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The
photograph
opposite shows a canal boat at the Welshpool Wharf on the Montgomeryshire Canal around 1902. |
The roads of the time, particularly in Wales, were very bad, and there were demands for a network of inland waterways like those already working in many parts of Europe. This led to the great age of canal building in Britain from around 1761 to 1816.
Canals then played a vital part in the commercial transport of the first thirty years or so of the Victorian period, but they were to lose most of their trade with the coming of the steam railways around 1861.
