1717 The River Tone was made navigable from the town of Taunton to the River Parrett at Burrow Bridge. The Parrett ran north from here to the Bristol Channel, passing through Bridgwater on route, it also ran many miles south into Somerset. Things never exactly ran smoothly for the Tone Navigation, especially financially, but the route was very popular with those who made use of it. Goods were brought from South Wales, Bristol and the Midlands and boats were able to use the two rivers to penetrate well into the centre of Somerset. Because of this, for many years there was no overwhelming need for a canal in the area.
1769 When a canal in the Bridgwater and Taunton area was eventually proposed, it was not local growth that the promoters had in mind, their plans were on a much grander scale. They wanted to create a waterway connection from the Bristol Channel to the English Channel in order to avoid the long and dangerous trek around Lands End. The first part of the plan was a canal from Exeter to Taunton, passing close to Tiverton (to be known as the Grand Western Canal). At Taunton another waterway (to be known as the Bristol & Western Canal) would head north east and connect with the River Avon at Morgan’s Pill (near Bristol). The B&W Canal route was surveyed by Robert Whitworth under the supervision of James Brindley. Around the same time a second plan was also surveyed by Whitworth. This rival scheme was promoted as the Taunton & Uphill Canal which would run from the Grand Western Canal at Taunton to the Bristol Channel near Weston Super Mare. In the end, none of these plans even reached the stage of an Act of Parliament but the ideas were not forgotten...
1792 Robert Whitworth was asked to re-survey his route for a canal from Exeter to Taunton. However, it took 4 years for the Grand Western Canal Company to obtain their Act of Parliament. It took another 4 years after that before any work was started and many more years before the canal actually reached Taunton.
Also in 1792, proposals were put forward once again to create the Taunton to Uphill route but these were defeated due to strong opposition from landowners who feared that such a waterway would affect land drainage and irrigation. I expect the owners of the Tone and Parrett navigations also made objections to the proposed canal which would almost certainly damage their business.
1796 The whole idea of a Channel to Channel canal via Bridgwater and Taunton was quashed when a separate (rival) company in Dorset gained an Act to build their own Channel to Channel route. This was named the Dorset & Somerset Canal and work on it was started immediately. However, the company soon ran into financial difficulties, the work was stopped and the canal never saw a boat.
1810 After a very long delay, the building of the Grand Western Canal began though construction began at Tiverton, a long way from Taunton. At the same time the Kennet & Avon Canal (from Reading to Bristol) was almost complete. This lead to a meeting in December where a plan was put forward to create the missing link which would not only connect the Bristol Channel to the English Channel but at the same time connect London to Exeter. John Rennie, who was involved with both the K&A and the Grand Western, was asked to re-survey the old Bristol & Western plans - now referred to as the Bristol & Taunton Canal.
In his report Rennie said "No line of country can be more favourable for a navigable canal". He proposed a ship canal, built all on one level from a lock on the Avon at Morgan’s Pill (near Bristol) to the River Parrett near Bridgwater. There were then two alternative routes to the south coast. The first would drop through two locks at Bridgwater, cross the Parrett and then head for Taunton where it would join the Grand Western Canal. The second plan would run from the River Parrett to the River Axe on the south coast near Seaton. In the end it was the Taunton route which was promoted, possibly helped along by the Kennet & Avon company who had shares in the Grand Western Canal.
1811 In January, a meeting of landowners between Bristol and Bridgwater made objections to the newly planned canal, claiming it would harm their businesses and be a hazard to drainage. Further south, the river Tone Conservators and its traders also objected to the proposed canal which would bypass their river. Despite this opposition the Bristol & Taunton Canal Act was passed later in the year though a number of restrictions were placed upon the new company - some of them rather bizarre...
The new canal company were ordered not to build a tunnel at Clevedon (south of Bristol) or to start work at Bridgwater until all other sections of the canal were complete. There was also a time restriction placed on the company. If the route was not completed within 4 years, their Act of Parliament would be considered void. The company were also told that they had to pay off all outstanding debts owed by the River Tone Navigation - and they had to do this within 3 months. The only part of all this that the new Bristol & Taunton Canal Company actually managed to do was to rid the rival Tone Navigation of all its debts. Work on the canal never got under way.
1822 Canal mania was just a distant memory and 11 years had lapsed since the B&T had obtained its Act - which had now long since expired. The whole idea of a connection between Bristol and the south coast had been dropped - only a short section of the Grand Western Canal near Tiverton had been completed. Nevertheless, in March a group of B&T shareholder’s agreed that an attempt should be made to obtain a new Act to build a canal from the River Parrett at Huntworth to Taunton. This would create an alternative to the River Tone Navigation which was often unnavigable due to drought in summer and floods in winter. The shareholders also asked the Grand Western Canal company to complete its line to Taunton or allow them to build a link to the GWC. This would create a continuous route from the Bristol Channel to Tiverton and might even revive the idea of a Bristol Channel to Exeter canal.
At the same time (and possibly the reason for the resurgence in B&T activity) promotion began for a waterway connecting Bridgwater to Seaton under the name of the English & Bristol Channels Ship Canal.
1824 A new Act of Parliament was obtained by the B&T company, allowing the building of a canal from Taunton to Huntworth with a lock and a basin at Huntworth where it would link into the River Parrett. The new canal was to be known as the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal although it did not actually start in Bridgwater. The new company were obviously very keen this time and work began straight away - this was probably because plans were still underway to build the English & Bristol Channels Ship Canal from Bridgwater to Seaton.
James Hollinworth was appointed engineer on the B&T. His canal was to be 13 miles long with 6 locks each measuring 54ft by 13ft.
1825 An Act of Parliament was passed allowing the construction of the rival English & Bristol Channels Ship Canal. It was to be a wide and deep waterway, built very straight in order to take fast ships across the West Country.
Meanwhile, the B&T canal was being built very quickly across a landscape that brought very few problems. This (along with the threat of the English & Bristol Channels Ship Canal) spurred the neighbouring Grand Western Canal into action and (at last) they started connecting Tiverton to Taunton. In turn, this seems to have had a bad affect on the ship canal because the promoters of that waterway found it impossible to raise the necessary cash to begin construction and the whole idea was dropped.
1827 On January 3rd, a cheering crowd came to Taunton to watch a canal barge, with flags flying, enter the town - the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal was officially open.
Like a lot of canals, the B&T’s construction had cost a lot more than estimated by the surveyor. It took the company 10 years to pay off extra money which had been borrowed to complete the route. Nevertheless, the early years of the canal were a good success with tonnages and tolls rising every year.
Of course the opening of the canal was not cheered by everyone. After 110 years of unhindered business, the River Tone Conservators now found themselves with a big rival. Their greatest problem was that their waterway suffered badly from droughts and floods while the well controlled canal could
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stay in water (and in business) all year round. And so, a period of "dirty tricks" began! The Tone Conservators did everything they could to hinder the canal’s water supply (which came from the River Tone at Taunton). It would appear that they were pretty good at this because the B&T was eventually forced into breaking down the river bank at Taunton to make a new connection with the river. The next trick was to dramatically reduce the tolls charged on the river. The B&T company objected to this of course but they lost the battle in court. This angered them enough to announce (in August 1827) that they were going to take over the river navigation using powers given to them in the Act of 1811. The Tone Conservators objected but in November the canal company forcibly took charge of the river and immediately returned the tolls to their original rate. On top of this, they ended all maintenance on the river navigation.
1830 The Tone Conservators - booted out of office by the canal company - went back to court and again won their case when it was decided that the B&T could not use powers obtained in 1811 because that Act had been voided (timed out) in 1815. The Conservators repossessed their river in July and immediately reduced the tolls again. They also started to cut water supplies to the canal once again. This time they weren’t holding back! A dam was built to block the canal from the river at Firepool Lock in Taunton. The courts soon forced the Conservators to take the dam away so they then threatened legal action against any boat that attempted to enter the river from the canal.
1831 In November, the canal company made a final offer to buy the River Tone but once again it was rejected.
1832 The River Tone problem was finally resolved when the B&T company took the matter to the House of Commons. An Act was passed in July enabling the canal company to buy out the Tone for just £2,000. Weirdly, the Conservators retained the right to an annual inspection of the navigation and if it was not maintained properly they had the right to repossess the river!
Despite all the problems - and having a canal as a direct rival - the River Tone was still carrying almost 40,000 tons a year and receiving over £2,000 in tolls at the time of the take-over.
The B&T company were now free to complete all their plans. Their first job was to build a short canal in Taunton connecting the River Tone to the Grand Western Canal (which was still under construction). When complete this would create the continuous route from the Bristol Channel to Tiverton as they’d planned in 1822.
1836 The B&T company probably thought that the River Tone was the only rival they would ever have. However, in May an Act was passed in Parliament allowing the creation of the Bristol & Exeter Railway, which was to have branches to Dunball Wharf and into Bridgwater. A new fight for survival was about to begin though before the railway was built, the canal continued to do very well.
1837 To combat the immanent arrival of the railway, the B&T company took a gamble and decided to build an extension of about two miles from its terminus at Huntworth into Bridgwater where a dock would be built and a new connection would be made with the River Parrett. It was a gamble because there was little chance that the extension would increase traffic. The hope was that it would prevent the loss of traffic to the railway. The new extension was to pass right through Bridgwater, snaking through the town to pass close to as many businesses as possible.
1841 The new extension was opened on March 25th to the sound of bells, cannon fire, the playing of the national anthem and (best of all no doubt) the consumption of "roast beef and plum pudding"!
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As soon as the new extension was opened, Huntworth lock and the basin at the old terminus on the River Parrett were closed and never used again.
Somewhat surprisingly - considering the growth of railways in the area - another new canal was built in 1841 which linked with the Bridgwater & Taunton. The Chard Canal (the last "small" canal ever to be built in the UK) initially ran from Ilminster to Creech St Michael on the east side of Taunton. This was a great bonus to the B&T because it increased traffic just at a time when it needed it most.
1842 The B&T reached its peak, carrying over 118,000 tons and collecting over £8,000 in tolls.
Despite this, the profit made by the canal in the first two years after building the extension into Bridgwater was nowhere near enough to pay off the money borrowed to construct it.
The situation was made worse when a railway between Bridgwater and Taunton was opened on July 1st. The canal company had no choice other than to lower its tolls. In an effort to keep traffic on the canal they also agreed to pay the Grand Western Canal a subsidy to encourage its traffic to continue to use the B&T instead of transferring onto the new railway.
1845 The story for the B&T was a familiar one echoed throughout the UK at this time. Railway competition was simply too much to deal with and as the rail network grew, business on the canal steadily declined. With no hope of turning this around the canal company decided they would become the "Bridgwater & Taunton Canal Railway"(!). The plan was to drain the canal and convert the bed into a railway line. A number of other canals decided to follow suit including a Kennet & Avon scheme to create the (wait for it...) "London, Devizes & Bridgwater Direct Railway Company". This was part of a plan to turn as many West Country canals as possible into railways under the banner of the "West of England Central & Channels Junction Railway Company" which would have been able to carry goods and passengers from London to Penzance - but would have been a nightmare to pronounce! Of course none of this materialised and after a short time, with income plummeting, the B&T Canal was put into the hands of a receiver.
1848 As a result of the B&T going into receivership it could not keep up its subsidy deal with the Grand Western Canal Company, this led the GWC to stop using the B&T and use the railway instead. Of course this meant there was now even less trade on the Bridgwater & Taunton.
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1851 With the canal now deep in debt, the receiver obtained an agreement with the Bristol & Exeter Railway Company to lease the waterway. This eventually led to the railway buying the canal (though not for another 16 years). During this time the neighbouring Grand Western Canal also had a long battle with the B&ER and it too eventually had to sell out to the railway.
1867 On April 8th, the Bristol & Exeter Railway Company took possession of the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal, paying £64,000 for it. This paid off all loans and debts and provided a small amount for the shareholders. Surprisingly the railway company began its ownership by building a new wharf at Bridgwater dock. Other improvements were made and things were not looking so bleak for the waterway. But...
1876 The Bristol & Exeter Railway Company amalgamated with (or was taken over by) Great Western Railway - a company who did not much like messing about with boats. The canal went into an instant decline.
1886 The River Severn railway tunnel was opened and this meant that coal from Wales was no longer carried across the Bristol Channel into Bridgwater docks. From this point on the canal became little more than a local thoroughfare with hardly any goods being imported from, or exported to, other parts of the country.
1890 Canal tonnage was now down to just under 14,000.
1896 As if matters weren’t bad enough, the canal began to suffer badly from water shortages. During the next 5 years there were numerous occasions when goods had to be carried by train. By 1905 water levels were back to normal but by this time many of the canal’s customers were lost to the railway forever.
1907 The last tolls on the B&T were collected and the canal slowly but surely fell into dereliction, used only as a water source and a drain.
c1940 During WW2 the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal (along with the Chard Canal and River Axe) were used as defence lines. Sadly, the many iron swing bridges along the canal were melted down for the war effort and were replaced with fixed wooden ones. These were stronger bridges which could take large amounts of military traffic and also had the advantage of being easy to destroy if necessary. Pillboxes and tank traps were also placed along the canal. Some of these can still be seen today.
1948 The B&T Canal (like most canals in the UK) was nationalised and the British Transport Commission took control of the derelict waterway. It should be noted that during all this period the old River Tone remained navigable - though also mostly unused. It too was nationalised by the BTC.
1955 In the BTC waterways review, both the B&T Canal and the River Tone were placed into Group 3, "Waterways having insufficient commercial prospects to justify their retention", and - to be fair - nobody could really argue with this at the time. What this meant was the canal would not be maintained and would eventually be filled in and sold off.
1958 The Bowes Committee said that the canal might be suitable for redevelopment - what they had in mind is not clear but nothing was actually done
1962 The B&T Canal became one of the first canals to carry water commercially. Wessex Water reached an agreement with the National Rivers Authority and the British Waterways Board (who had replaced the BTC) which allowed them to pump water from the canal into Durleigh Reservoir. Since its closure in 1907, the B&T had kept a very good water level due to its connection with the River Tone at Firepool Lock in Taunton.
1968 Thirteen years after the BTC report had said the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal was fit only for closing down, nothing had changed. Its use as a water supply channel kept it intact. The 1968 Transport Act classified it as a "remainder" waterway - not fit for maintenance or development as a navigation.
Around this time the Bridgwater & Taunton Restoration Group (later the Somerset Inland Waterways Society) was formed. Pleasure boating was becoming very popular around the country and a number of derelict canals were already being restored. The long term plan was to put boats back on the B&T. Luckily for the restoration society they gained good support from Somerset County Council.
1972 Restoration of the canal began, mostly funded by Somerset County Council with the work being done mostly by the British Waterways Board. It was reported that SCC were planning to spend £15,000 on the canal during 1972, £5,000 of which was to raise the height of some of the bridges. However, this didn’t go down too well with restoration society because the bridges were to be lifted only to a height of 3ft 6ins - high enough only for canoes and rowing boats! The society managed to postpone the work on the bridges while trying to persuade the council to raise them to a height of about 7ft. Of course it is not just a matter of putting an old bridge on stilts! Most bridges needed to be completely renewed and all approach roads would need to be altered.But the local council were certainly keen to see the canal restored, for example, later in the decade they spent £20,000 just to restore one retaining wall and they announced plans to convert the derelict docks in Bridgwater into a sport and leisure area. Ware’s warehouse, which faced the docks, had become a Listed Building and was to be converted into an indoor leisure centre which would also include a nightclub. The barge lock into the River Parrett and an original bascule (lifting) bridge were also to be restored. (Note: The leisure area was never built though, as we shall read, the docks were eventually redeveloped).
1978 Work began on clearing Newtown Lock in the centre of Bridgwater leading into the old docks. The lock was found to be full (almost 12ft deep) of silt and other accumulated rubbish. By this time the SCC had also restored Maunsel Lock in the middle of the route and dredged most of the canal, but they confounded the restoration sociey by planning to build a bridge at Bathpool with just 4ft clearance. Once again the council had to be persuaded that this was ludicrous considering the amount of money they had spent on making other stretches of the route navigable.
1979 BWB work parties completed repairs to virtually all the locks on the canal. By the end of the year only the two locks at either end of the route, Firepool Lock in Taunton and Newtown Lock in Bridgwater, were still to be fully restored. This meant that the canal was now a continuous working waterway for about 13 miles. There was, however, still one major problem. Almost all of the bridges which crossed the canal were still too low to allow boats to pass under them. Originally nearly all the bridges had been swing bridges, now they were either fixed in place or had been replaced by new bridges which left no headroom. By the this time, keen as they were, the SCC simply couldn’t afford to raise the bridges. Cutbacks in local authority spending meant a big rethink was needed.
During the year a convoy of small outboard powered dinghies passed through the newly reinstated locks as they cruised from North Newton to Bathpool (near Taunton). They were the first boats to use the B&T locks for over 70 years
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1980 In April a report made by the West Somerset Inland Waterways Association appeared in Waterways World magazine describing a plan which would create a cruising network of 100 miles within the West Somerset area. As well as the B&T Canal restoration this also included reinstating the Wesport Canal along with the rivers Tone, Parrett, Yeo and Isle to full navigable routes. In the case of the B&T the report said that its restoration would be relatively simple with only one lock and a handful of minor bridges needing to be restored. This seems to have been wishful thinking, it took another 14 years to get all the bridges raised on the canal and the chance of all the other waterways being restored is still very very slight.
1984 In January it was reported in the waterways press that the disused Bridgwater Docks were to be redeveloped into a 160 berth marina by the newly created Bridgwater Marina Company who had purchased the docks from the Somerset County Council for £300,000. Most of the berths were to be for sea going vessels but 20 moorings were to be provided for canal craft. A new lock was also being built by SCC with the help of the BWB. This would allow boats up to 16ft long to enter the new marina from the River Parrett. The main building at the docks, Ware’s warehouse, was also to be restored and converted into flats, a pub, a restaurant and a museum. The work was expected to be complete that summer.
Details of the rest of the restoration project are somewhat sketchy but throughout the 1980’s work continued, bridges were lifted one by one, some made into swing bridges as they had been originally. The last bridge to be raised was Priorswood Bridge in Taunton which was replaced in 1993.
1994 In June the B&T canal was officially reopened from end to end. For the first time since 1907 boats could once again navigate the whole canal from Bridgwater Docks to the centre of Taunton. This, of course, is fantastic news but there are still some disappointments. The biggest of these is the lack of a connection from Bridgwater Docks to the River Parrett. The barge lock remains closed, apparently to stop mud and silt getting into the "lovely new marina".
The marina is "lovely", - but aren’t marinas supposed to hold boats?!!
It would be unfair to end on a sour note. The canal restorers, BW and the Somerset County Council should be praised for their many years of work in bringing back to life one of the UK’s nicest "country canals".
additional photo's ©Andrew Norris : tauntoninpictures
Welcome to Canals & Waterways: Roots & Routes, the website dedicated to the history and routes of Britain's Inland Waterways. Almost every British canal, whether navigable, derelict or under restoration is described here. Many river navigation's (including all of the Norfolk Broads waterways) are also included.