Canal Boat – July 2018

canalboat.co.uk Canal Boat July 2018 63

diverted where its course had been used for

the town’s bypass and former rubbish tip

(albeit a diversionary route had been

reserved).

So Phase 1 was chosen as the subject of the

first major funding bid. But an initial

approach to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a

grant in the region of £22m to provide the

bulk of the funding received a reply which

might be summarised along the lines of

“Sorry but we don’t have the resources for a

grant of that size: come back with a bid for

half that amount, and we’ll see what we can

do.”

This left the canal restorers with a

dilemma: if they could only restore half of

Phase 1, which half should it be? To many

canal boaters the answer seemed obvious:

opening up the western end from Saul, and

then using that as a springboard for further

progress eastwards to Stroud and beyond,

made a lot more sense than opening an

isolated length limited to local boats and

small craft which would then need to be

linked to the national network at a later date.

But the HLF and other potential funders

weren’t primarily interested in

narrowboating. The HLF’s interest was

heritage – and there was relatively little

heritage work to be done in the western four

miles. Five of the six surviving historic locks

on this length had already at least been partly

restored, and the work still to be done was

more about finding engineering solutions to

the M5, A38 and rail crossings and building a

mile of new canal with two new locks to

replace the missing length. Likewise the other

likely funders, the regional development

agency, Stroud District Council and other

local authorities, were more interested in

urban regeneration and long-term job

creation – of which there also wasn’t a great

deal on the western part.

By contrast the eastern six miles of Phase 1,

from Stonehouse to Brimscombe, included

numerous surviving locks and bridges to

restore, and ran through a former mill valley

with a great deal of regeneration potential and

immediate benefits for local people. As such it

ticked all the boxes for the big funders – and

so, to a certain amount of disappointment

among boating folks, the Trust plumped for

the eastern section, dubbed ‘Phase 1a’. And

sure enough, the funders supported it to the

tune of over £20m in total.

Fast forward a few years, and despite a few

wobbles along the way (including British

Waterways’ withdrawal from the

partnership; the need to drop the uppermost

length near Brimscombe when the economic

downturn meant that commercial

redevelopment of the Port was no longer

going to pay for it; and a much greater

volunteer involvement required to make up

for a funding shortfall), it’s now very nearly

complete. New main road bridges and

several smaller liftbridges have been built,

the Stroud diversion completed, nine locks

RESTORATION

So why should HLF fund this

length, when the wisdom some

years ago was that they would be put

off by the lack of heritage value?

A length of canal channel east of Whitminster

survives in fair condition but is weed-filled

The canal shares its route with the River Frome for

some distance near Whitminster