Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
— — the canal that walks on air.
Not only on a wall.
“The longest, highest cast-iron aqueduct in Britain, carrying narrowboats one hundred and twenty-six feet above the River Dee. Eighteen arches, a single iron trough, no railing on the towpath side. From below it looks like a Roman ruin that learned to fly. From above, the water in the trough is the same colour as the sky it has borrowed.
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct carries the Llangollen Canal across the valley of the River Dee between Trevor and Froncysyllte, in Wrexham county borough, north-east Wales. Designed by Thomas Telford with the older engineer William Jessop and opened in 1805, it runs 307 metres across eighteen masonry piers, with the cast-iron trough sitting 38 metres above the river. Together with eleven miles of canal, it was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2009, recognised as a masterwork of the Industrial Revolution and one of the boldest civil-engineering works of its day.
The trough is cast iron, flanged plates bolted together and sealed with a paste of Welsh flannel boiled in sugar and iron-filings. That was Telford's own recipe, still watertight after two centuries. The piers are hollow above thirty feet, an early use of that economy in masonry, and the mortar carries ox blood for hydraulic set. Boats still cross under their own power; the trough is wide enough for one narrowboat, and on the eastern edge a slim towpath gives walkers a handrail the boats themselves do not have.
The aqueduct is open to walkers as well as boats, on a 1.2-metre towpath cantilevered out from the trough. There is a handrail on the path side and only a four-inch iron lip on the water side. On a still day the trough reflects the sky and the crossing feels like walking on a thin ribbon of cloud above the Vale of Llangollen. The Trevor Basin at the eastern end is the usual starting point; the path is level and runs about 305 metres each way.