Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is one of the heroic monuments that symbolises the world's Industrial Revolution and its transformation of technology. Thomas Telford, the Ellesmere Canal A general surveyor and agent, was working under William Jessop, the most prolific engineer of the British Canal mania. The construction of this landmark, the highest navigable canal aqueduct built, led to the formation and consolidation of a team important to the subsequent development of civil engineering on such large scale projects as the Caledonian Canal.
The decision to build such a high deck, and in the new civil-engineering medium of cast-iron, was a bold one. The canal surface is carried 38 metres over the River Dee on an iron-arched deck 313 metres long, comprised of 19 spans of 13.6 metres. The 3.6 metre wide trough is carried on successive spans of four-arched ribs spanning between slender masonry piers, which are partly hollow and taper to 3.96 metres by 2.29 metres at their summit. The southern approach embankment was one of the largest earthworks built up to this time.