Description:Writing about the development of transport in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Professor Eric Richards describes ‘two structural changes’ which took place between 1750 and 1850. Professor Richards defines these changes as ‘the dramatic expansion of canal enterprise’ which occurred from the middle of the eighteenth century and secondly, ‘the sudden emergence of railway construction as a leading sector in the 1820s’.
The Leveson-Gower family were instrumental in both of these developments, exerting what Professor Richards defines as ‘a critical influence’ over the growth of inland transport. In the middle of the nineteenth century Granville Leveson-Gower, Marquis of Stafford (1721-1803) invested in navigable waterways on his Shropshire estates and employed the civil engineer James Brindley to survey a canal between the River Trent and the River Mersey. In 1748 the Marquis married Lady Louisa Egerton, the sister of Sir Francis Egerton, the third Duke of Bridgewater (1736-1803). The Marquis invested in the construction of the Duke’s Bridgewater Canal which K. R. Fairclough describes as England’s ‘first arterial canal’. When the Duke of Bridgewater died in 1803 he bequeathed the income from the Bridgewater Canal to the Marquis’s first son George Granville Leveson-Gower who became the first Duke of Sutherland in 1833.
In 1825 George Granville Leveson-Gower (1758-1833), advised by his Chief Agent James Loch, invested in the development of railways. Professor Eric Richards writes that between 1815 and 1825 there had been emerging dissatisfaction with the speed and economy of the canal network which was failing to meet the demands of trade and industry. Calls for more efficient transport facilities encouraged Loch and the Marquis of Stafford to review their investment policy and support the development of new railway networks. An investor in both canals and railways, Professor Richards describes the Marquis of Stafford as ‘both the largest canal proprietor and the largest railway proprietor in the kingdom’ by 1826. His decision to continue supporting canals but to also invest in the railways ensured that the Leveson-Gower family ‘were located at the very centre’ of the struggle between canal proprietors and railway promoters which arose in the 1820s and 1830s.
The Sutherland Papers contain a huge variety of documents relating to the progress of inland transport during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Papers surviving in the collection belonging to Sir John Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower (1694-1754) reflect debates surrounding the development of navigable waterways in the early eighteenth century. Both the first and second Marquises were instrumental in the development of canals and railways and documents in the Sutherland Papers provide a fascinating insight into the struggle between canal proprietors and railway promoters in the early nineteenth century. Plans produced by the civil engineer James Brindley and correspondence from George Stephenson are amongst the more famous documents suriving in the collection, reflecting the prominent role of the Leveson-Gower family in the progress of transport and industry throughout this period.
Click on the images on the left to learn more about Canals & Railways in the Sutherland Papers.
Contextual information from Professir Eric Richards The Leviathan of Wealth: The Sutherland Fortune in the Industrial Revolution (Routledge, 1973) and K. R. Fairclough, ‘Egerton, Francis, third duke of Bridgewater (1736–1803)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8584]