After a number of false starts, the six-mile-long Liskeard-Looe Union Canal with 24 locks was opened in 1827 although it was not completed until 1830.
The canal was four feet deep and twenty-six feet wide and each of the barges carriage a load of twenty tons.
The canal was built to carry agricultural supplies including lime to to improve farmland, sea sand to lighten help break up heavy soils, crushed bones for fertilizer and manufactured goods inland to Liskeard from the port at Looe and to export the agricultural produce of the area.
Rich lodes of copper, tin and lead were discovered on Caradon Hill, on the
eastern edge of Bodmin Moor in 1836 leading to a mining boom in the area (the South Caradon Mine was opened in 1837) where the edge of the moorland had previously been uninhabited.
Granite mining was also carried on at Cheesewring.
The carriage of tin and copper ore from the mines and granite from the quarries of Caradon Hill to the north of Liskeard to Looe where they could be loaded aboard ships for export and to supply the mines and quarries with much needed coal from South Wales soon overshadowed the
carriage of agricultural produce for which the cananl was built and at one time it was reckoned that no less than half of the world's copper production passed down the canal and through the
port at Looe.
In the 1850's, incresed traffic led to the expansion of the canal basin at Moorswater.
The canal company built the railway from Liskeard to Looe which it ran as a canal company from 1860 until 1896 when it was made a railway company by Act of Parliament.
The railway made much of the canal redundant and it deacyed through lack of maintenance although a small amount of agricultral traffic, mainly carrying sand and manure, continued to use the lower portion of the canal up to Sandplace. It is believed that the canal fell into disuse compeletely after the railway became a branch line of the Great Western Railway.
The railway now runs as one of Cornwall's scenic railways under the marketing banner of "The Looe Valley Line" by the Wales and West Railway ("Wessex Trains").
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