Sir Edward Leader Williams (28 April 1828 – 1 January 1910) was an English

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

, chiefly remembered as the designer of the

Manchester Ship Canal The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West England, North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary at Eastham, Merseyside, Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it ...

, but also heavily involved in other

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface ...

projects in north

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shrop ...

Early life

Williams was born in Worcester on 28 April 1828, the son of a civil engineer also named Edward (responsible for works to make the

River Severn The River Severn (, ), at long, is the longest river in Great Britain. It is also the river with the most voluminous flow of water by far in all of England and Wales, with an average flow rate of at Apperley, Gloucestershire. It rises in t ...

navigable; also a keen amateur artist and friend of

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

) and his

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

wife Sarah Whiting. His brother Benjamin Williams Leader became a notable landscape artist. The family lived at Diglis House in Worcester (today the Diglis Hotel).

Career

After attending the Royal Grammar School Worcester Williams became an

apprentice Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a Tradesman, trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in ...

to his father. In 1856 he was chosen out of 110 applicants to be chief engineer for the development of the navigable northern section of the

River Weaver The River Weaver is a river, navigable in its lower reaches, running in a curving route anti-clockwise across west Cheshire, northern England. Improvements to the river to make it navigable were authorised in 1721 and the work, which included ...

. He began to specialise in canal construction and in 1865 produced plans for enlarging the Weston Canal, a short stretch of canal linking the river near Frodsham to docks at Weston Point,

Runcorn Runcorn is an industrial town and Runcorn Docks, cargo port in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England. Runcorn is on the south bank of the River Mersey, where the estuary narrows to form the Runcorn Gap. It is upstream from the port of Live ...

. On 1 September 1872, he joined the Bridgewater Navigation Company and worked on the

Bridgewater Canal The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, Greater Manchester, Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester. It was ...

Manchester Ship Canal

After submitting proposals in competition with another engineer (Hamilton Fulton), Williams was then appointed by Daniel Adamson in 1882 to design a new ship canal linking

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

with the

Irish Sea The Irish Sea is a body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the Celtic Sea in the south by St George's Channel and to the Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland in the north by the North Ch ...

. Williams became chief designer and chief engineer, helping the Manchester Ship Canal Company formulate its proposals for the necessary Act of Parliament. From its initial reading in 1883, it took two years for the Bill to receive

Royal Assent Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in othe ...

, and a further two years before the first construction work started, in November 1887. During the construction he was elected to membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 17.4.1888 The canal opened in 1894, and has been described as "a feat without precedent in modern history". As well as the canal itself, major engineering landmarks of the scheme included the Barton Swing Aqueduct (carrying the Bridgewater Canal over the Ship Canal) and a neighbouring

swing bridge A swing bridge (or swing span bridge) is a movable bridge that can be rotated horizontally around a vertical axis. It has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravit ...

for road traffic at Barton. After the official opening of the

on 21 May 1894, Edward Leader Williams of the Oaks, in the Parish of Dunham Massey, in the County Palatine of Chester was knighted by

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...

on 2 July by

Letters Patent Letters patent (plurale tantum, plural form for singular and plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, President (government title), president or other head of state, generally granti ...

. Williams' other works include the Anderton Boat Lift (1875) near

Northwich Northwich is a market town and civil parish in the Cheshire West and Chester borough of Cheshire, England. It lies on the Cheshire Plain, at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane, east of Chester, south of Warrington and south of Ma ...

, which links the navigable stretch of the River Weaver with the Trent and Mersey Canal.

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Edward Leader 1828 births 1910 deaths English canal engineers People educated at the Royal Grammar School Worcester Engineers from Worcester, England Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 19th-century English engineers 20th-century English engineers