London’s Lost Route To Basingstoke

£16

The Basingstoke Canal is an enigma. It was one of the first to be opened in Southern England and was intended to form part of a national waterway between the Thames and the English and Bristol Channels. Yet although links were sought with other navigations over a period of forty years, the canal never progressed beyond Basingstoke.

The book describes how this unusual waterway came to be built and how it fared. A story of great enterprise fraught with singular lack of success. We learn of a famous gynaeologist who saved the company from bankruptcy almost as soon as it was opened and how London’s chief magistrate sought to develop trade; of how the building of the London & Southampton railway and the military camp at Aldershot changed the pattern of traffic. There are details of canalside incidents learned from Samuel Attwood’s diary, of Victorians boating for pleasure and the tale of an unfortunate law-suit.

Finally there is the story of a succession of speculators, few more successful than the last; some endeavoured to revive trade, others to swindle gullible investors. At length the Court of Appeal reversed a High Court judgement and decided that the original company had been wrongly dissolved and that the new owners had neither the liability to carry out repairs nor the right to levy tolls. Today the waterway’s future remains uncertain but the Surrey and Hampshire Canal Society is making determined efforts to restore its naviga-bility.

LONDON’S LOST ROUTE TO BASINGSTOKE is a fully documented and lavishly illustrated account of one of Britain’s most beautiful waterways.