WHEN canal engineer Robert Whitworth stood at Gannow Top in Burnley in the 1790s, he must have had his doubts.

But he was determined to bring the proposed Leeds-Liverpool canal right into the heart of the town.

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The mile long embankment which runs at rooftop level above the centre was his answer and he fought tooth and nail to get his plan accepted.

It nearly started another War of the Roses, though.

The Yorkshiremen on the canal committee wanted a short, direct route from Barrowford to Whalley and onwards – the Lancastrians wanted the waterway to pass through the growing cotton towns of East Lancashire.

For three days at a crisis meeting in the Black Bull in Burnley, arguments went back and forth until the Red Rose side of the room threatened to pull out, take their money with them and form an independent canal building committee.

In 1794 a new Act was passed, changing the route of the canal to run via Burnley and Blackburn and the towns in between, instead of Whalley and Walton-le-Dale.

Whitworth, one of the greatest canal builders of the 18th century then went on to defeat another obstacle, nature’s perversity and blast a way for the canal through Gannow Top, using the earth that was removed to build a 50ft embankment.

The canal took 40 years of fighting, intrigue, skill and shear hard digging to complete – and is today a man-made wonder which straddles the Pennine backbone of England.

It also gave birth to a breed of men who became household names, such as Lancastrian John Longbottom, who took on the task of planning the 127-mile route which would link the growing industrial areas of East Lancashire, with both the Mersey and West Riding.

As well as the straight mile there are other particular features of the canal, such as Foulridge Tunnel which opened in 1796 and meant boat owners had to use their legs to propel their craft from one end to the other.

The next section from Burnley to Blackburn took 14 years to construct and included the series of locks in the cotton town, each one containing 80,000 gallons of water, all for the purpose of raising a boat by eight feet.

In the 1970s there was a canal enthusiast called Bill Hancock, who was known more affectionately as Lifeboat Bill.

He despaired at the derelict state of the waterway and the many mills, factories and warehouses at its banks.

Rotting barges and oil drums in the polluted waters were a grim reminder of a past era.

He said: “It’s a sacrilege. Every mill owner should be forced to keep his canal frontage neat and tidy and with a bit of modest investment, councils could landscape the banks.”

nThe first narrow boats played a key part in the economic changes of the British Industrial Revolution. They were wooden boats drawn by a horse walking on the canal towpath led by a crew member, often a child. Narrowboats were chiefly designed for carrying cargo, though some packet boats, carried passengers, luggage, mail and parcels.

Boatmen’s families originally lived ashore, but in the 1830s as canals started to suffer competition from the burgeoning railway system, families (especially those of independent single boat owner/skippers) began to live on board, partly because they could no longer afford rents, partly to provide extra hands to work the boats harder, faster and further, partly to keep families together.