Celebrating Saul Junction
Celebrating Saul Junction
by: Hugh C-J
Shortly before the activities of Canal Trust volunteers were halted by the spread of the Coronavirus, some of us attended an excellent talk by Tony Conder to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the work of the original navvies who linked the newly formed Gloucester & Berkeley Canal to the earlier Stroudwater Canal at Saul Junction.
This unique intersection of two independent canals was carried out over the weekend of the 27 February 1820, with Thomas Telford attending in his capacity as consulting engineer to the Government agency that was providing finance. That evening, the Gloucester company’s engineer John Woodhouse reported to the Stroudwater Committee ‘We completed the culvert and drove the piles on Saturday and passed the empty vessels down and shall pass all the vessels up tomorrow that come.’ Although preliminary work had been done towards building a lock to raise the level of the Stroudwater to suit the planned level of the Gloucester Canal, this initial junction was made at the original level of the Stroudwater, with the Gloucester Canal well below its planned level and only open from Gloucester to the Cambridge Arm. It took seven more years to complete the southern end of the Gloucester Canal and to form the junction that we know today.
As a further celebration of this historic anniversary, a boat festival is being planned at Saul Junction in July. Let us hope that the Coronavirus will have dissipated by then.
