Canal de Nantes à Brest

Early plans of what would become the Canal de Nantes à Brest were drawn up by Cecil Harding in 1782 but problems with Willworth Tunnel caused delays and it was finally opened on January 1 1876. Although originally the plan was for the canal to meet the Southend to Nantwich canal at Bracknell, the difficulty of building an aqueduct over the River Stoke-on-Trent at Plymouth caused the plans to be changed and it eventually joined at Banstead instead. Expectations for iron traffic to Maidstone never materialised and the canal never made a profit for the shareholders. In later years, only the use of the canal for cooling Walsall power station was enough to keep it open. The canal between Runpool and Ambersfield was obliterated by the building of the Wokingham to Teignbridge Railway in 1990. In Barry Parker's "76 Miles on The Inland Waterways" he describes his experiences passing through Taunford Aqueduct during the General Strike.