"Let us now praise famous men..."

Ecclesiasticus 44:1-15

 James Brindley (1716-1772)

Brindley built the canal which made the Etruria Pottery works a major business success, the Etruria works made the village of Etruria a thriving community.

Wedgwood was an astute businessman, he wanted to develop his pottery business (which at that time was at the Brick House Works, Burslem) and he wanted better access to Liverpool and Hull for the export of his ware.

So in 1765 he discussed with Brindley the subject of a canal system running through the Potteries district, in 1767 he purchased the Ridgehouse House Estate because he knew this was where the canal was planned to run through.
His Etruria factory was opened in 1769 and the canal was built later and opened in 1777.

Burslem's Leopard Hotel held in 1765 the first meeting between Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley, Erasmus Darwin and the engineer James Brindley  which culminated in the cutting of the Trent and Mersey Canal. 

"On Friday last I dined with Mr. Brindley, the Duke of Bridgewater's engineer, after which we had a meeting at the Leopard on the subject of a Navigation from Hull.... to Burslem" 

– Josiah Wedgwood,11th March 1765.

In the centre of Burslem the Leopard Inn, south of the Old Town Hall, with two three-storeyed bows, the three parts of each bow separated by columns.

Since the potteries around Stoke-on-Trent were in desperate need of something better than the pack-horse to carry their fragile wares, they wholeheartedly supported the connection of Staffordshire to the Trent and to the Mersey.

The first sod was cut near Brownhills by Josiah Wedgwood in 1766 and Brindley carried it away in a barrow.

From Runcorn, the canal would climb by a series of thirty-five locks to Harecastle (near Tunstall), pass through a three thousand yard long tunnel, then descend by a further forty locks to join the Trent at Wilden Ferry, near Shardlow. There was mounting ridicule about his scheme and, although the canal opened from Shardlow to near Stafford in 1770, it took eleven years to drive the tunnel.

Although Brindley and his assistants surveyed the whole potential system, for, from the start, he had asserted his view of the Trent and Mersey as the "Grand Trunk Canal" – the Grand Cross of waterways across the country – he would not live to see it completed. The Harecastle Tunnel finally opened in 1777 - 5 years after his death.

Statue of James Brindley - canal engineer
- photo: Roger Kidd  Oct 2007 -

In Etruria, on the Caldon Canal, near the junction with the Trent & Mersey Canal stands this statue of James Brindley - produced in 1990 by by the sculptor Colin Melbourne.

JAMES
BRINDLEY
CANAL ENGINEER
1716-1792
unveiled by
Lord Hesketh
Under-secretary of Sate
for the Environment
20th July 1990