The Early Days
Restoration of the Wilts & Berks.
A group of enthusiasts is interested in considering the possibilities of the gradual restoration of the Wilts & Berks and North Wilts canals and wishes to form an organisation to promote these aims.
It is not intended that restoration to navigation should be attempted initially: this would be a very long term project and one of the most demanding and challenging ever undertaken. They do not contemplate any physical work on the canals at this stage unless an unexpected situation arises. The initial aim would to be to obtain the co-operation of county and local councils, planners and 200 landowners in safeguarding the routes of the canals against any further losses. It is expected to take years rather than months to achieve this. If and when such co-operation is obtained, plans would be prepared to provide localised amenities such as towpath walks and areas suitable for nature study. At a later stage, when these activities were established, it might be possible to consider re-watering lengths of canal for fishing and canoeing, but work towards restoring locks and linking watered sections for navigation must inevitably remain an ideal in the distant future.
These canals were abandoned in 1914, but in spite of this, a surprising amount of the line is intact. The canals are essentially rural and in these agricultural areas, re-excavation of infilled lengths would be comparatively simple. The major problem areas would be in those parts of Abingdon, Swindon and Melksham where the route has been obliterated; other obstacles would include dropped bridges and the M4 motorway.
The Wilts & Berks Canal is a "narrow" canal linking the Kennet & Avon Canal at Semington and the River Thames at Abingdon; the North Wilts Canal joins the Wilts & Berks at Swindon with the Thames & Severn Canal at Latton. Bringing these canals back to life would be a difficult, lengthy and expensive task, but it would open up some beautiful English countryside. It could eventually provide a large area for linear water storage in a region where shortages occur and could allow transfer of water from one part of the country to another.
These canals can be saved, but something must be done soon, as the situation will continue to deteriorate if no action is taken, with further infillings and obliteration of the route. Readers interested in supporting this project in any way should write today to me, enclosing a sae. It will be possible to follow up these ideas only if there is sufficient support.
N. C. Rumbol.
A second work site was opened in 1978 at Shrivenham arch Bridge (Station Road B4000), with skips provided by Oxfordshire County Council for the removal of rubbish. On 14 January the Committee escorted members of County, District and Parish Councils on a walk along the canal from Bourton to East Challow. The Group’s plans for Templar’s Firs were submitted to Wiltshire County Council on 19 January 1979; these plans had the support of the sitting M.P., Mr. Daniel Awdry. A second-hand Priestman Wolf IIIB Dragline Excavator was purchased and put into service at Kingshill about this time; the first of numerous mechanical aids the Group would purchase over the years. Negotiations where commenced with Mr. Gordon Barnes for a license to work on the infilled lock and a mile of canal he owned at Dauntsey Lock. An interesting point raised in an article by Ron Churchill is that all the original buildings were still standing and this included the lock cottage: but he may have mistaken the wharf house for the cottage which had been demolished some time previously.
The Company Secretary looks back over a decade of downs and ups.
As I sat looking through ten years' worth of "Dragon-Fly's" trying to decide how best to comply with our Editor's request for a look back over the last (and first) ten years of the Group, one thing struck me above all else. Precisely why the direction of the Group's work has followed a particular course over the years seems very difficult to pinpoint, but what is apparent is that on many occasions matters of concern have been raised, considered for a while, and have then fallen from note into oblivion.
As I said in the centre pages of the first "Dragon-Fly', we had at that time little idea of what might or might not follow from that cold, wet Saturday afternoon of 6th October 1977 in the Long Room of Swindon Arts Centre. We have certainly been able, as I anticipated, to increase the amenity use of some of what remains of the canals. Also, full restoration has become the main aim of the Group, and with our imminent change to Limited Company status, we hope we shall be able to further this aim even more actively and strongly. I referred also on those pages to lengthsmen. This idea has never developed and although people do occasionally write and notify us of relevant items of which they have become aware, it is regrettable that we have no operational systems of lengthsmen keeping their eyes open along the length of the canal, for possible dangers of any sort to the line of the canal and to future restoration.
Early on in our activities, we advocated the development of personal contact with landowners as the best way of helping them to appreciate the benefits of our plans. Although for one reason or another, relations sometimes get strained, and we do not meet a particular person for a while, this has proved the best way of over coming difficulties. It certainly proved most interesting when a few years ago, I spent several days visiting landowners on the East End.
Many of you will not know that in years gone by, we used to have regular monthly meetings designed for the interest our members. However, I suppose because of the length of the canal, and the geographical spread of the membership, these meetings were badly supported and ran at a loss for a while (with acute embarrassment when a speaker travelled many miles to talk to five or six people) before being abandoned. In an early Journal, we talked of developing a library and of making material from it available for loan this was short-lived, for what reason I'm not sure, although Pete Boyce our Archivist (and original Editor for many years) still maintains such items that we hold and which people send us.
Sometimes even whole projects have been planned and then lost to us, or altered in some way which we might consider to be quite unnecessary. Some of you will remember a lot of work being put in under the Skew Bridge at Kingshill (our first work site, of course) to dig a channel for a drain which became known (not very affectionately) as Barton's Folly. It was expected to carry water once every fifty years, but I'm not sure if it has yet been functional. I suppose there are now some (or even many) in the Group to whom Templar's Firs may be just a name, or even unknown. It lurks Just outside Wootton Bassett, and the Group (led by on Churchill who was Membership Secretary for many years) fought and won a Public Enquiry for permission to develop an amenity area there. Despite this, for reasons best known (only) to Wiltshire County Council and a building firm called Bradleys, we were never given permission and the canal ended up being drained by superfluous pipes installed by Bradleys. This area remains to this day a potential asset which we should pursue with greater vigour as soon as time permits.
Also in the early '80s, we began working at Dauntsey Lock under our initial license with members of the Barnes family, who own over a mile of canal in this area. This work continued on and off for several years, but was thwarted by he fact that at this time our Group was going through the lowest ebb of its existence to date. Several of our active members were to move away from the area, or to develop other interests and commitments, and we were similarly to lose our Editor. At one point we had only about four people working for the Group, as we had got into the sort of vicious downward circle in which because we had so few workers left, no-one had time available to recruit any more. It looked as though the Group would have to be wound up when it fell to Chris Toms and me to produce "Dragon-Fly" 18 as some sort of emergency edition. All active on-site work (such as at Dauntsey Lock) had ceased causing inevitable inconvenience to landowners such as Gordon Barnes with whom we had agreed to carry out particular work. As Gordon will know, we hope that we are now in a position to negotiate for the development, continuation and completion of the work which we had hoped to carry out so long ago. Studies we had begun at the East end and initial contacts with the Vale of White Horse District Council and Oxfordshire County Council began to fade when our potential East End Co-ordinator had to give up because of other commitments.
I note that in "Dragon-Fly" 12, I quoted a comment from someone (I have no idea now who it was) saying: ".. .I can't imagine what the Secretary of an organisation so realistic in its aims, so persistent in its actions, which produces a Newsletter that is a model combination of the academic and the practical, can find to feel insecure about". This real feeling of insecurity and of the imminent collapse of the Group, was probably around for 3 or 4 years. It seems to have been during late 1983 and early 1984 that things began to look up (not that they could have become much blacker). Ron Churchill and a couple of others at the West End had developed themselves into a sort of committee and had begun looking at possibilities at Calne, and some contacts had been made with North Wilts District Council. Richard Porter had taken over as Editor, and a new person appeared on the scene. I do not like singling out individuals for a specific mention as there are inevitably many who get left out although they deserve mention, for many reasons. However, I am going to mention two: the first is John Henn. John joined us when we were at our lowest point and I have no doubt that he saved the Group from possible extinction. He encouraged us to take out of mothballs ideas which had passed through our minds years before, such as using the Avon to negotiate Melksham, and he forged us into action from which we have never looked back. Neither has John, having become our West End Co-ordinator, and the prime mover of all the activity now to be seen in that area.
We were able to enlist the full support of Jack Dalby as our first President. Jack had for a long time been interested in the canal, and was a mine of information about it. He had been very sceptical about our intentions and chances of success when the Group was first mooted, and he still exercises a wise and guiding hand over our deliberations.
My initial theme in these jottings was that of chances missed. While the recent past will be familiar to most of you, and I do not propose to dwell on it, I continually see references to one sadly missed group of chances which we can never rectify. That is all the people (perhaps some 30-50 since the Group began) who have had stories to tell of the working days of the canal through personal experience or thoughts and writings of parents and others. Unfortunately, the passage of years means that many of whom we have been made aware are no longer with us, and therefore the chance of retaining their reminiscences has gone for ever; we sadly never found anyone who had time and inclination to go and talk to these people. A wonderful source of information has been lost, and I feel that this is one of the most regrettable omissions of the Group's first ten years, because it is too late: much of the information passed on with those who had it to offer.
My final topic brings us right up to date in that over the years our Group never had a Chairman. We tried all sorts of ways of chairing our Council meetings, but no-one in the Group was in a position to take the job on as a permanent involvement. We tried to locate people who might be interested, and after much failure became aware of an engineer who was partially retired and looking for an interest. I now come to mention my second name: that of our Chairman, Noel Griffiths. The arrival of Noel on the scene supplemented the arrival of John Henn perfectly. None of us others were normally able to make contacts with people during the day, or to travel to sites without taking enforced holidays, and so Noel filled a vital gap which has furthered the work of the Group to the point where things have never looked brighter.
In the next few months we shall be taking on the status of a Company Limited by Guarantee, and we shall shortly be applying to the Department of the Environment for a grant towards the employment of a full-time Manager for the canal. These possibilities, plus the fact that we now have Co-ordinators for all three sections of the canal, and who are working at their Jobs in the ways best suited to the nature and state of the canal in their areas, means that the next ten years should see more progress on the ground. The past ten have been years of establishment and political persuasion, resulting in the Policy Statements of 1966, by West Wilts District Council, and the establishment of the Liaison Group which one hopes will at an appropriate time be extended to include the three Councils not yet directly involved. But I am looking ahead, and that I believe is the task which our Editor has set the Chairman for a future issue. So I will close with an optimistic feel about our next ten years, by which Boats to Melksham (if not to Lacock) could well be a reality.
Neil Rumbol. Reproduced from "Dragon-Fly" 31, November 1987