Background The
Somerset coalfield had been producing coal since at least 1437, when the main source was a pit at
Kilmersdon. By the early 1500s, additional pits had been opened at
Clutton,
High Littleton and
Stratton-on-the-Fosse. There were also mines at
Farrington Gurney,
Midsomer Norton and
Paulton by 1678, but no mining activity at
Radstock. This changed in 1793, when an exploratory shaft found coal seams at varying depths below the village, which led to a flurry of new mines opening at
Dunkerton,
Foxcote,
Priston,
Timsbury and
Writhlington. For all of the pits, transport was a major problem because of the poor state of the roads. The cost of getting the coal to market, and the threat of cheaper coal from south
Wales as a result of the opening of the
Monmouthshire Canal, which was then under construction, led to the proposal for a canal which could transport Somerset coal to
Bath and
Wiltshire. Initial surveys were conducted during 1793 by
William Jessop and
William Smith under the direction of
John Rennie who presented a report on 14 October 1793 estimating the cost of construction of the canal at £80,000. Smith, who also worked at the Mearns Pit at High Littleton, made the original observations leading to his important
stratification theory by observing the
dips in the
geological strata through which the canal was cut. Smith became Surveyor to the company, but was dismissed in April 1799, apparently because he had used his position as surveyor to buy a local house at advantageous terms. He then set himself up in a private practice in Bath but was re-engaged by the company in 1811, to provide advice when repairs became necessary to the canal bed. As there were no serious objections to the plans, passage through Parliament was smooth, and the canal was authorised by an
act of parliament, the '''''' (
34 Geo. 3. c. 86), which received Royal Assent on 17 April 1974. It was entitled "An Act for making and maintaining a navigable Canal, with certain Railways and Stone Roads, from several Collieries in the county of Somerset, to communicate with the intended Kennet and Avon Canal, in the parish of
Bradford, in the county of Wilts". Rennie then had doubts about his original route, and suggested it should be constructed at a higher level, to avoid a long tunnel at Combe Hay.
William Jessop was asked to check the new route, and with Rennie gave it his approval, assuring the committee that there was an adequate water supply for the change. Further detailed surveys were carried out by Robert Whitworth and John Sutcliffe, while the committee sent Samborne Palmer and Richard Perkins, accompanied by Smith, on a fact-finding tour of the canals, inclined planes and tramroads of England and Wales, to help them decide whether to construct a canal with inclined planes or railroads. After they reported their findings on 3 October 1794, the committee decided to proceed with a canal or railway. Sutcliffe was then appointed as chief engineer, and in January 1795 the committee finally agreed that a canal would be better than a railway. Its route was not resolved until they obtained a second act, the '''''' (
36 Geo. 3. c.46), which authorised variations to the route defined in the original act.
Construction In May 1795, tenders were invited for the first sections to be built from Paulton to Hopyard, Camerton and from Radstock Bridge to Peglinch in Wellow. An estimate by the contractor Houghton & Son from Shropshire was accepted and work began. Part of the Paulton route was sufficiently advanced that five boats carried coal from Dunkerton to Camerton on 1 October 1798, some of which was then delivered by road to Bath. On the northern branch to Paulton, there was a difference in levels of to be overcome, and this was concentrated at
Combe Hay Locks. Rather than use a flight of around 23 conventional locks, the committee elected to use vertical
boat lifts. Perkins and Palmer had seen various lifts during their fact-finding tour, but most were designed for small boats, whereas they wanted one that could transport full-length narrow boats. They considered building railway inclined planes, and using railways rather than canals for the upper levels on both branches. However, in 1794 Robert Weldon proposed using his vertical lift, known at the time as a hydrostatic lock but later called a
caisson lock. The
Kennet and Avon Canal agreed to fund one quarter of the cost of an experimental lift, and Weldon was asked to build it on the Radstock branch, but the site was later changed to Combe Hay. If it worked, Weldon would be paid £200 for use of his patent, but nothing if it failed. Weldon had built a model of his design at
Oakengates, next to the
Shropshire Canal. He started work on the first of three caisson locks which would be required at Combe Hay in early 1796. A narrow boat laden with 20 or 30 tons of cargo would be floated into an airtight wooden box, which was submerged in water in a stone-built cistern. The buoyancy of the box counterbalanced the weight of the boat and its cargo, and the box could be moved up and down by racks and pinions. Construction continued throughout 1796 and 1797. Meanwhile, tenders were awarded for building the canal from Midford to Limpley Stoke, and the junction with the Kennet and Avon Canal. During the first trial of the caisson lock in February 1798, the rack and pinion mechanism broke. After repairs were made, another trail took place in June 1798, when a boat was successfully lowered the down the lift, and raised back to the upper level. Weldon pledged that he would demonstrate the lock by using it to transfer 1,500
tons in 12 hours, using just a lift operator and a boatman. The committee decided to build two more lifts, one at Combe Hay and one at Radford, but no work was undertaken until the final trial had been completed. It never was, as there were repeated failures, and the committee started to consider other options. Three successful trials of the caisson lock were made in April 1799, but the walls of the chamber started to bulge. The
Bath Herald reported that the leakage from the cistern was so bad that the lock could only be used for three or four hours before trials had to be abandoned. While they blamed the masons who had built the faulty cistern, it was probably the ground in which the cistern was built that caused the problems. It was built through Lower
Fuller's Earth clay, a material that is notorious for expanding when wet, and this would have exerted enormous pressure on the cistern walls. At the time, the process of making waterproof cement was also in its infancy. These two factors caused the walls of the cistern to bulge inwards, resulting in the caisson jamming. Smith may have known of the problem, since he had visited
Sapperton Tunnel on the
Thames and Severn Canal in 1788 and 1794, which was distorting where it was cut through Fuller's Earth. After years of fruitless searching for the site of the lock, an archaeological dig in 1997 confirmed its likely location, following the discovery in the Public Records Office of a map dating from 1804-1806 showing the caisson and its exit tunnel. Nobody responded to a call for tenders in 1799 to rebuild the lift and to build the others. In the same year William Whitmore and his partner, Norton, offered to build a
balance (or geometrical) lift without payment, on condition that if successful they were to have £17,300 and a royalty of 4 pence per ton on goods passed. Sutcliffe suggested that it was a better design than the caisson lock, but was unsure that it could be built large enough to handle boats of 24 tons. He was also aware that
James Fussell was building a similar lift on the
Dorset and Somerset Canal, and recommended that they wait to see how successful that was.
Benjamin Outram was asked for advice, and suggested that the colliery railways should be rebuilt as plateways, to take much larger trucks, which could then be shipped down the canal on rafts, which would be and would carry 12 trucks. The trucks would then be lowered down a plateway incline to more rafts on the lower levels, or the coal could be loaded into boats. Sutcliffe was critical of this suggestion, as it would require the canal to be widened, and he thought Outram had grossly underestimated the cost of the work. He advocated a flight of locks at Combe Hay and Radford. Outram then suggested that railway inclines could be built at both locations, with coal carried in boxes on the boats, which would be transferred to the railways by crane. The inclines would be counter-balanced, with full boxes descending being used to raise empty boxes or boxes part-loaded with other commodities. This solution was adopted, and three locks were built below the Combe Hay inclined plane to lower the canal to the Midford level. The plane was not a success, with the Kennet and Avon company complaining that the coal was damaged by the transfer, and the
Wilts & Berks Canal company complaining that the transfer was slow and costly. The committee therefore decided to build a flight of 19 locks at Radford, and an additional 19 at Combe Hay. They proposed to raise more money to finance the building of the locks, the use of which would incur an additional toll of one shilling per ton on all traffic. This was vigorously opposed by the owners of the Kennet and Avon and the Wilts & Berks, on the grounds that the price of coal to their customers would be too high. After negotiation, the company obtained a new act of Parliament, the '''''' (
42 Geo. 3. c. xxxv), on 30 April 1802, which authorised the formation of a separate body called "The Lock Fund of the Somerset Coal Canal Company", with powers to raise the sum of £45,000. The money was raised by the Kennet and Avon, the Wilts & Berks and the Somerset Coal Canal each contributing £15,000, and the one shilling surcharge was to be levied until the capital had been repaid, after which it would cease.
William Bennet oversaw the construction of the lock flight, and although the upper canal was connected to the top lock on 5 April 1805, the locks were not used until January 1806. The delay in using the locks was probably due to the inadequate water supply. Water was pumped into the canal from the
Cam Brook at Dunkerton by a double-action pumping engine, but this was insufficient for the 22 locks. A beam engine was obtained from
Boulton and Watt of Birmingham which was capable of lifting 5,000 tons of water from the lower level up to the upper level every twelve hours. It was rated at , with steam being supplied by two
Cornish boilers. The engine house was built large enough to house a second engine and two more boilers, with the first engine actually called No 1 engine. So that the engine would not disturb Colonel Leigh, who probably lived in what is now known as Caisson House, the upper canal was extended for into Engine Wood, where the pump was built. This enabled a supply of coal to be delivered by boat. At some point between 1812 and 1875, the Combe Hay engine was moved to supplement the engine at Dunkerton, but the actual date is not known. The engine house was demolished in the 1890s.
Operation By 1806 the main line of the canal was fully operational The 1802 act set the tonnage rates to be charged: in 2006 Fractions of a Mile to pay for Half a Mile, and of a Ton as a Quarter of a Ton; Rates for Wharfage to be determined by the Company. In addition to the above Rates, One Shilling per Ton is paid on all Goods to the Lock Fund, which also receives Three Farthings per Ton from the Coal Canal company. The boats were weighed at Midford, where a
weigh house was built in 1831, with a roof supported by eight stone Doric columns. It was the first of three built in England and Wales. Boats were floated into a one-ended lock, the gate closed and the water drained. This left the boat resting on a cradle suspended by angled rods attached to a beam which took the weight of the boat. One-pound weights were then added to a pan, with one pound being equivalent to one
hundredweight (), until the system was in equilibrium, when the weight was recorded. The weigh house continued in use until the canal closed and was dismantled in 1914. The other two machines were at
Tongwynlais on the
Glamorganshire Canal and at Brimscombe Port on the
Thames and Severn Canal. As well as the main trade in coal, the canal was occasionally used for passenger traffic. In 1814, the
Benedictine monks who came to
Downside Abbey used the canal for the last stage of their journey. The amount of cargo carried was 138,403 tons in 1838, resulting in over £17,000 of tolls being paid. Annual cargoes of over 100,000 tons were common from 1820, and in 1864 reached 157,000 tons, but soon the decline in output from the various Somerset coal pits along with competition from the railways dramatically reduced the canal's profitability, and coal traffic was down to 24,581 tons in 1884.
The Radstock branch When the Radstock branch was authorised, it was to terminate at Welton Hollow, near
Midsomer Norton, where there was a colliery. However, when construction began, the first contract was for a stretch from the Waldegrave Arms in
Radstock to Peglinch (now known at Paglinch), starting around to the east of Welton Hollow. Further contracts were issued to extend the canal eastwards to
Wellow and Twinhoe, but tenders do not appear to have been advertised for the final section westwards. The first contract included the construction of a road bridge over the canal a very short distance from where it terminated, suggesting that the western extension was still proposed at the time. The precise location of the terminal wharf at Radstock was unknown until a map dated 1806 was discovered in the Somerset Records Office. The branch was intended to link to the main line of the Paulton branch at
Midford, which required the negotiation of a drop of between the end of the level canal at Twinhoe and Midford. The caisson lock and the inclined plane at Combe Hay had both proved to be unreliable, and no work was carried out on similar structures on the Radstock branch. The 1802 act authorised a flight of 19 locks to be built above Midford, but by the time the flight at Combe Hay had been built, there was insufficient money left to cover the cost of a second flight of locks. The canal section was around long, and was filled with water by 1804, when someone drowned after falling into it in January. It is unclear how the water supply was obtained. The
Gloucester Journal newspaper reported in April 1805 that one lock had been built on the Radstock arm, and the remaining 18 locks had been replaced by a temporary tramroad. This solution was adopted because of the small volumes of coal produced by the Radstock pits. Midford Basin was connected to the main line by an aqueduct that crossed the
Midford Brook. The 1806 map shows three small jetties at the Radstock end of the canal, with tramway tracks running along them, so that coal could be unloaded into boats. There is no evidence that the canal was wide enough to enable boats to turn around, and so they may have been double-ended, with pintles at both ends to allow the rudder to be moved from one end to the other. The Canal Company records for the early period have been lost, and there is scant evidence of traders using the canal. The company did not receive a response to advertisements for a maintenance contract for both branches of the canal in 1810, and when they advertised again in 1812, only the Paulton arm was mentioned. It is possible that the canal was filled with water by pumping, since an 'engine' is shown on two maps of Radstock, although it was shown on the wrong side of the canal to pump water from the brook. After the canal was converted to a railway, a steam engine was advertised for sale in 1815. It was stated to be in good condition, as it had only worked for two summers. Transport along the Radstock arm was inefficient. First, coal was brought from the pits to be loaded into boats at Radstock, then it was transferred back to the tramway at Twinhoe, and carried to boats at Midford. In 1814, the Company asked the canal engineer John Hodgkinson for advice, and he suggested that they lay a tramway along the towpath, and dispense with the canal altogether. They followed his counsel, and the tramway construction was completed by July 1815. It consisted of a single line with passing places every , and was level to Twinhoe, where it descended on a 1-in-80 slope to Midford. The gauge was , which may have been adopted because it was the same as the tramways at Radstock or the original tramway from Twinhoe to Midford. The canal had operated for at most eight years, and possibly only four or five. The first railway to affect the canal was the Frome to Radstock line. This was promoted by the
Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway, but the company was taken over by the
Great Western Railway (GWR) before the line was built. They opened it as a broad gauge () freight railway in 1854, and although they expected it to benefit from large volumes of coal traffic, the volume of coal carried by the canal continued to increase. In November 1870, the
Somerset and Dorset Railway announced that it intended to build a standard gauge line from Limpley Stoke to Radstock, where it would join the Frome to Radstock freight railway. As the Radstock tramway was still using horse traction and the new railway would be in direct competition with it, the canal company decided to sell the tramway to the Somerset and Dorset company. The sale was agreed in February 1871, and the canal company received £20,000, £15,000 in cash and the remainder in shares. The tramway closed in 1874, once the new railway was completed. As the canal company did not seek parliamentary powers to convert the canal to a tramway, the sale of the tramway was technically illegal, but this did not prevent the transfer. The sale included the tramways from Radstock to Welton and Clandown, but not those that served other collieries, which were protected by a clause in the
Somerset and Dorset Railway (Extension to the Midland Railway at Bath) Act 1871 (
34 & 35 Vict. c. ccv). The Somerset and Dorset Railway issued a prospectus that stated that over 100,000 tons of coal had been carried by the tramway each year, but this was an exaggeration, and the actual figure was around 80,000 tons. There was a
break of gauge at Radstock until June 1874, when the Radstock to Frome line was relaid as a
standard gauge line.
Engineers and surveyors , 1810, by Sir
Henry Raeburn , undated •
William Bennet (d. 1826) •
John Hodgkinson •
Benjamin Outram (1764–1805) •
John Rennie (1761–1821) •
William Smith (1769–1839) • John Sutcliffe •
Robert Weldon (?1754–1810) •
Robert Whitworth (d. 1799) Data from Jim Shead's Waterways Information.
Paulton and Timsbury basins at
Paulton in 2006, referred to locally as "The Batch" The terminus of the northern branch of the Somerset Coal Canal was located between the villages of
Paulton and
Timsbury. It was a central point for at least 15 collieries around Paulton, Timsbury, and
High Littleton, which were connected to the canal by tramroads. of tramways connected the pits to the canal. A map discovered at the Waterways Museum at Stoke Bruerne dating from the 1850s shows that seven of the Timsbury and Paulton pits formerly served by the canal had been abandoned by that date. On the northern side of Timsbury basin was the terminus for the tramroads which served Old Grove, Prior's, Tyning and Hayeswood pits, with a branch line to Amesbury and Mearns pits. Parts of this line were still in use in 1873, probably all carrying horse-drawn wagons of coal. Tramroads on the southern side of the Paulton basin served Brittens, Littlebrook, Paulton Ham, Paulton Hill, and Simons Hill terminating at Salisbury Colliery. In addition the Paulton Foundry used this line. The entire line was disused by 1871 as were the collieries it served.
Decline in 2008 A railway branch line was constructed in 1882 from
Hallatrow to Camerton, running alongside the canal for the last of its route. This resulted in a reduction of trade on the canal, although the canal company gained some benefit by selling some land to the railway company. Of the 30 pits that had originally been served by the canal, traffic from 13 of them had been lost when the Radstock tramway was sold, and the opening of the Camerton branch line had resulted in a loss of 75,000 tons per year, which transferred to the railway. The canal was almost exclusively reliant on the collieries for its traffic, and only four of those were still working. The canal went into liquidation in 1893 but continued to be used, as the pumping engines at Dunkerton were not turned off until 1898. The closure of the canal caused difficulties for the remaining pits which had relied on it for transportation, but most of the traffic transferred to the Camerton Branch. In 1902 the
Board of Trade declared that the canal was derelict and unlikely to be reopened, enabling the Great Western Railway to buy it for £2,000 and formally abandon it in 1904, both actions authorised by the
Great Western Railway Act 1904 (
4 Edw. 7. c. cxcvii). A branch of the
Bristol and North Somerset Railway line was built from Limpley Stoke to Camerton, where it joined the line from Hallatrow, opening in 1910. It carried passengers and freight, but the passenger service was withdrawn during the
First World War. This service was briefly reinstated in the 1920s for two years, but the line continued to carry freight, notably from the Camerton Colliery. This closed on 15 April 1950, and the line lasted for less than a year after that, closing on 15 February 1951. The line was used in the 1952
Ealing comedy film
The Titfield Thunderbolt, and was dismantled in 1958. ==Restoration==