Wilts & Berks Canal

wasn’t even seen as a possibility. But things have changed in the last 40 years...

gether with the Cotswold Canals and Kennet & Avon (which itself was still under restoration at the time) this would re-create the ‘Wessex Network’ stretching across much of southern England.

So why was it such a difficult restoration? Firstly because at all three of the places where it met up with other waterways, chunks of canal had disappeared under the expansion of nearby towns. The link to the Thames had vanished under Abingdon; the final few miles to the Kennet & Avon had

Length: 52 miles Locks: 42 (main line)

Length: 8 miles Locks: 11 (N Wilts)

Date closed: 1914

Grove

East Challow Wantage

To Oxford and Inglesham

River Thames

To Reading and London

Possible diversion in connection with reservoir (if built) scended via 11 locks from a junction with the main line in Swindon to meet the Thames & Severn Canal at Latton. been obliterated by the expansion of Melksham; a length on the approach to the Cotswold Canals had been filled in for housing construction on the edge of Cricklade. And secondly, because there the three arms met in Swindon… well, you can guess what happened there. Oh, and the M4 motorway crossed the canal with no bridge, as did the Great Western Railway in a couple of places. In other words, there was no chance of any piecemeal reopening from the junctions of the nearby navigable waterways anytime soon. Any sections which could be restored would be landlocked – and quite possibly isolated from each other by having Swindon or difficult road or rail crossings in between them.

It could have become part of something bigger: there was a proposal for a canal to continue the route from Abingdon to the Grand Junction (now the Grand Union) Main Line at Marsworth, providing a route to London that bypassed the River Thames which was an unreliable navigation at the time. But the only part of this route ever built was the Grand Junction’s Aylesbury Arm.

Unlike its neighbours which took wide-beam barges the Wilts & Berks was built for 7ft wide narrow boats. It was never really busy or profitable but carried a moderate trade mainly in coal from the Somerset coalfield. Competition from the Great Western Railway which paralleled much of its route led to a decline in trade. It was almost disused by the time an aqueduct failure west of Foxham closed it to through traffic. It was abandoned in 1914, some sections were filled in, the rest was left to decay, and much subsequently disappeared under roads, buildings, agriculture and par ticularly the expansion of the towns on the route.

The Trust did what such groups usually do in these circumstances: over its first 20 years or so it simply worked wherever it could get permission to work on local projects – and from quite early days it was supported by WRG and other visiting volunteer groups. Early projects included a length leading west from Swindon; rebuilding Foxton Top Lock; locks in the Wantage area; and Moredon Aqueduct, the River Key Aqueduct and Moulden Lock on the North Wilts; in 1991 the Big Dig brought 1000 volunteers to Wantage to celebrate WRG’s 21st birthday with a massive scrub-bash and three miles of bonfires. Meanwhile an independent group did a lot of work at Dauntsey Lock and the flight of seven locks near Lyneham. At the same time it began to work on the possibilities for getting around the major blockages in the longer term – a diversion to the south to avoid the missing length in Abingdon; a route involving a length of the River Avon as an alternative way through Melksham; lengthy diversions running alongside the M4 around the south of Swindon.

However from around the Millennium onwards, things started to come together regarding the section of canal between Wootton Bassett and Swindon. It’s not been straightforward – steep cost overruns on one project gave the Trust some financial headaches and slowed things down for a while. But 20 years on, it’s really begun to move.

A decent length heading east from Wootton Bassett had already been cleared and watered; to the east of there, Chaddington (or Summit) Lock was restored with support from visiting mobile groups under the Dig Deep Initiative; continuing from there towards Swindon a grant paid for a length at Studley Grangre to be restored. Between there and the restored length on the edge of Swindon (which had been one of the first sites to see restoration work) there was a problem in the form of the M4 motorway blockage. But there was also an opportunity in the form of Wichelstowe.

Wichelstowe is the new name (well actually the old name dredged up) for the large residential expansion of Swindon on the south side of the existing urban area. It extends over an area which includes a length of the canal’s proposed east-west diversion around the south side of Swindon. But it also incorporates a section of the canal’s original route, which is proposed to be retained as an arm leading into Swindon, and also for access to the North Wilts branch heading northwards. Now in the past, a plan to develop a huge new housing scheme on the line of a canal might have been seen as the kiss of death for any restoration plans. But these days (after a couple of decades of the canal restoration movement championing the idea) the developers have come around to the idea that having a canalside site is sufficiently desirable that it actually increases the value of the houses. So much so that it’s worth the developer sacrificing a few housing plots in order to give some of the others a canalside view. Not only that, it’s actually worth the developer paying the cost of restoring the canal – or even building it from scratch, in the case of the diversion route. (And OK, it’s also an opportunity for a supportive local authority to make this a planning condition.)

That’s something that’s been talked about on a lot of restoration projects – and actually happened on several occasions, for example the first length of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal in Salford was reopened as the first phase of the Middlewood commercial development (which promptly went bust, but that’s another story!) But Wichelstowe is (I think) the first where a brand new length of canal, complete with bridges and a new lock, has been built as part of a housing development – but with a long term view to reopening to navigation. At the same time, another part of the Wichelstowe development has brought about the restoration of part of the original canal line. And there’s more to come…

So where are we now? In brief… the sections of canal in Wichestowe are complete (although it’s taking time to track down some troublesome leakage on one of them). Much of the canal between there and Wootton Bassett is restored. Routes around the main obstructions have been identified. Elsewhere many individual projects have been completed on both the main line and the North Wilts, including all those described above plus others. These include the WRG-supported Jubilee Junction scheme which marked the Inland Waterways Association’s 60th birthday in 2006 by creating the new junction with the Thames and first 100 yards of canal on the new route around Abingdon; restoration of the Pewsham to Lacock length; the canal park at Shrivenham supported by an IWA ‘Waterways in Progress’ grant, the nearby rebuilt Steppingstones Bridge and more.

So what next? Although there’s work continuing on other sites such as Shrivenham, it looks like the main progress will continue to be the Wootton Bassett to Swindon length. The latest news is that work should be starting soon on the next stage of Wichelstowe, following the submitting of a planning application. This will involve rebuilding the ‘missing link’ section of canal that links up the two lengths already in existence: the length of the original main line leading into the town, and the first part of the bypass running alongside the M4 around the south side of town. This will create a significant length of navigable canal, and it already has a tripboat operating on it. And there’s another plan to build the next short section of the diversion around Swindon as part of another housing scheme.

At the same time, there’s hope of progress on what might have seemed like one of the biggest challenges: the M4 motorway. The fund set up by Highways England to pay towards mitigation of environmental damage from new road schemes of recent decades has already been mentioned in Navvies in connection with the £4m it provided for reinstating the Cotswold Canals / A38 crossing near Whitminster. The Wilts & Berks has also put in for funding from the same pot – and although it hasn’t landed the big one yet, it’s already secured a £42,000 grant for feasibility studies into providing the M4 canal crossing. The Trust is hopeful that a larger sum for the detailed design will follow, and in due course a grant for the cost of building the actual bridge in a couple of years’ time. Meanwhile on the far side of the motorway, diversion of nearby roads, paid for by Swindon Council in connection with the next phase of Wichelstowe, has already involved building a new bridge to carry Wharf Road over the canal when it gets there. So clearly somebody thinks there’s a good chance of the canal getting there…

But at the same time as these big projects by professional contractors there are sure to be plenty more jobs for volunteersthe Trust’s teams have been at work on the towpath at Studley Grange, at Shrivenham Canal Park (where they’ve installed a solarpowered pump to keep the canal topped up) and elsewhere - as well as running the tripboat and a visitor centre. See WBCT’s progress update on page 40 to see what they’ve been up to lately.

And then what? One other site that might just see some real progress in the not-toodistant future is the extreme south west end of the canal at Melksham. As we mentioned, the old course through the town has been lost, but a new route has been identified. This would leave the Kennet & Avon just a little west of the original junction, and descend on a new route via several locks to join the River Avon. The river would be made navigable through the town, with a new lock built alongside an existing weir, followed by more locks climbing back out of the river and rejoining the original route north of the town.

This area too is the subject of proposals for housing development. And here, too, there seems a good chance that some or all of the work to build the new link from the K&A to the Avon could be funded through the housing scheme. And having got boats from the national network reaching Melksham, extending to Lacock and Pewsham seems a lot more practicable.

Finally, on the eastern arm heading towards Abingdon, there’s the long-running on-off saga of Thames Water’s proposed large new reservoir, which (if it’s ever built) might just provide a channel for the easternmost length of the canal, doubling up as the reservoir’s emergency emptying channel. And at the Swindon end of this section, there are proposals for further expansion of the town on the east side, which could see more sections of canal built in the same way as the Wichelstowe schemes.

Oh, and a few years back, Swindon Council came up with a rather eye-catching scheme to reinstate the west-to-north canal route through the town centre, connecting up to the North Wilts Canal, by building brand new canal channels down the middle of some of the town’s streets. It might or might not happen, but clearly the canal’s come a long way since it was written off by its own supporters as impossible…

Martin Ludgate