An overview of heritage and engineering on the canal system Available to Purchase

This paper offers an overview of heritage and engineering on the Canal & River Trust waterway network by looking at the evolution of the canal system, the nature, meaning, value and importance of heritage and the types of problem and conflicts that current canal engineers have to deal with from a heritage and an engineering perspective. The need to devise ingenious and sometimes radical interventions on historic operational and non-operational structures is highlighted in conjunction with the pressure to devise cost-effective solutions in restricted, difficult-to-access environments. The use of both traditional and modern engineering techniques on a historic transport network is explained. The author is a civil engineer with the Canal & River Trust, a registered charity, managing over 3000 km of navigable canals, rivers and associated infrastructure across England and Wales on behalf of the nation. The Trust’s national network has approximately 10 000 principal assets and 15 000 non-principal assets and the third largest collection of listed buildings and structures in the UK with five UNESCO world heritage sites.