Aerial view of Muirtown Basin Digital image of A 36839

Description Aerial view of Muirtown Basin Digital image of A 36839

Date 1985

Collection RCAHMS Aerial Photography

Catalogue Number SC 804774

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of A 36839

Scope and Content Aerial view, Muirtown Basin, Caledonian Canal, Inverness, Highland, from east This shows Muirtown Basin (centre) which covers eight hectares and has a length of 731.5m and a width of 128m at its widest point. Clachnaharry Lock connects this basin with the Sea Lock Basin (top) which has been constructed in the Beauly Firth. The Sea Lock, connecting this basin to the sea, is just visible at the top of the photograph. The construction of Muirtown Basin was extremely hard work for the men involved as they had to dig out a large area of ground. The soil excavated was used to build up the banks and a dyke was built to protect the work from the Beauly Firth. The basin was completed by 1807 and Telford hoped that it would become a second harbour for Inverness. Unfortunately this never happened because boats became too big and the basin remained under-used. The Caledonian Canal was designed by Thomas Telford (1757-1834) and built between 1803 and 1822 at a cost of £840,000. It was the first example of a transport network funded by the government in Great Britain. The 96.5km-long canal provides a route for boats travelling between the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean as it runs from the Beauly Firth at Clachnaharry, Inverness, to Loch Linnhe at Corpach. Only 35.4km of this length is man-made while the other 61km runs through four lochs: Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich and Loch Lochy. Unfortunately, at 4.2m deep, the canal was too small for most sea-going ships which led to it being altered and deepened between 1844 and 1847. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/804774

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap