Bath
The City of Bath was an inland port long before the Kennet and Avon Canal was built and the River Avon had enabled trade between Bristol and Bath to become well established. As a consequence, by 1810 when the canal section was fully opened, a well-developed waterway-based infrastructure with extensive riverside wharfage and warehouse facilities existed in the city. Although not the only one, the city’s main wharf was at Broad Quay, and this busy and bustling site gave good access to the industrial and commercial side of the city. However, both the wharf and the surrounding area were also places of industrial squalor, and this stood in stark contrast to the more fashionable and affluent areas of Georgian Bath.

The hills above Bath had been quarried for their limestone since Roman times, but Bath stone became famous when architect John Wood and his son John Wood the Younger developed Bath in the 18th century, creating crescents and squares and many fine public buildings. Besides the two Woods, the other key figure in the Georgian development of Bath was Ralph Allen, who built up a large fortune from the mining of Bath stone. From his quarries, Allen transported cut stone down to a wharf on the River Avon close to where the canal now joins the river, and shipped it down the Avon to Bristol. After the Kennet and Avon Canal was opened, however, Bath stone was transported up the canal also, for delivery to London and numerous locations in between.

Not surprisingly the proprietors of the canal company, who must have seen the stone quarries as one of their best potential customers, used Bath stone for many of their constructional works. These included bridges, buildings, and the fine aqueducts at Limpley Stoke and Avoncliffe.

Between the point where the Kennet and Avon Canal joined the river and the eastern limits of Bath, other wharves were built alongside the canal. The largest of these is known today as Sydney Wharf and this site once consisted of numerous wharves, warehouses, and other buildings. These included the Somerset Coal Wharf where coal was brought by boat from the collieries at Timsbury and Radstock, along the Somerset Coal Canal and on to the Kennet and Avon Canal at Dundas.

Just east of Sydney Gardens tunnel was Darlington Wharf, the main location from which the fast “fly boat” service operated. Due to their small size, these craft were not capable of carrying large cargoes; however, as they travelled through the night without stopping, apart from when changing horses, they were able to cut, for example, at least two days off the journey from Reading.

Darlington Wharf also accommodated a coal merchant and a boat builder, and was the main location from which passenger-carrying Scotch boats departed for their journey to and from Bradford-on-Avon.