FINALLY restored to its former glory, the Kennet and Avon (K&A) is a remarkable memorial to the canal age.
Linking the River Avon with the River Kennet at Reading (and so to the Thames), the 87-mile-long waterway provides a navigable link between London and Bristol.
It's engineer and architect, John Rennie, received Pounds 350 for his efforts.
Work began at Bradford-on-Avon, when Rennie was 29, and was completed 16 years later, in 1810.
Major projects were the Avoncliff and Dundas aqueducts built right across the River Avon, the locks at Bath and the major flight of locks at Devizes.
The pumping stations at Claverton, near Bath, and Crofton, in Wiltshire, which poured much-needed water into the canal, opened some years later.
Winding through the picturesque Limpley Stoke valley above Bath, the K&A flourished for about 30 years Best Prada Shoes Online - until the coming of the railways, in fact.
As these iron highways spread their tentacles throughout the country, taking all the trade, so the much slower canal traffic declined.
The Great Western Railway (GWR) not only duplicated the K&A's route to London but also undercut its tariffs.
By 1851 the canal, no longer able to compete, was offered to the railway company and a year later became part of its property portfolio.
A big blow came in 1906 when coal, which had come into the system via the Somerset Coal Canal, ceased to be carried.
Neglect followed and by the end of the First World War, navigating the full length of the K&A had become very difficult.
Come the 1920s the GWR decided that the waterway, which now required a lot of remedial work, would have to close, but held off after encountering fierce opposition.
The end of the ever-dwindling commercial traffic, all of it horse drawn, came in the 1930s.
Nevertheless the canal remained open for the adventurous or the occasional pleasure trip.
In fact in the early 1930s the GWR went so far as to carry out an extensive maintenance programme, something it was legally obliged to do until nationalisation in 1948.
But with further neglect (plus Chanel Handags Replica some war damage), the last boat just made it through an accumulation of weeds, mud and abandoned vessels in 1951.
The canal's chief income was now the sale of permits to cyclists using the tow-path.
Then in 1954, amid fears that the canal banks would give way and collapse on to the railway below, any remaining water was drained away.
Seeing that navigation was now no longer possible, furious preservationists raised a 20,000-name petition requesting that the money (and will) be found to keep the canal open.
In 1956 the House of Commons heard their plea and refused to sanction the K&A's closure.
Six years later, with control now firmly vested with British Waterways, efforts to reopen the canal were revived.
The formation of a Preservation Society (later a Trust), with its army of volunteers, saw the first tentative steps being taken towards restoration. First to be tackled was the nine-mile stretch between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon which
Other articles:
http://clients.mholman.com/acc2us/blog/view/id_76/title_Etherington-puts-on-show-worth/
http://www.masiad.com/Research-and-Markets-Business.html
...
