5.2 Case Study: Grand Canal
Unlike the River Shannon, with its underground origins dating back to glacial formations, the Grand Canal is a man-made waterway. It spans from the east coast of the island, beginning in Dublin City, to the city of Shannon Harbour in County Offaly – where it connects with the River Shannon.
The Royal and Grand canals were developed in the early 19th century, connecting Dublin to the River Shannon. Along the way, the canals passed through major towns and trading sites across the midlands, further increasing commercial trade between the east and west. In this chapter, we will learn more about the Grand Canal and the impacts that its development had on the environment, trade and culture.
The Grand Canal is one of two major canal developments in Ireland that emerged during the nineteenth century. The Grand Canal and the Royal Canal projects both spanned from the east to west of the country and provided new opportunities for trade, employment, travel, and leisure. While both canals take the same east-to-west path across Ireland from the Irish Sea to towards the Atlantic Ocean, the Grand Canal was conceived initially, and the Royal Canal was developed in direct competition. The Royal Canal was commissioned in the 1780s, thirty years after initial construction of the Grand Canal, due to growing frustrations of the speed of construction taking place on the Grand Canal (Coyle 2021, 26). The Grand Canal takes a south-westerly path towards the River Shannon while the Royal Canal was built to the north of the Grand Canal, following a parallel path. Once complete, the Grand Canal spanned 132 kilometers across the middle of Ireland (Kerrigan 2023, 9).
It was during the mid-eighteenth century that plans began to develop within the Commissioners of Inland Navigation to construct a canal linking Dublin to the River Shannon; the building of the canal began in 1755 and reached the River Shannon in 1804, taking nearly fifty years to complete (Coyle 2021, 24-26). Just six years later, by 1810, the Grand Canal was reaching 200,000 tons of trade per year (Kerrigan 2023 18-19).
While the Grand Canal was popular in the early nineteenth century, by the mid-1820s railways were emerging, with the first steamer connecting Dublin to Limerick; as you can imagine, the continued development of train service in Ireland in the subsequent decades meant competition with the Grand Canal both in terms of the movement of people and the trading of goods. The canals decline in usage in the mid-nineteenth century, in part due to the results of mass emigration because of famine, but also due to the rise of train transportation (Coyle 2021, 27). Canals ceased commercial use in the 1950s and by 1954, the tides changed with the development of the Waterways Association of Ireland, a group with volunteers who worked to promote the canals including their eventual restoration (Coyle 2021, 27) The last commercial canal boat to run on the Grand Canal was in May 1960 (Kerrigan 2023, 20).
Figure 5.7 Video from the location where the Grand Canal meets the River Liffey at the Sea Locks, taken by Katie Young. Video holds the same copyright as the textbook (CC-BY-4.0).
Building the Grand Canal
Who built the Grand Canal? Those who built the canals were referred to as ‘navvies’, short for canal navigators. Navvies were recruited by canal contractors from farms and small households across the country. Many navvies were unskilled labourers who migrated to the canal building sites, seeking work. For those unskilled labourers, some were motivated to work on the canals due to hunger, poverty, and lack of employment in their local areas. Other navvies were hired because of their expertise in masonry, bricklaying, carpentry, and management (Coyle 2021, 26).
Others were hired for short-term work when the building of the canal passed through their area, and worked on digging the canal, blasting rock, and waterproofing the newly built portion of the canal (Coyle 2021, 26). Navvies dug the canals by hand with tools such as spades and pickaxes, and over time became very skilled at their work; those skills were taken with them as they emigrated to England, Scotland, and the United States in subsequent decades (Coyle 2021, 26).
Canal Economies
Ireland’s economy changed with the development of the Grand Canal, as items such as grain, turf, food, building materials, and tools were shipped between the east and west coast (Kerrigan 2023, 9). New industries also emerged, including working on the canal, working to build the canal, and working in hospitality around the canal to service those moving through the area via canal boats (Kerrigan 2023, 10). At the same time, farmers and businesses were able to ship goods easily to major cities in ways that were not possible previously, expanding the reach of markets for those living in Ireland’s midlands (Kerrigan 2023, 11).
Caitríona Devery writes that historical remnants of the Grand Canal’s yesteryears are embedded within the physical landscape through material culture; for example, in the village of Pollagh in County Offaly, the Pollagh brick industry took off through the mass transportation of locally made bricks to be shipped and subsequently sold in major cities like Dublin, with 14 million bricks being sent to Dublin each year in the 1840s (Devery 2021). In fact, while many areas suffered during the famine years, the brick industry in this village saw the growth of the area post-famine (Devery 2021). When the Grand Canal was slowly converted into a greenway for leisure, elements of the brick trade emerged, including bricks found on the sides of excavated paths, but bricks from Pollagh can also be found across the country, from brick facades of houses in Tullamore to interior brick walls in Dublin houses (Devery 2021).
Another major propeller of industry on the canals was Guinness, a popular Irish alcoholic stout, that has ties with the development of the Grand Canal. Guinness stout emerged in the mid-eighteenth century, and was originally transported in the country via horses; of course, when the Grand Canal opened in Dublin at the end of the eighteenth century, Guinness quickly began to transport raw materials, casks and Guinness itself across the country via the Grand Canal (Guinness Storehouse 2023). On the journey east to west from Shannon Harbour, malt barley was shipped towards the Guinness Brewery for processing, while in reverse Guinness stout was shipped across the canal waterway reaching towns and villages along the way (Waterways Ireland – Guinness 2023).
The Grand Canal Company formed in 1772 and St James’ Gate was chosen as the starting point of the canal (Kerrigan 2023, 18). There was a semi-circular harbour just off of where the Guinness Storehouse is located, and Guinness would not only ship their stout across the canal waterways from this location, but they also used the canal water of the Grand Canal to make Guinness stout (Dublin Canals n.d.).
Guinness allowed for the longevity of the Grand Canal well after its rise of popularity in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the last canal boat to ship trade on the Grand Canal in 1960 was shipping Guinness, a testament to the economic drive of Guinness within the Grand Canal economy. We can see how both the trade of raw materials as well as finished products meant that Guinness benefited from these inland waterways, but also how the Grand Canal itself provided drinking water that was used for the making of Guinness in its early stages.
Changing Landscape
The building of the Grand Canal and its surrounding amenities altered the landscape along its path – of course through the creation of a canal itself, but also the surrounding buildings that emerged, including storage houses that stored goods to be collected for trade by the canal boats, lock houses, hotels, pubs and restaurants that emerged along the canal. Towns were significantly altered by the arrival of the Grand Canal. For example, when the Grand Canal reached the town of Tullamore in 1799, the town changed with the building of a hotel, multiple warehouses, a harbour and drydock; when the canal reached the Shannon River five years later, Tullamore became an important market for trade (Freeman 2021, 120).
Of course, the physical landscape was altered permanently by the digging of the Grand Canal, too. Part of what made the building of the Grand Canal a lengthy project was that it had to cut through the Bog of Allen, one of Ireland’s famous large raised bogs, an endeavor that took the project five years (Kerrigan 2023, 18). The Grand Canal thus altered the makeup of one of Ireland’s largest bogs, changing the landscape of Ireland’s midlands region.
In recent years, work has been undertaken to rejuvenate and restore the Grand Canal for a new purpose as a greenway for leisure, including cycling and walking along the canal’s towpath. The renovations reveal the changing role that canals play in the life of Irish citizens and visitors, from an area of trade to an area of recreation. The development of the greenway is a large undertaking and has been done in chunks over large periods of time. The Grand Canal greenway projects are a relatively new endeavour in relation to the Royal Canal preservation and restoration projects that have a longer history in Ireland.
