letters to the editor

Luke Walker fills us in on what’s happening with a new group founded almost six years ago to work on the Wilts & Berks Canal restoration

Dear Martin

It’s been good to see the recent coverage in Navvies and another respected waterways journal regarding progress on the Wilts & Berks and North Wilts Canals. What is perhaps conspicuously absent is a mention of the new waterway restoration charity which achieved its registration on 11 September 2017. There was no publicity in advance of that date as those of us involved were not confident that our application would be successful.

There was, and still is, the well-established Wilts & Berks Canal Trust already busy on many sites on the Wilts & Berks Canal and its branches to Latton and elsewhere. This letter to the editor is to make the wider community of waterways restoration volunteers aware of the existence of the new charity and to share some of our recent news.

Our name is Wessex Waterways Restoration Trust – very distinct from the name of our companion organisation working on the Wilts & Berks Canal, and our logo and corporate colour were selected to be distinctive from them, too.

How an application came to be submitted to form another charity is not nearly as important as what our new-ish charity has been doing so far, and what we’re aiming to help to deliver. In the months since ways were found to work on waterways without breaching regulations to stop the spread of Covid-19 our trustees have been meeting using Zoom (except for two physical meetings) and our volunteers have been working on sections of the Wilts & Berks main line between Bowds Lane at Lyneham and Foxham Upper Lock at Foxham, all in Wiltshire. We’ve raised funds from Awards for All to buy kit to enable us to maintain canal towpaths and more recently we bought two 20-foot shipping containers to be our plant repair workshop and store at Dauntsey Lock. We have a website at www.wessexwaterways.org.uk which is expertly maintained for us by Alan Mynard of the Bucking- ham Canal Society and we send out an occasional email newsletter under the title The Oriel.

Like many new organisations, we went through a rather stormy period in the early years. However good news in recent months has mostly flowed from being able to participate in the local Wiltshire, Swindon and Oxfordshire Canal Partnership. Two of our Trustees have had an initial meeting with the new CEO and recently elected Chair of WBCT, we’ve renewed our contact with a trustee of the Cotswold Canals Trust (who has been very helpful with our work to set up our plant maintenance depot) and two of our Trustees had a very useful and positive day at the first IWA/CRT Restoration Conference in Chesterfield during March.

One other good thing that has happened since the start of 2023 is that we’ve heard from our foundation trustee Dr Geraint Coles (who had to stand down as a Trustee in the early months due to a serious health issue). We’ve ‘engaged’ him as a pro-bono consultant and he’s already showing signs of adding significant value at Partnership level. Welcome aboard, Geraint – it’s good that you’ve come back to help us. Geraint got various honourable mentions at the March conference for the work he did for the Chesterfield Canal some years ago – laying the foundations for some successes on that canal back then, and more successes more recently.

Our work programme on the ground has been mostly limited to keeping sections of the towpath in good order at Foxham, Dauntsey and Lyneham. I feel it’s almost unethical to let the work of previous generations of volunteers go to waste due to simple neglect. We’ve learned the value of backpack brushcutters – if you’ve ever wanted to use the right tool for the job of vegetation clearance on a canal bank you need to find and try one of these.

One bit of structures work we have been able to complete was alongside the restored lock chamber at Dauntsey Lock.

The vital piece of stone we needed was provided by a helpful person involved in another waterway restoration, the brindle paving was provided by a former Trustee of WBCT from many years ago when his driveway was re-laid in Royal Wootton Bassett. The Wacker plate became unavailable due to damage sustained on a WRG BITM weekend at Weymoor Bridge, and one of my former neighbours in Evesham (who is also a member of the Cotswold Canals Trust) provided the expertise to fit the replacement items and get it ready for service.

I’m hoping that you will have space for further progress reports from us in the coming years, but for now here’s a photo [above ] of the lock chamber at Dauntsey with the brindle paving alongside.

One other point I must mention, to correct the record, comes from what was included in Navvies 315. There was a potted history of restoration work on the Wilts & Berks but I have to request a correction regarding the independent group working on the canal in the area around Lyneham. That’s not strictly true – though it is true that a commercial company was registered and carried forward some canalside property development at Dauntsey Lock. That initia- tive extended to funding restoration work by volunteers at Dauntsey – including the Hignetts Hole Spillway, re-excavation of a significant length of the canal, finding, emptying, and restoring the lock chamber. The volunteer effort came from several of the WRG mobile teams and from the local branch of the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust – thus not ‘an independent group’. The work on Seven Locks at Lyneham, back then was led by the WBCT – and enjoyed great support from KESCRG, NWPG, WRG Forestry and several WRG mobile teams. We completed the restoration of the chambers of Locks 3 and 4 which had been started many years previously without sufficient funding being committed to enable completion.

Thank you, Martin, for allowing me to use a little space in Navvies for the above clarification regarding what the (independent) Wilts & Berks Canal Company did, and what the (part of Wilts & Berks Canal Trust) Foxham-Lyneham Branch of WBCT did. The same people did operate in both organisations so perhaps not so easy to work out who was doing what, back then.

Best regards

Luke Walker Wessex Waterways Restoration Trust