When the canal was constructed, The Canal Company decided to cross the valley with an aqueduct across the River Ouse, the alternative being a large numbers of permanent locks. These would have been time consuming to construct, much water would be wasted and a bridge or ferry would still be needed for the horses that pulled the narrowboats.
A flight of temporary locks were built between Wolverton and Cosgrove enabling the canal to be using during construction of the aqueduct. The first aqueduct was brick built, construction was slow and there were many problems before it opened in 1805. It collapsed during the night of February 18th 1808.
The temporary locks were brought back into use and The Canal Company decided to replace the brick built aqueduct with a cast iron trough. This technique was relatively new, having first been used 15 years earlier on the Derby Canal.

Benjamin Bevan, an engineer of Leighton Buzzard, designed the aqueduct and it was manufactured by Reynolds & Company at Ketley Iron Works in the West Midlands. The design was successful and the aqueduct has remained solid and in use since January 21 1811 with only two closures for maintenance in 1921 and 1986.
The passages through the embankment under the canal are known as 'cattle creeps' and were built to enable cattle access to fields either side of the canal.