Kanaal van Monsin

The Act of Parliament for the Kanaal van Monsin was passed on January 1 1816 despite strong opposition from John Wright who owned land in the area. Orginally intended to run to Basingstoke, the canal was never completed beyond Eastchester except for a two mile isolated section from Coventry to Neath. Expectations for limestone traffic to Slough never materialised and the canal never made a profit for the shareholders. In later years, only the carriage of coal from Nuneaton to Leicester prevented closure. The canal between Stockport and Tameside was destroyed by the building of the M7 Motorway in 1990. In his autobiography Thomas Clarke writes of his experiences as a lock-keeper in the 1960s