Another 9 hours sleep last night – I just can’t believe it!
We have decided to stay at Parvis Wharf for a couple of days to keep
Dot and Gordon company – our timings are now completely messed up so we are not
in any hurry.
I went to Tesco with Dot and Gordon and got a taxi back as a) it’s a
long way and b) I seemed to have a lot to carry!
It was a quiet afternoon so I did some research into the Basingstoke
Canal. (The photos today are some odd ones I have taken recently)
The first route to be surveyed in 1769 was a line northwards to the
Thames at Monkey Island, Bray, but the engineering problems proved it would be
too costly. In 1776 a 44-mile route eastwards from Basingstoke, to link with
the River Wey Navigation and the Thames at Weybridge, was considered. The route
included a loop round Greywell Hill that took the canal up to Rotherwick, with
a short arm going to Turgis Green, but this met with opposition from the owner
of nearby Tylney Hall. As a result, a decision was made to tunnel through
Greywell Hill rather than go round it, and this route, reduced to 37 miles, was
approved by an Act of Parliament in 1778. However work did not commence until
nine years later owing to financial restraints as a result of the costly War of
American Independence.
From the River Wey the canal was built to rise 195ft by 29 locks to
Aldershot. The mile-long cutting at Deepcut, the 1,000-yard long Ash Embankment
crossing the Blackwater Valley on the Surrey/Hampshire border, and Greywell
Tunnel, 1,230 yards long, are the major engineering features.
The canal was completed in 1794 at a cost of £154,463 – almost twice
the estimated cost.
By the mid-1960s the locks were decaying, the channel was silted up and
choked by weed and rubbish and much of the towpath had become overgrown.
Unable to negotiate with the owner, Mr SE Cooke, who had his own plans
for abandonment of the navigation, the Surrey and Hampshire Canal Society,
formed in 1966, embarked on a 7-year campaign for public ownership and a policy
of restoration. A successful outcome was signalled late in 1973 when Hampshire
County Council acquired their 15-mile length, giving the go-ahead for the first
official working party. Surrey County Council bought the Surrey length for
£40,000 in March 1976.
Over the next 17 years the two county councils funded a programme of
restoration actively supported by the Surrey and Hampshire Canal Society, the
Inland Waterways Association and other canal restoration groups who organised
voluntary working parties along the 32 miles of the waterway. The period
generated a number of innovative practices, such as the operation of the steam
powered dredger Perseverance in Hampshire, manned by volunteers, narrow gauge
railway lines supplying work sites, summer voluntary work camps and youth
employment training schemes.
The protracted project was completed in 1990 and the canal was formally
re-opened on 10th May 1991 by HRH the Duke of Kent at Frimley Lodge Park,
followed by a weekend of civic celebrations along the entire length of the
canal.
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