Background: Readers of this item should be aware that a) there are indeed canals within a few miles of Aston Abbotts, b) there is a scheme to build a new canal from Bedford to Milton Keynes, and c) Aston Abbotts is a up a hill.

New Local Canal Construction

Many of you will have heard or read the press reports about the Waterways’ ambitious project to construct a new canal. However, some of you may be unaware that this venture once had a local connection.

The route mentioned in the recent press reports—the favoured one of nine options—will link the River Great Ouse in Bedford with Three Locks near Soulbury. This is not the first time such a scheme has been proposed. Brewer and MP Samuel Whitbread tried to get just such a link constructed in 1810 but the plan foundered for lack of investment. Another attempt in 1892 also was abandoned for similar reasons. If this project goes ahead it will cost between £80m and £150m and it will be the first new canal construction in Britain for 100 years.

If it seems a little bizarre to be building canals in the 21st century then let me assure you that there is a method behind this madness. It is projected that the new canal will create some 500 permanent jobs in the tourist and recreational industries as it attracts an expected 1.5 million additional visitors to the area. This is in addition to the 280-440 temporary jobs created during the construction phase.

It is not just the creation of jobs that is important. There is the obvious environmental benefit of a substantial new wildlife haven that will become a welcome natural habitat for waterfowl and the many other creatures that usually rely upon rivers and streams. Conservationists are getting excited about the possibility of attracting the red vole back to the area, whilst pond-owners (like myself) are somewhat less enthusiastic about the probable increase in the heron population!

The 20-mile route will pass through both Beds and Bucks countryside and involve some 13 locks, all of traditional wood and brick construction. This is where the story gets an interesting twist. In Beds a lock can have a maximum depth (the height between the upper and lower pounds) of 11 feet 8 inches, whilst in Bucks a byelaw enacted in 1823 restricts canal locks (those on man-made canals, not locks on canalised rivers) to just 7 feet and 4 inches. This is not of any great significance on the favoured route, but it had a major impact on the original, bolder plan.

When Patrick Cunnel, the Waterways’ constructional director, first put the idea of a new canal to the Waterways board in 1993, his original proposal was for a canal some 14 miles longer than currently proposed. This would have linked directly from Bedford to Aylesbury. It was not going to be just a tourist attraction; being broader than the current Aylesbury arm it would also have had commercial significance as a working waterway.

A first attempt at planning the route had to be abandoned because it fell foul of a major government-backed housing scheme that was then under discussion, but eventually a tentative route was settled upon and this would have seen the canal come closer to home than many of you might expect. The original plan followed much the same route as is currently planned from the River Great Ouse to Three Locks, but then it would have continued southwest passing between Soulbury and Wing, finally passing just north of Aston Abbotts on its way to Aylesbury.

This is where the problem with lock depths scuppered the plan. Cunnel appealed three times to Buckinghamshire County Council for a repeal of the byelaw limiting lock depths in Bucks, but without success. Being forced to restrict lock depths to a maximum of just 7 foot 4 inches meant that after passing between The Abbey and Norduck Farm a system of at least 19 locks would have had to have been constructed down Lines Hill before the canal finally terminated in the lake at Watermead. Environmental impact fears and spiralling costs effectively killed the scheme, although it would have been the most imaginative engineering project in Aylesbury this century.

So the Waterways fell back upon the current more achievable plan and the opportunity to attract tourism to Aston Abbotts was lost. However, it would have been a much longer-term project with the canal eventually opening, coincidentally, exactly fifteen years after the official publication date of this issue of The Chronicle. So that would have been on the first day of April in 2017 then. A little too far in the future perhaps.

This article appeared in the April 2002 issue of the Aston Abbotts Chronicle. There really is a Bedford to Milton Keynes canal project and if you want to know more about it you can visit the Milton Keynes Waterway website, where you will find maps of the proposed routes and summaries of the feasibility studies.