Wargrave Local History Society

THE speaker at the February meeting was Graham Horn who talked about the history of the Kennet and Avon Canal.

His work brought him to the Reading area in 1983 and he joined the local canal society as a way to meet people.

Within a few months he was elected to the committee and was asked to take over as secretary.

After 13 years in that role, he became the group’s chairman and a member of the Kennet and Avon Trust Council.

The history of the canal goes back to the 18th century. The River Kennet had been made navigable from Reading to Newbury in the 1720s.

Reading was the local centre of commerce but people feared that Newbury would take over so each night they tried to remove the work done during the day.

At about that time, the River Avon was made navigable from the west to Bath. Then came a proposal to link the two as a cross-country route by the Grand Western Canal, which was later renamed the Kennet and Avon.

This enabled goods to pass to and from London to Berkshire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Bristol and beyond to America.

Mr Horn took members on a “virtual” trip along the canal from west to east, explaining many features.

Originally, the River Avon Company and the Kennet and Avon were separate concerns. Each needed a water supply, which they guarded jealously.

When the canal company built a pumping station at Bath, the Avon Company thought that the canal company might be pumping their water up into the canal.

The Kennet and Avon said they only pumped water back up the canal from within their locks, although they did not say if the lock gates between the canal and river were open at the time. 

The company headquarters were in Bath and built on a bridge over the canal. A trap door set into the bridge roof allowed the clerk to lower messages so the next company barge could collect it for carrying along the canal, a system known as the “towpath telegraph”.

John Rennie, the project’s engineer, decided that the best route was to take the canal over the River Avon to the north side for three miles and then back again.

The westernmost crossing was the Dundas Aqueduct — named after the company chairman — and remains much as it was when built in the early 1800s.

Rennie had to negotiate with every landowner over whose property the line of the route passed.

This resulted in much additional expense, building ornate bridges so as not to spoil the landowner’s view, or disguising the canal as a lake, as well as financial compensation.

Water supply is always a critical aspect of providing a canal and originally there was to be a three-mile long tunnel at the summit through which water would drain into the canal from the land above.

However, what was built was a shorter tunnel with a pumping station at Crofton to lift water 40ft up from a reservoir back to the summit level.

This had two large steam engines that lifted 80 gallons per stroke. One of these, built in 1812, is the oldest steam engine in the world and is still doing the work.

Further along the canal at Hungerford, many of the original buildings, such as workers’ cottages and a bonded warehouse, remain while at Kintbury the former Dundas Arms is now a hotel.

There was a stables here for post horses. These were provided to allow a rapid journey by exchanging the animals pulling the vessels along the canal.

It was considered that a horse pulling a cart on the roads of that time could haul a one-ton load, whereas if it was pulling a barge on the canal the load could be up to 50 tons. The result was a lowering in the cost of the materials carried as well as a profit for the canal owners.

The canal opened in 1810 and made profits until 1852 but by then the railways were able to carry the goods more quickly and cheaply than the canals. The only way forward for the Kennet and Avon was to sell the canal to the Great Western Railway.

The latter, however, invested any profits into railways so the canals began a long, slow decline until1948 when the last boat worked right through between Reading and Bristol. At that time, the Government was nationalising the country’s transport networks and the canals were put under the control of the Docks and Inland Waterways Executive with a remit to close all the waterways.

However, John Gould, of Newbury, still had two boats on the canal which he used to bring salt from Cheshire to the Hovis mill in Newbury.

Finding that he was unable to pass through one of the Kennet and Avon’s locks, he served an injunction for loss of earnings on the executive, which decided to close the canal.

Gould set up a Kennet and Avon Association and told the executive that it could not close the canal as the 1793 Act of Parliament created a “right of navigation in perpetuity”.

It would need another Act of Parliament to close it. The House of Commons duly passed that but the House of Lords rejected it. 

The executive took a relaxed view that enabled groups of volunteers to begin to restore the 108 locks and the waterway between them.

One of the major tasks was the Caen Hill flight of locks near Devizes — so called because many of the men who had built it were from that area of France, having been taken prisoner during the Napoleonic War.

The restoration of the lock at Aldermaston created a problem as it had been  listed. It had to be restored as it was but also made “safe” to comply with modern health and safety requirements, so a compromise had to be reached.

At several places on the canal, the swing bridges had to be replaced by a different style of crossing as both river and road traffic had increased from the early days and the delays in opening a bridge would not have been acceptable to either. Eventually, just one lock remained to be done, at Widmead, near Thatcham. Work had been delayed several times but it was completed by August 8, 1990, the date of the official opening of the Kennet and Avon by the Queen.

Work has continued over the last 29 years and the canal is enjoyed by those who use the towpath as well as those in boats.

There are now more species of wildlife to be found along the canal than when it was derelict.

The society’s annual meeting will take place on Tuesday, March 12, when the past year will be reviewed and the programme for the coming year will be revealed.

Meetings take place at the Old Pavilion in the recreation ground, off Recreation Road, Wargrave, starting at 8pm. For more information, call Peter Delaney on 0118 940 3121 or visit
www.wargravehistory.org.uk