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These are Soulbury Three Locks on the Grand Union Canal north of Leighton Buzzard. The lady is using the rope over the gate to take the last forward movement off the butty boat.

From here the canal maintains a level for over twenty miles until it reaches Tyrley, where a flight of five locks alter the level by 33 ft.

This scene on the Bridgewater Canal in Greater Manchester is essentially unchanged to this day.

Runcorn is now the terminus of the Bridgewater Canal, but there was a time when it continued down a massive flight of locks to connect with the Mersey and the Ship Canal.

A major boating centre to this day, Braunston was the northern end of the Grand Junction canal. At this point it met the Oxford Canal; there used to be a small lock outside the house.

Of canal boats there is no sign. When this view was taken, the canal carrying age was over and the leisure boom had yet to explode.

The Thames and Severn canal opened in 1789, connecting the River Severn with the Thames at Lechlade.

The canal opened in 1817, and ran from Kendal to Lancaster, later continuing south to connect with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal via a tramway at Preston.

This photograph looks down on the town from an aqueduct along the Macclesfield Canal, the last canal to be built in England, which opened in 1831.

A little beyond the 450yd-long tunnel at Chirk, the Llangollen Canal is suddenly carried 70 feet in the air over this spectacular stone aqueduct.

The Ulverston Canal was opened in 1796 to connect the town with the Leven Estuary, and to enable trade, both exports and imports, to be increased.

The Lancaster Canal was never connected to the main canal system. Its rugged stone bridges and its proximity to the Pennines make it a most picturesque line.

There were ten locks at the end of the Bridgewater Canal linking it with the docks below; figures for 1883 show that in that year alone 60,300 craft passed up and down.

The River Weaver creates a link with the Trent & Mersey Canal by way of Northwich's mighty Anderton Boat Lift, where a pair of narrow boats could be lifted 50 feet in two caissons.

The canal pictured here is the Peak Forest Canal, completed in 1801.

Today the canal comes to an end near here. Evidence of the docks has nearly all gone and trees have been planted.

To the left, and above the bow of the tanker Dauphine, we can see the huge lock gates that give access to the Manchester Ship Canal. The canal was opened on 1 January 1894.

Bude's canal, built in 1823, was something of an oddity. For its first two miles, it was a barge canal – as seen here. Then, freight was trans-shipped into small 5-ton tubs with wheels.

An excellent example of co-operation between bargees on the busy canal network. The two central barges have been lashed together in order to bypass those moored alongside the canal bank.

When the Oxford Canal finally reached Oxford in 1790, the city bells were rung to celebrate the arrival of the first barges loaded with coal from Coventry.

Even by the 1960s the heyday of canals such as the Birmingham to Worcester was long past.

Chasewater was built as a canal feeder in 1800; it was so efficient that its owners, Wyrley and Essington Canal Company, sold surplus water to other companies.

From here the canal maintains a level for over twenty miles until it reaches Tyrley, where a flight of five locks alter the level by 33 ft.At Tyrley the lock keeper's single storey cottage is situated

In 1795, the Wisbech Canal was cut along the course of the Well Stream; thus providing communication with Ely, Cambridge and the other local towns, via the network of inland waterways that existed at that