He had copious reserves of coal stretching northwards from Worsley. He had a ready market for that coal in Manchester and Salford, where the demand for fuel simply could not be met. But the cost of transport from one to the other was prohibitive.
It was the Duke who first contemplated the idea of a canal. But it was the Duke's land agent, the talented John Gilbert, who proposed carrying the canal straight into the mines, solving the problem of shaft drainage and at the same time providing a consistent supply of water for the canal.
And it was engineer James Brindley who helped to turn what might have been a useful but dead-end idea into something that became a key link in a nationwide canal network.
The Duke's first scheme - the one for which he originally received Parliamentary approval - was to carry his canal south towards the Irwell and then turn eastward, parallel with the North bank of the river, to run into Salford.
First Barton Flyover
But before construction had got far, the Duke shifted the goalposts. Inspired by Brindley, who had already done preliminary surveys for a proposed Trent-and-Mersey waterway, he realised that for the Bridgewater Canal to become part of a country-wide web, it would have to cross the Irwell.
He originally planned to lock his canal down to river level, and lock-up again on the other side. But Brindley hated the thought of locks, and proposed carrying the canal over the river on an aqueduct. He succeeded - with a lot of help from Gilbert - and the first "Barton flyover" became the wonder of the age, with the first barge crossing above the river in July, 1761.
When the canal eventually reached Castlefield in Manchester, later that year, it halved the cost of coal in the city. But had the Duke stopped there, he would very quickly have become bankrupt. The age of steam had not yet arrived, and selling coal to householders did not make much impact on the capital cost of the canal.
TWO of the brains behind the Bridgewater project: James Brindley (left) the engineer, and the Duke's land agent, John Gilbert.Already, however, the Duke had got Parliamentary permission to carry the canal westwards to Runcorn, where it would join the tidal Mersey and give Manchester direct access to the seaport of Liverpool.
Even so, it was a close-run thing. The Duke found it difficult to borrow city money for what many considered a hare-brained scheme and Gilbert often had to go around with what amounted to a begging bowl to find the cash to pay the labourers.
By October 20 1771, profits from the canal amounted to just £3,546 while the Duke's debt had risen to £133,219 and his yearly interest payments alone were £5,400.
On the last day of 1772, the Runcorn locks were opened and the canal was complete - apart from one stretch south of Warrington, where there was a long-running dispute with landowner Sir Richard Brooke.
It was to be four more years before the "Battle of Norton Priory" was resolved and the full length of the canal was opened on March 21 1776. The Duke's perseverance had paid off, the money began to roll in and very soon the country was swept by canal mania.
