Description:The Leveson-Gower family were instrumental in the development of navigable waterways in Britain. 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 (1716-1772) to survey a canal between the River Trent and the River Mersey. The Sutherland Papers contain a number of plans for naviagble waterways produced by James Brindley in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The image above shows a plan entitled 'A Plan for a Navigation chiefly by canal from Longbridge near Burslem in the County of Stafford to Newcastle, Lichfield and Tamworth and to Wilden in the County of Derby'. The plan was produced by James Brindley and revised by John Smeaton in 1760.
The plan contains detailed representations of the main towns and cities in Staffordshire such as Newcastle, Lichfield and Trentham. Churches and houses such as Sandon Hall and Stone Park are also represented on the plan alongside Lichfield Cathedral.
Landowners are marked on the plan, as are rivers and several tables of statistics concerning the length of canals between different places. Areas such as Burton and Rugeley are shown on the plan and also smaller villages including Weston and Great Haywood. Industrial landmarks such as mills and brine pits also feature on the plan, reflecting its production during a time of industrial development.
For biographucal information about James Brindley, see K. R. Fairclough, ‘Brindley, James (1716–1772)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3435]