Written by John Bishop
With a booming national economy and Bristol and Reading growing rapidly in the early eighteenth century, transport of goods was crucial. Roads were indifferent and generally poor, and horse drawn wagons very limited in the weight they could carry. Moving materials on water was a different matter. A barge 109ft long and 17ft wide could carry 100 tons of coal. When pulling upstream it would take a team of 12 horses, but just one going the other way if the river was flowing fast. The Avon had been navigable since the 12th Century but passage of boats had ceased due to the presence of obstructing mills. 18th Century Bath was becoming a fashionable city needing building materials, as well as tea and sugar and cloth arriving from the Bristol docks. In 1712 Parliament approved that the river had to be cleared for the passage of boats. John Hore of Newbury was the appointed engineer and the river was reopened in 1727. In 1715 He was also appointed to reinstate the 18 miles of the Kennet from Reading to Newbury. There were two wharves in Reading and one at Aldermaston “which is the place of export of very considerable quantities of round and hewed Timber, Scantling, Hoops, Brooms, as well as Malt and Flour”. In the late 1780’s canal mania swept Britain with much of the canal network either approved or under construction by 1793. Work started in 1794 and was completed in 1810 on the 57 miles of man-made waterway linking Newbury to Bath. This completed the 87 miles from Bristol to Reading. In all the waterway incorporates 105 locks. But there was a problem. The summit level of the canal which runs between Crofton and Burbage in Wiltshire is 450 feet above sea level and 40 feet higher than any reliable local water sources. The obvious answer was to build a tunnel through rather than go over the land but it would have to be two and a half miles long, was expensive, and even then a health and safety nightmare. The solution was to put in an extra 12 locks and have a steam powered pumping engine to lift the water. The pumping station was located at Croton because of the availability of fresh water springs in the area. It was built in 1807 and started work in 1809. A second engine was installed in 1812 and is still in operation today. The total cost of the canal was just under one million pounds. In today’s values that is ten billion pounds. Immediately the cost of transporting goods was slashed and by 1850 Britain had 5000 miles of canals. But then the railways came in; to go from Reading to Bristol became a 5 hour journey. The canal company sold out to the railways and gradually fell into disuse. Eventually, in 1954 the last trader on the Kennet & Avon Canal, John Gould, brought High Court action against British Transport that as owners of the waterway they had failed to keep it open. 20,000 people signed a petition in 1956 against the closure of the canal and in 1990 the Queen opened the restored waterway to the delight of many people. Now it is a highway for pleasure, on foot or by barge, sanctity for wildlife and conservation and a monument to the inspiration and fortitude of a previous generation.
