Brindley and Canals
A millwright of Derbyshire, James Brindley was closely associated with the engineering of eighteenth-century waterways, writes Hugh Malet.
Few men have led a more constructive life than James Brindley, the Derbyshire millwright, inventor and canal engineer, who was born in 1716 and died in 1772. Fewer still have been so lavishly praised for what now seem to be partly the wrong reasons.
The Brindley myth, a curious phenomenon in historical research, suggests that our assessment of a group of able and distinguished men can be distorted by the bias of writers determined to force their heroes into a pre-conceived image.
Smiles’ Lives of the Engineers kindled the youthful enthusiasm of many who distinguished themselves in that profession, and enchanted generations of readers with lively descriptions of Brindley’s childhood in the High Peak district of Derbyshire, spent carving toy mill machinery; but on closer analysis it seems that Smiles may have stretched the truth a little to serve his image of the poor child who made good.
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