Lune Aqueduct

The Lune Aqueduct carries the Lancaster Canal over the River Lune on the north-eastern edge of Lancaster. It is a huge thing: five semicircular arches, each spanning some seventy feet, striding across the river about fifty feet above the water and running around 660 feet from end to end. Built of dark, heavy sandstone, it is one of the great monuments of English canal engineering and is listed at Grade I.

It was designed by John Rennie, one of his earliest major works, and built between 1793 and 1797 by the Scottish mason Alexander Stevens, who died before it was finished. The final cost, more than £48,000, ran far over budget — the work was pushed on around the clock to beat the winter floods — and the expense was one reason the canal was never carried south to Kendal as intended. Rennie stiffened the piers with hidden inverted arches, and gave the whole an almost classical dignity, with a cornice and inscribed tablets at either end.

The aqueduct is free and open, crossed by the canal towpath, and is easily reached on foot from Lancaster city centre or from the riverside path along the Lune. The best view is from the meadows below, looking up at the full run of arches. Upstream the Lune valley opens out towards Caton and the fells, country long popular with walkers.