Gloucester and Sharpness Canal
canal in the United Kingdom
The Gloucester and Sharpness Canal (also known as the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal) is a ship canal in the west of England, between Gloucester and Sharpness, completed in 1827. For much of its length the canal runs close to the tidal River Severn, but it cuts off a long loop in the river at a once-dangerous bend near Arlingham. It was once the broadest and deepest canal in the world. The canal is 26.5 km (16.5 miles) long.
Canal planning and construction
Conceived in the canal mania period of the late 18th century, the Gloucester and Berkeley Ship Canal scheme (as it was originally named) was started by architect and civil engineer Robert Mylne. An act of Parliament, the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal Act 1793 (33 Geo. 3. c. 97) was obtained, authorising the raising of a total of £200,000. The project rapidly encountered financial difficulties, to such an extent that Mylne left the project in 1798.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5572091. VIAF identifies the subject as 315136848. The Library of Congress control number is sh96009235. Authority coordinates are 51.733, -2.483. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1827, 1793 and 1798.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gloucester and Sharpness Canal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.