Penrhyn Canal

Canals That Never Were: NarrowBoat, Spring 2025

Richard Dean

Richard Dean describes an interesting Welsh proposal

An old print showing Penrhyn Quarries: an unlikely destination for a canal. The industries of South Wales soon attracted canal builders and several heavily locked waterways penetrated the main valleys. The driving force was coal but this stimulus was largely absent in most of North Wales, where the inland slate quarry owners quickly adopted railways as the best and cheapest means of transporting their heavy and breakable produce to the coast. Richard Pennant, keen to develop his quarries at Bethesda, was the only one to briefly consider building a waterway. As early as 1793 he was contemplating a canal for the steeply graded journey down to the harbour he was developing at Port Penrhyn, outside Bangor, but a proper scheme was not available until 1799, after he had been introduced to the engineer Thomas Dadford. The details are recorded in a notebook which, fortunately, has survived among the Pennant papers in Bangor University Library. Dismissed by an earlier writer as “…