Notwithstanding all these additional means of raising money, the funds still proved inadequate to the completion of the work, and the aid of parliament was again applied for in 1826, this application was answered by an act, entitled, 'An Act to enable the Company of Proprietors of the Leominster Canal to raise further Sums of Money to discharge their Debts, and to complete the Canal, and for amending the Acts for making and maintaining the said Canal, and for granting to the said Company further and other Powers.' By this act the proprietors may raise £60,000 by creating six hundred new shares of £100 each, such sum to be applied to the liquidation of debts already incurred. This and one or two clauses relating to the election of committees, and the compensation to be made for lands, &c. taken for the use of the company, comprize the substance of the act last obtained.
Mr. Thomas Dadford, Jun. was the engineer, under whose able superintendence the work has been put into execution. The tunnel at Sousant was finished in 1796, and in November of the same year twenty miles of the canal, from Leominster to Mamble Coal Works, were opened; the consequence of which was an immediate reduction of the price of coal from 1s. 6d. to 9d. per cwt. In 1797 the entrance into the canal from the Severn was opened and the work has gone on progressively since that time.
The design for which it was projected was the transit of stone, lime and iron-ore, and the agricultural produce of the country on its line to London, Liverpool, Hull and Bristol, and also the supply of Leominster and its vicinity with coal and coke. These purposes, it is hardly necessary to state, have been fully answered.
LEVEN CANAL.
41 George III. Cap. 32, Royal Assent 21st May, 1801.
45 George III. Cap. 43, Royal Assent 5th June, 1805.
THIS canal which is little more than three miles in length, was undertaken, at the sole charge of Mrs. Charlotte Bethell, of Rise, for the purpose of opening a Communication between Leven and the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, and of thus affording an easier conveyance for goods and agricultural produce. Its direction is
