Royal Canal

The Royal Canal (Irish: An Chanáil Ríoga) is a canal originally built for freight and passenger transportation from Dublin to Longford in Ireland. It is one of two canals from Dublin to the River Shannon and was built in direct competition to the Grand Canal. The canal fell into disrepair in the late twentieth century, but much of it has since been restored for navigation. The length of the canal to the River Shannon was reopened on 1 October 2010, but a final spur branch, to Longford Town, remains closed.
In 1755, Thomas Williams and John Cooley made a survey to find a suitable route for a man-made waterway across north Leinster from Dublin to the Shannon. They originally planned to use a series of rivers and lakes, including the Boyne, Blackwater, Deel, Yellow, Camlin and Inny and Lough Derravaragh. A disgruntled director of the Grand Canal Company sought support to build a canal from Dublin to Cloondara, on the Shannon in West County Longford.
Work on this massive project commenced in May 1790 at Cross Guns Bridge, Phibsborough in a westerly direction towards Ashtown. This is commemorated in the plaque beneath the keystone of Ranelagh Bridge. Twenty-seven years later, in 1817, the canal reached the Shannon. The total cost of construction was £1,421,954. Building was unexpectedly expensive, and the project was riven with problems; in 1794 the Royal Canal Company was declared bankrupt. The Duke of Leinster, a board member, insisted that the new waterway take in his local town of Maynooth. The builders had to deviate from the planned route; this necessitated the construction of a 'deep sinking' between Blanchardstown and Clonsilla. The diversion also called for the building of the Ryewater Aqueduct, at Leixlip.
In 1796, the canal reached Kilcock and trade commenced. Two passenger boats, the Camden and the Phelan, went into service on 2 December 1796, with a fare of 1s 1d (first class cabin) or 6d (second class cabin) from Dublin to Leixlip, a journey of approximately 20 km. This was much cheaper than the stagecoach at the time, which cost 8s 8d for the same journey. Passengers also had the option to dine on board the canal passenger boat, whereas this was not possible on the coach. This made a slow canal journey such as the 12 hours to Mullingar more manageable.
In the early 1800s, the canal supplied water to Dublin Corporation for its north city water supply, which could make the water level drop on the canal at times, especially during dry summers. To counteract this, a small reservoir named after King George III was opened in the north inner city in 1809, paid for by Dublin Corporation, which was fed from the 1 km-long spur that came off the Royal Canal to meet Broadstone railway station near Phibsborough. The ground alone, covering merely an acre, cost the Corporation £1,052 9s 2d. The reservoir still exists, named the Blessington Street Basin, although the spur has been filled in.
In the late 1820s, as the quality of roads in Ireland improved, road carriers such as Bianconi's Coach and Car Service began to compete with the canal as an affordable alternative public transport option.
By the 1830s the canal carried 80,000 tons of freight and 40,000 passengers a year.
In 1843, while walking with his wife along the Royal Canal, Sir William Rowan Hamilton realised the formula for quaternions and carved his initial thoughts into a stone on the Broom Bridge over the canal. The annual Hamilton Walk commemorates this event.
In July 1845, the Midland Great Western Railway company was formed by a parliamentary act, authorising it to build a railway from Dublin to Mullingar and Longford and to purchase the Royal Canal, which they did that same year. They considered draining the canal and building a new railway along its bed; however they were "legally obliged to operate the canal as a separate transport system and so it (the Royal Canal) continued to operate". The train line was eventually laid adjacent to the canal, and the two run side by side from Dublin to Mullingar.
15 passengers, including two children, were drowned in an incident on the canal, near Clonsilla, Dublin in 1845. At approximately 4:00pm on 25 November that year, the Royal Canal Company passenger boat Longford, on its way from Dublin to Longford, was steered accidentally into the bank, turned over (with the weight of 54 passengers suddenly thrown to one side), and capsized.
In May 1847, during the Great Famine, tenants of Major Denis Mahon left his Strokestown Park estate in County Roscommon. The tenants, who would become known locally as the "Missing 1,490", had been offered a choice of emigration with assisted passage, starvation on their blighted potato farms or a place in the local workhouse. Weakened by starvation, the 1,490 walked for days along the towpaths of the Royal Canal to Dublin, where they were put on boats to Liverpool, and from there travelled to Grosse-Île, Quebec on four "coffin ships" – cargo vessels that were also, ironically, loaded with grain from Ireland, and were unsuitable for passengers. It is estimated that half of the emigrants died before reaching Grosse-Île. This was the largest single exodus of tenants during the Famine. Mahon was assassinated in November 1847, after news reached Roscommon about the fate of his former tenants. An annual walk on the canal banks commemorates these events.
Competition from the railways gradually eroded the canal's business, and by the 1880s annual tonnage was down to about 30,000 and the passenger traffic had all but disappeared.
The canal had a brief resurgence during World War II, when horses and barges returned. CIÉ took over the canal in 1944. As rail and road traffic increased, the canal fell into disuse. In 1951, one boat was left using the canal commercially, which ceased in July of that year. A decade later, in 1961, CIÉ closed the navigation on the canal, and placed a dam across it "three miles west of Mullingar, thereby cutting off the main water supply to the western section".
In 1974, volunteers from the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland formed the Royal Canal Amenity Group to save the canal. By 1990 they had 74 kilometres of canal, from the 12th lock in Blanchardstown to Mullingar, open again for navigation. In 2000, the canal was taken over by Waterways Ireland, a cross-border body charged with administering Ireland's inland navigations. On 1 October 2010, the whole length of the canal was formally reopened.
Since the early 19th century, the canal has been maintained by eight successive agencies: the Royal Canal Company, the Commissioners of Inland Navigation, the New Royal Canal Company, Midland Great Western Railway Company, Great Southern Railways, CIÉ, the Office of Public Works (from 1986), and Waterways Ireland, in addition to the restoration and maintenance by the volunteers of the Royal Canal Amenity Group.
The canal passes through Maynooth, Kilcock, Enfield, Longwood, Mullingar and Ballymahon and has a spur to Longford. The total length of the main navigation is 145 kilometres (90 mi), and the system has 46 locks. There is one main feeder (from Lough Owel), which enters the canal at Mullingar.
The Royal Canal was originally planned to terminate in Dublin at Broadstone, to serve the then fashionable area of residence, as well as King's Inns and the nearby markets, but it was extended so that now, at the Dublin end, the canal reaches the Liffey through a wide sequence of dock and locks at Spencer Dock, with a final sea lock to manage access to the river and sea.
The Dublin – Mullingar railway line was built alongside the canal for much of its length. The meandering route of the canal resulted in many speed-limiting curves on the railway. The canal was bought by the Midland Great Western Railway to provide a route to the West of Ireland, the original plan being to close the canal and build the railway along its bed.
The canal travels across one of the major junctions on the M50 where it meets the N3, in a specially constructed aqueduct.
Today Waterways Ireland is responsible for the canal, and it was under their stewardship, in association with the Royal Canal Amenity Group, that the Royal Canal was officially reopened from Dublin to the Shannon on 2 October 2010. Access points currently exist near Leixlip and at Maynooth, Enfield, Thomastown, Mullingar, Ballinea Bridge and Ballynacargy.
In 2006, a commemoration marker was erected at Piper's Boreen, Mullingar, to mark the 200 years since the canal reached Mullingar in 1806.
The Royal Canal Way is a 144-kilometre (89-mile) long-distance trail that follows the towpath of the canal from Ashtown, Dublin to Cloondara, County Longford. It is typically completed in six days. It is designated as a National Waymarked Trail by the National Trails Office of the Irish Sports Council and is managed by Waterways Ireland. In 2015, Dublin City Council began extending the walking and cycling route along the Royal Canal from Ashtown to Sheriff Street Upper. The Royal Canal Way connects with the Westmeath Way west of Mullingar and will eventually form the eastern end of the Dublin-Galway Greenway, the final part of EuroVelo Route 2, a cycling path from Moscow across Europe to Galway.
The Royal Canal Greenway is the greenway encompassing the Royal Canal Way between Maynooth and Cloondara, with a branch to Longford. It was launched in March 2021.
The Royal Canal was immortalised in verse by Brendan Behan in The Auld Triangle. A monument featuring Behan sitting on a bench was erected on the canal bank at Binn's Bridge in Drumcondra in 2004.
Royal Canal boatmen believed the 13th lock at Deey Bridge, between Leixlip and Maynooth, was haunted. This tale became the subject of a poem by Arthur Griffith, The Spooks of the Thirteenth Lock, which in turn inspired the name of the band The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock.
53°21′N 6°14′W﻿ / ﻿53.350°N 6.233°W﻿ / 53.350; -6.233