Description
The monument comprises the remains of a stretch of the Aberdeenshire Canal Navigation, or Aberdeen-Inverurie Canal.
This canal ran from Port Elphinstone, just south of Inverurie, to Aberdeen harbour, following a course 18.25 miles (29km) in length above the right-hand bank of the River Don. The Act of Parliament that sanctioned its construction in 1796 declared its purpose as being to 'promote the improvement and better cultivation of the inland parts of the country'.
Construction was carried out by various contractors, with John Rennie as consulting engineer and George Fletcher as resident engineer. The canal opened in 1805. It operated until 1854, when it was replaced by the Aberdeen to Inverness line of the Great North of Scotland Railway, which was built along roughly the same alignment, obliterating much of its course.
The section of the canal that survives south of Dalwearie lies south of the railway line and for most of its course south of the road, which crosses it towards the east. It follows an angled course, some 500m in length, skirting the south side of a flat area. The western part is made up, with two banks retaining the raised waterway (now dry).
The northern bank evidently supported the tow-path, though the top part of it has been dug into in recent times; in places its base is revetted with boulders, and at one point a stone-arched culvert conveys a stream under the canal bed. Overall the width of the surviving earthwork is 25m at this point. To the east, however, the south side of the canal is formed by the scarped side of a natural slope.
Just west of the present road, there would probably have been another culvert at a point where another stream crosses the route of the canal; in this area there are also remains of buildings and a stone-built enclosure, probably once associated with the smithy serving the canal that is known to have existed at Dalwearie.
The monument to be scheduled comprises a strip 30m wide, to include the canal bed and enclosing embankments, extending from a point in the west 17m south of the fence bordering the road and continuing for a distance of some 120m SE, followed by a further 380m ENE as far as the fence bordering the south side of the railway, excluding the short section between the fences where the modern road crosses the line of the canal but including the stone-built structures and enclosure immediately south of the road at this point, as marked in red on the accompanying map.