the ring, which is around long, and it can reasonably be completed in a week. History There were a number of early proposals to link Macclesfield to the canal network. The first was in 1765, when a link to Congleton to the south, and Northwich to the west was proposed. A writer in the Derby Mercury newspaper in 1793 suggested a link from the Caldon Branch of the Trent and Mersey Canal to Macclesfield wia Leek. Two years later, a canal from Poynton Collieries via Macclesfield to the Trent and Mersey at Lawton, with a branch via Leek to the Caldon Branch was proposed. A rather more serious proposal was made in 1796, when gentlemen from Congleton, Leek, Macclesfield, Manchester, Stockport and the West Riding employed the engineer Benjamin Outram to survey possible routes. Outram was working on the Peak Forest Canal at the time. At a meeting in Macclesfield, held on 11 March 1796, his proposals for a canal from the Peak Forest via Rudyard to Endon on the Caldon Branch, with a separate branch or railway from Poynton and Norbury to Stockport were welcomed. However, there were dissenters, with some arguing that there was no guarantee that the Peak Forest Canal would succeed, and the Trent and Mersey Canal already had plans to build a branch from their Caldon Branch to Leek. The cost was estimated to be £90,000, and there was not enough financial support, now that the initial rush for building canals, known as Canal Mania, had ended. In 1799, the Peak Forest Canal included clauses for a branch to the collieries at Poynton and Norbury in an Act of Parliament they were trying to obtain, but those clauses were deleted during the parliamentary process. In 1805 and 1806, they attempted to find the original papers from Outram's surveys, and hoped that the Trent and Mersey might support their proposal for a canal from Marple to Lawton, via Macclesfield. There was another proposal in 1810, and various half-hearted attempts to revive the idea between 1814 and 1818, but none came to fruition. In 1824, the Cromford and High Peak Railway, a bold scheme to link the Cromford Canal and the Peak Forest Canal, was being planned, but a suggestion to build a branch of the railway to serve Macclesfield was deferred, as there was nobody from Macclesfield at the meeting. A proposal for a canal from