restoration Feature

Restoration Feature

The Wilts & Berks Canal

The restoration back-story: Back when what’s now the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust was launched, restoration of the 55-mile canal linking the Kennet & Avon Canal at Semington to the Thames at Abingdon was ‘impossible’. Yes, I know, it’s not been unusual for some of the more difficult canal restoration proposals to be initially greeted with scepticism regarding the prospects of these long-abandoned canals ever reopening. For example the launch of schemes to restore canals such as the Wey & Arun, Huddersfield, Lichfield and Thames & Severn have all been dismissed as ‘impossible’, ‘hopeless cases’ or ‘lost causes’ – even by people within the canal restoration movement.

But where the Wilts & Berks differed from these was that even the Canal Trust itself regarded reopening the canal as impossible. It was launched under the original name of Wilts & Berks Canal Amenity Group, with the ‘amenity’ bit intended to imply that the new group simply wanted to preserve some of what was left of the old canal as a public amenity, with no hope of ever actually putting boats back on it as a through route. But if that’s a measure of how difficult it would be to reopen it, then perhaps it’s a measure of how the restoration movement was becoming more ambitious that after a few years (and to a certain amount of continuing scepticism) the Group changed its objectives to include full reopening to boats – not just of the Wilts & Berks but also its northern branch the North Wilts Canal. To-

Latton

Wilts & Berks and North Wilts canals

Chaddington

The Wilts & Berks Canal’s south western end had its origins in some of the earlier routes proposed for the Kennet & Avon Canal, which would have run further north than the one eventually adopted, ser ving Marlborough, Calne, Chippenham and Melksham. Meanwhile its north eastern reaches can trace their origins back to an early plan for the Thames & Severn (now part of the Cotswold Canals restoration) which would have run further south and joined the Thames at Abingdon

The Wilts & Berks promised to serve all of these towns which had missed out on the earlier plans, and provide a third east-west route across southern England. Opened in 1810 from Abingdon on the Thames to Semington on the Kennet & Avon, it was 52 miles long with 42 locks. In 1819 it was joined by an important branch, the eight-mile North Wilts Canal which de-