WINTER repairs to the Kennet & Avon Canal have been completed with £382,000 being spent on locks at Caen Hill Lock Flight in Devizes.
The 87-mile canal, which links London with the Bristol Channel, is more than two centuries old and requires year-round maintenance work by the charity. Larger-scale repairs take place between November and March when canals are quieter to minimise the impact on navigation.
This year’s programme also included repairs to the top lock gates at Crofton, while the bottom and top gates at Copse Lock and at Colthrop Lock have been repaired in Berkshire, where timber repairs were made to the bottom gates and grouting to the cills using divers.
Rob Coles, area operations manager for Kennet & Avon East, at Canal & River Trust, explained: “The repairs and maintenance we’ve carried out this winter are vital to protect the canal from the extreme weather events that are taking their toll on our historic network, and so we can continue to look after the canal beyond the two centuries it has already been in existence.”
Work is continuing at Sheffield Lock near Reading to replace wooden quoins, which will make it easier for boaters to use when navigating this part of the canal.
As part of the charity’s winter works, the trust hosted an open day at Caen Hill Locks in Devizes in February that was attended by more than 400 people and offered the unique opportunity to go down into a lock chamber to discover the work required to maintain an important structure on the scheduled ancient monument.
In total, repairs were planned at 159 sites on the canal network across England and Wales over the winter as part of Canal & River Trust’s commitment to the inland waterways.
