Monkland Canal

Monkland Canal
Weir at Old Palacecraig
Specifications
Maximum boat length	71 ft 0 in (21.64 m)
Maximum boat beam	14 ft 0 in (4.27 m)
Locks	1 descent of four double locks; two other locks (The descent was duplicated for a period by a rope-worked inclined plane)
Status	Unnavigable, partly culverted
History
Original owner	Monkland Canal Company
Principal engineer	James Watt
Date of act	1770
Date of first use	Progressively from 1771
Date closed	1942
Geography
Start point	Calderbank, near Airdrie
End point	Townhead Basin, Glasgow (Later connected to the Forth and Clyde Canal by the "cut of junction")
Branch(es)	Four short branches
Connects to	Forth and Clyde Canal

The Monkland Canal was a 12 ¹⁄₄-mile-long (19.7 km) canal designed to bring coal from the mining areas of Monklands to Glasgow in Scotland. In the course of a long and difficult construction process, it was opened progressively as short sections were completed, from 1771. It reached Gartcraig in 1782, and in 1794 it reached its full originally planned extent, from pits at Calderbank to a basin at Townhead in Glasgow; at first this was in two sections with a 96-foot (29 m) vertical interval between them at Blackhill; coal was unloaded and carted to the lower section and loaded onto a fresh barge. Locks were later constructed linking the two sections, and the canal was also connected to the Forth and Clyde Canal, giving additional business potential.

Maintaining an adequate water supply was a problem, and later an inclined plane was built at Blackhill, in which barges were let down and hauled up, floating in caissons that ran on rails. Originally intended as a water-saving measure to be used in summer only, the inclined plane was found to pass barges more quickly than through the locks and may have been used all the year.

In the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, technical advances in iron smelting coupled with fresh discoveries of abundant iron deposits and coal measures encouraged a massive increase in industrial activity in the Coatbridge area, and the Canal was ideally situated to feed the raw materials and take away the products of the industry.

The development of railways reduced the competitiveness of the canal, and eventually it was abandoned for navigation in 1952, but its culverted remains still supply water to the Forth and Clyde Canal. Much of the route now lies beneath the course of the M8 motorway, but two watered sections remain, and are well stocked with fish.

The eastern end of the final extent of the canal is at Calderbank, south of Woodside Drive, where there were coal pits; the canal was fed there from the North Calder Water. A reservoir was created at Hillend (east of Caldercruix) to sustain the canal in the dry season, and others were made later.

The canal ran close to the north side of the North Calder Water, passing more coal pits (and later ironstone pits) at Faskine and Palacecraig, then turning north there. Palacecraig was later the southern extremity of the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway. The canal passed under the road at Sikeside (now called Sykeside Road, Cairnhill), from where it is nowadays in culvert.