Foulridge Tunnel
on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal
1796 May 3rd. Tunnel opened. 'On Tuesday the grand tunnel on the Leeds and Liverpool canal, at Foulridge, between Coln and Burnley, was opened, when the packet boat and several of the vessels belonging to the Leeds and Burnley Union company, with a number of ladies and gentlemen, attended by a band of music, passed through it, and proceeded down to Burnley, accompanied the whole way by a crowd of people. What added to the pleasing circumstance, one the vessels was laden with grain.'[1] '....Its length is 1630 yards, its height near 13 feet and its width 17 feet, and was undertaken by Mr. Fletcher, in Dec. 1792, when 1400 yards of the most difficult part, remained to be done, and which have been completed in little more than three years. It is universally allowed to be the most complete work of the kind in England, if not in Europe.'[2]