Willy's Rope Walk, Sea Farm, Ilminster

Willy's Ropewalk was established in 1832 by Thomas (or maybe John) Willy, although it may originally have been entirely open-air or located on a different site. 

By 1887 a building had been built at the south end of an open-air ropewalk.  The building, which was constructed from bricks and local stone, would have contained the turning and straining equipment. The rope walk was at least 100 metres long and extended over the Dowlish Brook, by means of a footbridge.  

Rope and twine were still being made on the site well into the mid 20th century by S. Metcalf, who took over from his uncle Frederick Willy during the Second World War.

Since I took the photo below in November 2015, the roof has been changed from a rounded top to one with straight pitches. A Victorian post box is built into the gable wall.  

Grid reference: ST 349 130.

Willy's Rope Walk, Sea Farm

Dawe's Twineworks, West Coker

Dawe's Twineworks in the village of West Coker is the only surviving Victorian twineworks with its original working machinery in Britain.  

The bedrock which underlies the West Coker area is Yeovil Sandstone and Lower Oolite Cornbrash, which is a crumbly limestone.  These rocks, which occur in an arc from Bridport to Castle Cary, create brashy, well-drained soils that are ideal for growing flax, hemp and corn.  Flax and hemp, which both have long fibres, are the raw materials for making yarn.  

Yarn is one thin strand of twisted fibre.  Yarn is used to make twine, rope and woven cloth.  Twine is made by twisting together between 2 and 7 strands of yarn.  Twine is less than 3mm in diameter. Rope is much thicker than twine and is made by twisting several bundles of twisted yarn or twine around a central core.  A twineworks produces lengths of twine that are twice the length of the walk.  A ropewalk can only produce lengths of rope the same length of the walk.

From 1830 until 1875 Israel Rendell, who lived at Millbrook House in West Coker, operated one narrow un-powered twine walk in the grounds of his house.  Israel Rendell died in 1878. William John Dawe had taken over the business in 1877 and used the existing facilities,  He died in 1894 and his brother Henry took over the business.  

Henry died in 1899 and his son Francis John Dawe took over. He had a purpose-built steam powered twineworks built in 1899.  The twineworks, which is 100 metres long, was built almost entirely of bolted together timbers.  It was roofed in double Roman clay tiles made by A.G. Pitts of Highbridge.  The east end of the walk, where the manager's office and drying area were located, had timber-boarded walls.  The twine walk has open sides. The only solid brick structure was the engine shed, which originally housed a steam engine.

Yarn was twisted into twine on the first floor.  It was then washed in water.  Animal guts, bones and skins were boiled up in an outside boiler to produce size.  The size stopped the twine from rotting.  It was applied to the moving twine by hand with a coconut mat sponge on the ground floor of the twine works.  The twine was polished with a horsehair rope and then circulated to dry it. 

Hanks of twine were then wound into balls and spools ready for sale. The hand powered balling machines were mainly operated by women, who could wind a ball of twine in less than a minute.

In the 1920s an oil engine replaced the steam engine.  In 1937 Francis John Dawe died and his son Henry Stuart Dawe took over the business.  He retired in 1968 and closed the twineworks.  After his death in 1983, the site was bought by a boat and general dealer called Dick Marks, who used it to store his stock.

In 2005 South Somerset District Council compulsorily purchased the twineworks to save it from dereliction.  Scaffolding was erected around the twineworks in 2007 to prevent it from collapsing and the Coker Rope & Sail Trust was formed.  The main walk was lifted and straightened out in 2010 and in 2013 the restoration process began.  In 2015 a 1927 Shanks diesel engine was lent to the twineworks, to replace the oil engine, which had been sold off in 1968.  

Funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund was secured in 2016.  A visitor centre was built in 2019 on the site of a derelict 1930s bungalow.  Dawe's Twineworks is now open to the public on the 4th Saturday of every month.  Enthusiastic volunteers offer guided tours and run the engine.

Twine treatment on the ground floor

Water and size troughs on the ground floor

Twine walk

This is probably the largest roof of Bridgwater Double Roman tiles anywhere in the world.

First floor: twine twisting machines

Spooling, braiding and balling machines

Engine house

Size boiler

Millbrook House

Monkey Brand Soap: a Crewkerne Connection?

On the west wall of the north aisle of St Bartholomew's Church in Crewkerne is a brass memorial to Adam Martin of Seaborough, who died in December 1678.  Seaborough is a small village located two miles to the south of Crewkerne.  

The memorial shows the coat of arms of Adam Martin.  At top of the coat of arms is a monkey looking at its reflection in a mirror.  This was supposed to have been the inspiration for a late 19th century advert for Monkey Brand scouring soap.  The memorial was moved from its original position in the south transept in 1937. 

Monkey Brand abrasive scouring soap, which was probably made from pumice, was first produced by Benjamin Brooke & Co Ltd in Philadelphia in the 1880s.  In 1899 William Lever of Lever Brothers bought the company and production was transferred to Port Sunlight near Liverpool.  It was sold in an orange paper package, which featured a monkey studying its reflection in a hand-held mirror.  I have not found any explanations as to how and why the Martin coat of arms came to be used to advertise Monkey Brand soap, so maybe it is just a coincidence.

Adam Martin's Memorial Brass

Monkey looking at its reflection in a mirror

West Somerset & Devon Shirt Factory, Abbey Street, Crewkerne

The West Somerset & Devon Shirt Company built a factory in Abbey Street, Crewkerne  c1872-1875.  They moved there from their original premises behind 11 Market Street.  There were two factory buildings with a house built in the 1840s sandwiched between them.  The house was designed and lived in by local architect John Patch.  It was later used as offices.

In 1953 the factories were taken over by Van Heusen.  More recently the factories were occupied by Bonsoir of London, which made pyjamas there until 2004.  The company is currently based elsewhere in the town.  The former factories were then converted into apartments.  The names of the blocks of flats acknowledge the former use of the buildings: The Shirt Factory, The Pyjama Factory and Bonsoir House.

The Shirt Factory

The Pyjama Factory

Plaque on Bonsoir House, 3 Abbey Street

Ice Houses

An ice house is a building used to store ice all year round. Ice was transported from lakes, ponds and rivers in winter by wheelbarrows or small carts.  It was packed into the ice house and then stamped on to form a solid mass. Sometimes salt was added to aid the freezing process.  When ice is packed together into a large mass, the relatively small surface area slows down rate of thawing.  It was then covered with a layer of straw to insulate it.  The ice would stay frozen for up to two years. Sometimes foods such as meat, fish, butter and fruit were stored in the icehouse.  

The most popular location for ice houses was the bank of a stream or pond and not too far from an estate road.  Almost all icehouses on country estates have an entrance, a passage, a vault and a drain (for meltwater, in the base of the vault). Most ice houses had roofs of either earth or thatch. Some ice houses had a chute in the roof above the centre of the vault to allow ice to be unloaded from above. Only a few ice houses were designed to be landscape features in the gardens of country houses.

Ice was stored in icehouses for use in the kitchens and dining rooms of stately homes. When ice was needed it was chipped out and taken to the house.  It was washed and placed in wine coolers and ice buckets to cool drinks and make iced desserts.  Fruit, fish and game were also laid on beds of ice to keep them fresh.

One of the first recorded ice houses in Britain was built in Greenwich, London in 1619. The idea for ice houses probably originated in France and Italy.  About 3,000 ice houses were eventually built in Britain and by the mid 19th century most country houses had at least one.  The majority of ice houses were built between 1750 and 1875. They were also built for commercial use, e.g. for packing and transporting fish or meat, for the manufacture of ice cream or for the sale of ice for domestic use.

From the 1840s crystal clear ice was imported into Britain from the USA, especially from Wenham Lake near Boston in Massachusetts, and later from Norway.  Ice houses continued to be used until the late 19th century when ice making machines and refrigerators became available.

There are very few icehouses in Somerset which are accessible to the public.  Montacute and Prior Park, which are both owned by the National Trust, have ice houses.  You can see the mound of the East Coker icehouse from a public footpath that runs close by. Nynehead Court has a very large ice house and the gardens are open to the public on certain days of the week but you need to book your visit in advance. There is an icehouse in a wood on the Ashton Court estate.

Montacute icehouse was built in the late 18th or early 19th century.  It has a Latin inscription over the door: "in superet Glacies frondeat atque Nives", which means "freshness springs from the ice and snow." It is situated halfway between the kitchens and the ponds in the park.

Entrance to Montacute Ice House

Looking down in to Montacute Ice House

Entrance to Montacute Ice House from inside

Diagram showing a cross-section of Montacute Ice House

Cut-away diagram of Montacute Ice House

East Coker Ice House

Entrance to Nynehead Court Ice House

Nynehead Court Ice House

The ice house at Nynehead Court was built in 1803.  It is made of brick and has an iron drain cover at the base.  There appears to have once been an entrance on the north side, but the current entrance way is on the south side.  It would probably have had 2 or 3 doors originally to act as insulation between the warmer air outside and the cool air inside the ice house, but it currently has none.  The ice house was filled with rubbish at some point after the 1950s, but it was emptied out and restored in 1995 by Taunton Deane Borough Council.

Prior Park, Bath

The Prior Park ice house is located half a mile downhill from the mansion it served, but close to the lakes, from which the ice was collected.  It was built c1755-60 for Ralph Allen.  He had the park laid out 1734-1740 and the mansion was built for him 1733-1750.  The external walls were made using Bath stone and the inside was lined with red bricks. During the Second World War it was used as a base by a top secret auxiliary unit of men, who would have led the resistance in the event of a German invasion. They made changes to the ice house, including digging an escape tunnel, which was accessed via a trap door and a wooden ladder. They also inserted timber beams into the internal walls of the chamber, so that they could create a second storey.

Further reading: 

Icehouses: Tim Buxbaum, Shire Publications, 1988

The Brick and Tile Industry in Bridgwater

The first commercial brickyards were set up in Bridgwater at the end of the 17th century.  Local clay was used.  The clay at Chilton Trinity was particularly good for making tiles. By 1850 there were 16 brickyards along both sides of the River Parrett and the brick and tile industry was the biggest employer in the town.  The largest companies were Sealys, Colthurst & Symons, Barham Brothers and John Browne/Somerset Trading Company.

James Brydges, the 1st Duke of Chandos (1673-1744), acquired the manor and lordship of Bridgwater in 1721. From 1721 until c1735 he attempted unsuccessfully to establish Bridgwater as a major industrial centre. He built the Georgian houses on Castle Street and set up a distillery and a soap factory.  He also established a glassworks with John Payne and a Bristol glassmaker called Prowse.  A 33 metre high kiln or cone was built for it in 1725 from locally made bricks.  Bottles and window glass were produced.  However, it only functioned as a glass kiln until 1733, as it wasn't profitable.  James Brydges lost money on all his Bridgwater projects.

The glass cone was then converted to a pottery kiln and used to fire bricks and tiles.  It continued to be used as a pottery kiln until 1939.  In about 1870 a railway siding was built to connect the pottery with the railway line to the docks.

The top part of the cone was demolished in 1943 but the lower section is still in situ at the junction of Northgate and Valetta Place and can be visited at any time.  The site was excavated 1975-76 and consolidated in 1985

In 1820 it was discovered that silt from the River Parrett in Bridgwater could be used to make scouring bricks.  These became known as Bath Bricks because after firing they were turned a similar colour to Bath stone.  Bath Bricks were patented by John Browne in 1827 and at its height millions of them were produced each year by 10 different Bridgwater companies and exported around the world.  They were gradually replaced in the early 20th century by kitchen scourers like Vim.

Alfred Garratt Barham started up a cement company in Bridgwater in 1858.  He was joined shortly after by his brother Francis Forster and the company became known as Barham Brothers. At first they made cement, hydraulic lime and plaster of Paris.  They later made clay products for the building trade: mainly bricks, tiles, ornamental gable ends and chimney pots.  Barham Brothers closed down in 1965.

Somerset Brick and Tile Museum is located in East Quay, Bridgwater. It is free to visit but is currently only open on Tuesdays.  You can see the inside and outside of Barham Brothers last remaining kiln, which is now a scheduled ancient monument. The rest of the museum is in a former plain tile drying shed.

Brick and Tile Museum

Brick and Tile Museum

Poster showing Barham Brothers wares

Plan of the Barham Brothers site in Bridgwater

Workers at the entrance to the kiln

Inside the kiln

Remains of Chandos Glass Cone

Chandos Glass Cone

Chandos Glass Cone

Stoates Mill, Watchet

Stoates Mill was built in Anchor Street in Watchet in 1832 as a replacement for Little Silver Mill, which was further upstream.  It was leased by brothers William and Thomas Stoate.  It expanded in the mid-19th century and eventually had ten pairs of water-powered grinding stones.  Grain was imported via the port of Watchet and after milling the flour and bran were exported mainly to South Wales.  

By 1877 Thomas Stoate had left the business to become a grain merchant.  William was joined in the business by his sons William, John and James.  A water turbine and steam engine were added in 1885.  In 1903 a new turbine was installed.  In 1911 a fire damaged most of the mill and the company moved their business to Temple Back Bristol.  Stoate & Sons is still in business (now at Shaftesbury 'in Dorset), with the great-great-great grandson of the first William Stoate now running the business.

In 1916 the derelict mill was acquired by the Exmoor Paper and Bag Company, who bought the paper bag plant that had been operating at the nearby Wansbrough Mill.  Water power was used at the mill until 1927 when a Gilkes Vortex turbine was installed.  This was manufactured by Gilbert Gilkes of Kendal in Cumbria.  It was rated at 45 HP and turned at 200 rpm to drive the electrical generator, which powered the works.

The Exmoor Paper and Bag Company used the mill until 1977.  The mill buildings were then used by various companies, including Watchet Products Fancy Goods Limited, which was founded in 1978. It made melamine products there but closed down in 1991.  The mill buildings were sold on a couple of times but gradually fell into a state of disrepair.  Planning permission for conversion of the mill buildings to residential use was granted in 2013 and building work began in 2016.  It was completed in 2018.

Preserved Gilkes Vortex Turbine

Stoates Mill in 2022

Stoates Mill, 2022

Stoates Mill, 2022

Nailsea Glassworks

John Robert Lucas was born in 1754. After his father Robert Lucas died in 1774, he took over his beer and cider works in Bristol and his shares in a glass making business in Limekiln Lane, Bristol.  In 1781 John Robert married Anna Adams and they had a son and two daughters.   In 1787 he leased a glassworks at Stanton Wick. 

John Robert Lucas established a glass works at Nailsea in 1788.  He chose Nailsea as the site for his new glassworks because of the abundance of coal produced by the mines around the town and local supplies of sand and limestone.  He may also have been influenced by plans for the Grand Western Canal, which would have linked the English and Bristol Channels with a branch to Nailsea.  However only the section from Tiverton to Taunton was ever built.   

Lucas’s company was called Nailsea Crown Glass and Glass Bottle Manufacturers.  Initially one cone shaped kiln and a furnace were built at Nailsea.  A second glass furnace was built there in 1790.  In 1793 John Robert Lucas went into partnership with William Chance, Edward Homer and William Coathupe.  In 1788 William Chance had married John Robert’s sister Sarah and Edward Homer had married John Robert’s sister Mary.

In addition to window glass and bottles, the Nailsea Glassworks also produced domestic ware and novelty items such as flasks, rolling pins, pipes, jugs and walking sticks, which were sometimes decorated with flecks, loops or bands of white or coloured enamel.  Most of these items were produced by workers at the end of their shifts using leftover pieces of glass.

In 1811 William and Sarah Chance’s son, Robert Lucas Chance, took over the management of the Nailsea works and married his cousin Louisa, the daughter of Mary and Edward Homer.  In 1812 he persuaded John Hartley, the leading crown glass expert in the country, to come and work at Nailsea.

The partnership of Lucas, Chance, Homer and Coathupe lasted until 1821 when William Chance sold all of his shares and Edward Homer sold part of his to William Coathupe.  Edward Homer’s son James Edward Homer was taken into the partnership at this time and the company traded as Lucas, Coathupe and Homer. 

John Robert Lucas died in 1828 and was buried at Backwell. Most of his estate passed to his grandsons John Rodbard Bean and Henry Lucas Bean.

The New House Cone was built at Nailsea c1828.  Experienced sheet glass blowers were recruited from France and Belgium from the 1830s, due a shortage of skilled British glass blowers. By 1835 Nailsea was the fourth largest glassworks in Britain.  Bottle making ceased at Nailsea in the 1830s in favour of plate, crown and sheet window glass.

In 1835 a partnership called Lucas, Coathupes, Homer and Cliffe was formed to run the business. In 1844 the company became Coathupes & Co with Charles and Oliver Coathupe, John and Henry Bean and James Edward Homer as shareholders. In the 1840s a new cone known as the Lilly or Lily Cone was built.

In 1848 Charles Coathupe retired and Oliver Coathupe became manager at the Nailsea works.  Over the next 25 years there were various changes in the partnership and shareholdings.  In 1861 the Nailsea works were closed for a while and the following year they were leased to Samuel Bowen, a glass merchant from West Bromwich, and John Powis of London.  They traded as Nailsea Glass Company and made patented ventilating glass, cut glass and coloured glass for stained glass windows.  Samuel Bowen became bankrupt in 1869 and he and Powis surrendered their lease.  In 1870 the Nailsea works were sold to Chance Bros of Smethwick, together with a coal mine on the same site.

Glass production ceased at Nailsea in 1873, due to competition from cheap Belgian imports and the decline in production from the Nailsea Coalfield, and the works were closed in 1874.  The New House Cone was demolished in 1905.  Some of the rubble from it was supposedly used to build the extension to the runway at Filton in the late 1940s.

Extensive archaeological excavations began on the glassworks site in 1983 and continued for several years.  In 2002 a supermarket was built on part of the site.  The only surviving building is one which housed the French kilns, and gas-fired furnaces.  This was later converted into the Royal Oak Garage. 

A collection of Nailsea Glass items can be seen at the National Trust’s Clevedon Court.  However much of what is today described as Nailsea Glass was not made at Nailsea but was made in the same style elsewhere in England e.g. Stourbridge.

Glassworks Cauldron, High Street, Nailsea

This would have been filled with cold water into which surplus molten glass would have been ladled.  Once the glass had cooled and solidified it was broken up and used to speed up the melt of the next batch of sand, limestone and soda.

The Glassblower Sculpture, High Street, Nailsea

This was sculpted by Vanessa Marston and unveiled in 2008

Former Glassworks building, later the Royal Oak Garage, High Street, Nailsea

Two glazed ceramic tile panels illustrating the glassworks and its various manufacturing processes. The panels were designed and produced by Ned Heywood of the Workshop Gallery in Chepstow.  They incorporate fragments of glass excavated from the site.  They are on display on the outside wall of Tesco’s Supermarket.

Drawing showing the layout of Nailsea Glassworks c1873

The Nailsea Coalfield

Nailsea hides its coal mining heritage well.  Most visitors to the town are unlikely to notice the few remaining engine and winding houses or spoil heaps.

The Nailsea Coalfield is an outlying section of the much larger Somerset and Bristol Coalfield. Coal seams in the Nailsea area, which are sandwiched between layers of pennant sandstone, are located in an arc around the north and east of the town.  The arc starts in the North Street/Union Street area of the town.  It then runs parallel to Silver Street and High Street and continues on through Nailsea Park, Trendlewood and down to Backwell Common and the railway station.  The coal measures are deepest in the centre of the arc.  The deepest mine was Golden Valley at around 620 feet deep.

Coal mining in Nailsea started in the early 16th century when it is recorded that coal was transported from Nailsea to Yatton to be burnt in a limekiln. At first the coal was only mined where it outcropped near the surface but by the mid-18th century deep pit mining had commenced.  There were 10 workable coal seams.  Some of them were up to 3 feet 6 inches thick but others were only 18 inches thick and it was barely viable to mine these thinner seams.  

Some of the Nailsea coal mines were privately owned but many of them were run by, or associated with, one company – White & Co.  This company started in 1786 as a 3 man partnership between Isaac White, Peter Cox and Joseph Whitchurch.  In 1788 Bristol glassmaker John Robert Lucas bought a share in the partnership and set up a glassworks in Nailsea, which provided a market for the coal. 

Power for winding in the mines was initially provided by horses.  Steam pumping engines were introduced in the mid-18th century.  This enabled the mining of coal measures, which couldn’t previously be exploited due to flooding.  Horses continued to be used for winding purposes until well into the 19th century.  Ponies (and young boys) were also employed below ground to haul sleds and waggons containing coal.

Tramways were built to link up some of the collieries (Youngwood/Whiteoak and Grace’s/West End) with the main railway line, which reached Nailsea in the 1840s.

Most of the coal produced was sold locally to heat houses and churches in the town and surrounding villages, to fire local lime kilns, to power the Nailsea Glassworks and in the pits themselves to fire the steam engines.

Output from the Nailsea Coalfield reached its peak in the 1850s.  In the 1841 Census there were 149 people in Nailsea and Backwell who were directly connected with coal production.  This number rose to 193 in 1851, then fell to 170 in 1861 and 70 in 1871.  It rose to 103 in 1881 but by 1891 only 16 people were employed producing coal.   Coal mines in the Nailsea area started to decline in the 1860s due to competition from larger mines in South Wales and the North of England, where the coal was cheaper and easier to extract.  Nailsea Glassworks closed in 1873 and the last Nailsea coal mine (Whiteoak) closed in 1882.

Several examples of winding and pumping houses remain, three as ruins and two as conversions into dwellings. The most obvious remains are the small winding tower in Millennium Park, which was once part of the Old Glasshouse Pit. The Middle Engine/Elms Pit complex in the Cherington Road/Oaksey Grove area of Golden Valley is now a scheduled monument. The engine house from Farler’s Pit survives in the garden of a private house on the corner of Queens Road and Station Road.  In North Lane an engine house has been converted into a cottage and Tall Cottage in Union Street was possibly formerly an engine house.

The remains of horse whims survive at Old Glasshouse Pit and Middle Engine Pit.  Spoil heaps remain from Golden Valley, Buckland’s Batch/Goddins, East End, Backwell Common and Youngs Pits.

Former Engine House on North Street, now converted to a private house

Spoil heap on Backwell Common

Remains of Old Glasshouse Pit's horse whim in Millennium Park

The ruined winding tower of Old Glasshouse Pit in Millennium Park

Spoil heap from Youngs Pit in Nailsea Park

The Chard Canal

The idea of building a ship canal to link the English Channel to the Bristol Channel and thus cut out the long sea journey around Lands End, was first proposed in 1769.  Further schemes were promoted in 1794, 1809 and 1824.  The exact routes varied but all started in the Seaton/Beer area and used the river valleys of the Axe, Isle or Tone and the Parrett and all crossed the Blackdown Hills at Chard.  Several surveys were completed but the costs of all of them were prohibitively high.

By the early 1800s the expanding town of Chard had an increasing need for a cheap method of transport to convey coal, building materials and food to the town and to carry woollen and lace textiles made in the town to markets elsewhere in England.  By the 1830s James Green, who was Devon's Surveyor of Bridges, had developed a type of canal that used short tub-boats, which could be raised and lowered using boat lifts or inclined planes.

In 1827 The Bridgwater and Taunton Canal opened.  In 1830 a group of people from Chard approached James Green with a proposal for a feeder canal linked to the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal but the canal's committee were not interested at this point.  However in 1833 a scheme was proposed to improve the navigation of the River Parrett to a point upstream of Langport, with a canal coming off it and leading to Ilminster and Chard.  This would have meant a loss of trade on the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal, so James Green was commissioned to survey a route for a canal from the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal at Creech St Michael to Chard via Ilminster.  His proposals were accepted but the engineer chosen for the construction was 22 year old Sydney Hall.  

The Chard Canal was mainly financed by 5 wealthy men from Bristol, who had also invested in the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal.  Acts of Parliament, which allowed the construction of the Chard Canal, were passed in 1834, 1840 and 1841.  Work on the canal began at Wrantage in 1835.  Construction of the Chard Reservoir, which was the main source of water for the canal, began in 1839.  The canal was officially opened between Creech St Michael and Ilminster or 15th July 1841.  The last section to be completed was the Chard Common Incline, which was opened on 24th May 1842.  The original estimate of the cost of construction was £57,000 but the eventual cost was about £140,000

The Chard Canal was 13.5 miles long and had 5 sections at different levels, which were linked by 4 inclined planes at Chard Common (86 feet), Ilminster (82 feet), Wrantage (27 feet) and Thornfalcon (28 feet).  There was a lock at Dowlish Ford, 4 aqueducts and three tunnels - at Herne Hill (300 yards long), Crimson Hill (2000 yards long) and Lillesdon (200 yards long).  The original proposal was to dig a deep cutting across one side of Herne Hill, with an aqueduct over the Chard to Ilminster turnpike road but this was later changed to a tunnel.  The canal was 23 feet wide and 3 feet deep in most places but some parts may have been as narrow as 12 feet wide.  The tub boats were pulled by horses.

At first trade on the canal was good.  Coal from South Wales carried by the Chard Canal was then taken by road to local villages and to towns as far away as Lyme Regis, and Sidmouth. The amount of goods transported soon began to decrease, due to competition from railways.  The canal never made a profit and in the 1850s there were several unsuccessful attempts to convert the canal into a railway.  The Bristol and Exeter Railway purchased the Chard Canal for £5,945, in order to prevent the London and South Western Railway from buying it and converting it into a railway.  The Bristol and Exeter Railway closed the Chard Canal some time between 1866 and 1868.

Wildlife pond where the Chard Canal once met the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal at Creech St Michael

Pillbox in a former inn at the junction of the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal and the Chard Canal in Creech St Michael

Diagram showing the inclined planes and tunnels on the Chard Canal

Map of the Chard Canal

Bridgwater and Taunton Canal at Creech St Michael

 Chard Canal aqueduct over the River Tone at Creech St Michael

This aqueduct (grid reference ST 271 254) can be viewed from a public footpath. Nothing now remains of another aqueduct, which Brunel built nearby to carry the Chard Canal over the railway line.

Remains of the Chard Canal aqueduct at Wrantage

 This once carried the canal over a small stream.  Grid reference: ST 305 228

Aqueduct at Wrantage

Pillar of the Chard Canal Aqueduct at Wrantage

Remains of the aqueduct, which once carried the Chard Canal over the A378 at Wrantage

Entrance to the Crimson Hill tunnel

Chard Canal at Ilminster

Chard Reservoir

Further reading:

The Chard Canal by Chard History Group, published in 1972