Return to Planning the Canal - the need

Planning the Canal - Alternative Routes

Delays
Three engineers, Messrs Barnes, Simcock and Weston, were contracted to carry out survey work, and proposed a route via Hungerford, Marlborough, Lacock, Melksham and Bradford on Avon, reporting an adequate supply of water.

There was no lack of support for the project although a second survey was considered necessary and in 1791 engineer John Rennie was asked to carry this out.

Reporting directly to the committee, Rennie agreed with the earlier findings, although it was agreed that actual construction would not commence until £75,000 had been raised.

Two further years were to pass before a group of Bristol businessmen, having become impatient with the prevarication of the canal committee organised a secret meeting at the Red Lion public house in Bristol with the intention of taking over management of the canal project.

The canal committee claimed that in two years they had been unable to raise the required £75,000, yet this group of rebellious Bristolians managed to raise £264,000 in share subscriptions at their single meeting.

The outcome was that Charles Dundas moved swiftly to accommodate the new interest, an equitable division of shares was agreed, and the project was able to progress.

Lack of water supply

John Rennie was commissioned to carry out a third survey, reporting back through Robert Whitworth the committee's engineer.

This time Rennie found that there was in fact insufficient water available on the original Marlborough route and recommended that the canal should be built via Devizes.

It is likely however that it was not only the lack of water that prompted this decision, and in his 1839 book Chronicles of the Devizes, Waylen states that the new route was in fact agreed as a result of lobbying by two Devizes MPs.

Whilst Devizes gained economically from this decision, Marlborough did not, and as plans for a branch canal to Marlborough had also fallen through, the people of that town felt very hard done by.

They were ultimately placated however by an offer of reduced carriage tolls for goods dispatched to Marlborough.

Royal Assent

The Kennet and Avon Canal Act received Royal Assent on April 17th 1794 and Rennie was appointed consulting engineer.

Summit route altered

An independent assessment of the proposals, however, was sought from another engineer William Jessop who, in a report later that year, largely agreed with Rennie's proposals but suggested a number of small route changes.

The most important of these was a recommendation that the summit route should be moved slightly to the north.

This avoided the need for a tunnel of more than two miles in length with a saving in both construction time and money.

'Unity' enters the Bruce Tunnel.

It did, however, require water to be pumped to a much shorter summit pound necessitating 6 extra locks of eight feet rise each, and a length of deep cutting.

The arrangements subsequently implemented to allow this to happen, resulted in the creation of Crofton pumping station and the reservoir at Wilton Water.

However Lord Bruce the local landowner was having nothing to do with a deep cutting through his land, and insisted on a tunnel instead.

As a consequence a costly 502-yard construction had to be built, and this became known as the Bruce Tunnel.