Only the Manchester Ship Canal and the Aire and Calder Canal bucked this trend.

The route started at Lake Lock, Stanley, on the Aire & Calder Navigation, near Wakefield, and ran to Outwood, a distance of approximately.

* Aire and Calder Navigation

* Aire and Calder Navigation

While the Aire and Calder Navigation improved links to the east for Leeds, links to the west were limited.

The Calder and Hebble Navigation links Brighouse with Wakefield ( junction with the Aire and Calder Navigation ), Mirfield ( junction with the Huddersfield Broad Canal ) and Sowerby Bridge ( junction with the Rochdale Canal ).

By the beginning of the 18th century, the Aire and Calder Navigation had made the River Calder navigable as far upstream as Wakefield.

In 1806, the Company agreed with the Aire and Calder Canal to replace the lock at Fall Ing with a new cut and a pair of locks, the work to be jointly funded.

With the Aire and Calder Canal rebuilding its main line, the Calder and Hebble sought an Act of Parliament to effectively abandon the river, but this was modified, as the needs of mill owners and others who owned property on the river banks were recognised.

The Aire and Calder Navigation objected to the lease, and in April 1847, the Attorney General and the Solicitor General ruled that it was illegal, and must cease.

Soon afterwaards, the Aire and Calder offered to lease the canal itself, and the agreement started in September.

After the Aire and Calder's lease expired in 1885, the Navigation Company again took charge, rebuilt many of the bridges, and established the Calder Carrying Company.

The Navigation starts in Wakefield, where there is an end-on junction with the Aire and Calder Navigation and runs upstream through Mirfield, after which there is a junction with the Huddersfield Broad Canal, to arrive at Sowerby Bridge, where there is another end-on junction, this time with the Rochdale Canal.

* The Aire and Calder Navigation carries boats to Leeds, and ( via the Leeds and Liverpool Canal ), to Lancashire

The canal was built to accept Yorkshire Keels coming up the Aire and Calder Navigation.

The locks on the Aire and Calder and the lower Calder and Hebble ( below Broad Cut Locks at Calder Grove ) have since been lengthened, and can accommodate boats which are 120 ft by 17. 5 ft ( 36. 6m x 5. 3m ), but the shortest locks on the upper Calder and Hebble force boats longer than about to lie diagonally in the locks.

To the north the River Calder joins the River Aire and the Aire and Calder Navigation canal.

The concept of using compartment boats led to discussions with the Aire and Calder Navigation Company, as a result of which it was decided to abandon the plan to develop Keadby, and instead use the existing port facilities at Goole.

The canal climbs steeply up the side of the Aire valley through this section.

The Aire and Calder Navigation is a river and canal system of the River Aire and the River Calder in the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire, England.

The recently finished Calder and Hebble Navigation proposed to build a canal from Wakefield to the Dutch River, which would bypass the Calder completely, and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal supported a Leeds to Selby canal, which would bypass the Aire.

The connection to the Aire and the Selby canal was maintained by the lock at Bank Dole.

The Aire and Calder was built for commercial freight, and although the volume carried has dropped significantly, particularly since coal deliveries to Ferrybridge power station by canal stopped, the navigation still carried 300, 000 tonnes of freight in 2007, down from 1. 64 million tonnes in 2000.

Meanwhile, negotiations had also taken place with the Aire and Calder, and an agreement had been reached to connect the two systems together by a canal, so that the improved Don could use Goole for the export of coal, rather than having to develop Keadby.

The Aire and Calder Navigation Company opened their broad canal from Knottingley in the northern sector of the coalfield in 1826, together with eight transshipment docks at Goole and a company-built town.

The Barnsley Canal is a canal that ran from Barnby Basin, through Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England to a junction with the Aire and Calder Navigation near Wakefield.

In July 1792, the Aire and Calder Canal Company asked William Martin, who was the manager of the canal, to prepare plans for a link from near Wakefield to the Barnsley mines.

Martin and the Aire and Calder's resident engineers surveyed the route, and at a public meeting held on 20 September 1792, the canal engineer William Jessop suggested that the line from just below Wakefield to Barnsley and Silkstone could be built for approximately £ 50, 000.

The Aire and Calder proposed to pump all the water for the canal from the River Calder, using steam-driven pumps at Agbrigg, Walton and Barugh.

By 1804, around 10, 000 tons was leaving the colliery, although the Dearne and Dove Canal had opened in late 1803, and only about half of the trade travelled the full length of the canal to the Aire and Calder.

They quickly offered to pass the canal on to the Aire and Calder Company, and to buy the Dearne and Dove Canal, but although they took over the Dearne and Dove Canal from 1 January 1846, they dropped their ideas for the Barnsley Canal.

Faced with a dilemma, the Barnsley and the Aire and Calder companies negotiated, and the result was the Barnsley Canal Transfer Act of 1871, which authorised the takeover of the canal by the Aire and Calder, the replacing of ten of the twelve Walton locks by an inclined plane, and protection of the water supply at Barugh.

The restored canal would follow the original line from the Aire and Calder Navigation to Barnsley, where a new marina would be built near to the location of Barugh locks.

Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and nestling on the lower slopes of Weets Hill in the Pennines astride the natural watershed between the Ribble and Aire valleys, Barnoldswick is the highest town on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, lying as it does on the summit level of the canal between Barrowford Locks to the south west and Greenberfield Locks just north east of the town.

The station is situated on a hill falling from the south of the city down to the River Aire and the Leeds canal basin.

On May 31, 2011 Vast Aire released a solo record titled Ox 2010: A Street Odyssey.

Situated in the Lower Aire Valley, and forming part of Fairburn & Newton Ings SSSI, RSPB Fairburn Ings is a Local Nature Reserve ( LNR ), with a focus mainly on wildfowl and waders, although many other birds can be seen.

The Aire and Calder still fulfils its original purpose of linking Leeds and Wakefield with York and the Humber ( and thence the Trent ), although the routes by which this is achieved have changed significantly.

At the time of the Anglo-Saxons in the early 7th century AD much of the Aire valley was still heavily wooded, although perhaps Yeadon stood out above the tree line.

As of 2011, the line, although only single track is an important freight only railway line and is used to carry coal and gypsum in both directions for the lower Trent power stations ( including Cottam and West Burton power station ) and for the Aire valley power stations.

The majority of programming is presented and produced locally from Hallam FM's Sheffield studios although In: Demand and AfterHours are produced from Key 103 in Manchester and 96. 3 Radio Aire in Leeds produces Late and Live.

The Magic brand in UK radio originated with Magic 828, the sister station of Radio Aire in Leeds which was launched in July 1990, although no other stations were branded Magic until the Emap group purchased the Metro Radio group in 1995.

It is part of the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation ( S & SYN ), although it was jointly funded by the Aire and Calder Navigation, and was opened in 1905.