscape in order to build canals helped man's understanding of the earth below.
30:00Liz McIvor tells the story of the early canal builders who struggled with the rugged terrain of England's Pennine hills.
30:00
Liz McIvor recounts the story of 'canal mania', the period of activity that helped develop Britain's modern financial economy, now centred in London.
30:00Liz McIvor charts the struggles of the builders and engineers tasked with creating a landscape of canals over the rugged terrain surrounding the Pennine hills.
30:00How the process of building Britain's canals resulted in furthering geological knowledge, as surveyor William Smith created the first geological map of England and Wales.
29:00Liz McIvor explores how the nation's canals were saved following years of postwar neglect, becoming places of tranquillity and popular for boating holidays.
29:00Liz McIvor recounts the tales of the men who built the canals - the navigators, or navvies - focusing on their work on the Manchester Ship Canal.
30:00Liz McIvor tells the story of the people who operated the canal boats, carrying fuel and goods around the country.