010-brompton-cemetery-15c and Kensington Canal by William Cowen

The Kensington Canal was a

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface f ...

, about two miles long, opened in 1828 in London from the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...

on the parish boundary between Chelsea and

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandswor ...

, along the line of

Counter's Creek Counter's Creek, ending in Chelsea Creek, the lowest part of which still exists, was a stream that flowed from Kensal Green, by North Kensington and flowed south into the River Thames on the Tideway at Sands End, Fulham. Its remaining open water ...

, to a basin near Warwick Road in

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Garden ...

. It had one lock near the Kensington Basin and wharves on the Fulham side, south of

Lillie bridge The Lillie Bridge Grounds was a sports ground on the Fulham side of West Brompton, London. It opened in 1866, coinciding with the opening of West Brompton station. It was named after the local landowner, Sir John Scott Lillie (1790–1868) a ...

. It was not commercially successful, and was purchased by a railway company, which laid a line along the route of the canal on the Fulham side. A second railway line followed in the filled-in littoral of the canal, thus one became London Underground's Wimbledon branch and the other, the West London Line.

Origins

was a minor tributary of the Thames running south from Kensal Green to join the main river west of Battersea Bridge. Lord Kensington, William Edwardes, seeing the success of the Regent's Canal, asked his surveyor William Cutbush in 1822 to draw up plans to convert the creek into a canal, with the object of bringing goods and minerals from the London docks to the Kensington area, then a rural district isolated from London. After some modifications, Cutbush's plan obtained Parliamentary sanction in 1824, and the Kensington Canal Company was incorporated in that year. William Edwardes and a group of his friends, including Sir John Scott Lillie, the second largest shareholder after Edwardes, were the proprietors; the cost of construction had been estimated as £7,969. The share capital of the company was £10,000 in one hundred shares of £100 each,The excess of capital over the construction cost was presumably for any necessary land acquisition and for "working capital", the purchase of ancillary equipment, etc and they had powers to raise an additional £5,000 if necessary. However this was a gross under-estimate, and John Rennie estimated that more than £34,000 would be needed to complete the work properly, including the rebuilding of Stamford Bridge.Deposited plans for the Kensington Canal, House of Lords Records Office, quoted in British History Online Rennie's nominee, Thomas Hollinsworth, was brought in as surveyor to the Canal Company.British History Online, ''The Kensington Canal, railways and related developments'', The Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust, online a

/ref> In May 1826 the Company obtained powers by another Act to raise a further £30,000. Notwithstanding this quadrupling of the anticipated cost of construction, the proprietors still entertained the notion of extending the canal northward to connect with the

Grand Junction Canal The Grand Junction Canal is a canal in England from Braunston in Northamptonshire to the River Thames at Brentford, with a number of branches. The mainline was built between 1793 and 1805, to improve the route from the Midlands to London, b ...

at Paddington, involving eleven locks, was still under consideration. The successful tenderer appears to have been Robert Tuck, probably in partnership with John Dowley. Work started in the same year, but was delayed by the bankruptcy of the contractor, Robert Tuck, and it was not opened until 12 August 1828.H V Borley and R W Kidner, ''The West London Railway and the W.L.E.R.'', The Oakwood Press, Lingfield, undated

Opening

After considerable difficulty in the construction, the canal finally opened on 12 August 1828. The Times newspaper reported that "Witnessed by an immense number of persons the Right Hon. Lord Kensington and a number of friends to the undertaking, embarked in a stately barge at Battersea-bridge and proceeded up the canal ... The whole party entered the basin amidst the cheers of the multitudes assembled, the band on board playing 'God Save the King'. This was followed in the evening by a 'sumptuous dinner' with Lord Kensington in the chair and by his Lordship's command, and chiefly at his expense, a substantial dinner with a butt of porter was also given to about 200 of the workpeople."The Times (newspaper), London, 13 August 1828, page 3. The ''Annual Register'' described the canal as well as reporting the opening:

Opening of the Kensington Canal.—This ceremony, which had been reserved for the anniversary of his majesty's birth, was performed by Lord Kensington, and a number of friends to the undertaking, embarking in a barge at Battersea-bridge, and proceeding up the canal, accompanied by a number of craft loaded with timber, coals, sand &c., the first fruits of the speculation. The canal runs from the Thames, near Battersea-bridge, directly North two miles and a quarter,The direction of the canal was somewhat to the west of north, and its length must have been less than two miles terminating close to the great Western road, half a mile distant from Kensington Palace: it is one hundred feet broad, and capable of affording passage for craft of one hundred tons burden; the basin is four hundred feet long by two hundred broad, and is situated in the most thriving and healthy part of the town. This canal, which is the only water conveyance to Kensington, has been completed at the expense of about 40,000 l., �40,000and its income from wharfs, tonnage &c. is calculated at about 2,500 l. �2,500per annum.''The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics and Literature of the Year 1828'', London, 1829

The Ordnance Survey plan made in 1850 confirms these features: there was a basin ("Kensington Canal Basin") near Kensington Road, and a lock immediately south of that location. The canal ran more or less straight in a south-south-easterly direction, turning east at the confluence to the River Thames at Chelsea Creek. There was a small basin and steps to street level immediately south of Richmond Road (now Lillie Road).''Ordnance Survey Plan'', 1:5,280, published in 1850 Traffic soon proved to be very limited, and in the mid-1830s Lord Holland described the canal as a total failure. Indeed, it was such a fiasco that it became a regular feature of derision in the Punch magazine. The River Thames is tidal at the point where the canal joined it, so the canal was also tidal up to the lock near Kensington. The tidal flow brought silt into the canal and the feed from Counter's Creek was inadequate to clear it, so that problems were soon experienced with obstruction to the passage of vessels. More seriously, the times of day when vessels could navigate the canal were extremely short and constantly changing.

Rescued by a railway

The proprietors of the canal had had ideas of extending it further north to join the Grand Junction Canal,Later to be a constituent of the Grand Union Canal but the cost of building the original section hugely exceeded the anticipated cost, and extension was out of the question. In the mid-1830s railways were being projected, in particular the

London and Birmingham Railway The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, in operation from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR). The railway line which the company opened in 1838, betw ...

and the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

; both of these lines were to pass a little to the north of Kensington (at Willesden) and their London terminals were to be on the north-west fringe of London. Attention was given to gaining access for goods and minerals to and from the London docks, and proposals were developed for a railway branch to the canal; trans-shipping there to or from river lighters would give the desired connection. A railway company was floated, called the Bristol, Birmingham and Thames Junction Railway, and when it was incorporated in 1836 it purchased the canal. The purchase price was £36,000, of which £10,000 was to be paid in cash and the remainder in shares in the new company.''Act of Incorporation of the BB&TJ Railway'', quoted in British History Online The grandiose name of the railway was altered to the "

West London Railway The West London Railway was conceived to link the London and Birmingham Railway and the Great Western Railway with the Kensington Basin of the Kensington Canal, enabling access to and from London docks for the carriage of goods. It opened in 18 ...

", and it built a short railway line from Willesden, joining with the main line railways there, to the canal basin. The railway line was leased to the London and Birmingham Railway in 1846, but it continued to own the canal; the Kensington Canal Company was wound up in the same year. The railway and canal combination was utterly unsuccessful, and the hoped-for traffic, involving trans-shipment at Kensington, never appeared. The main line railways—the Great Western and the

London and North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom. In 1923, it became a constituent of the Lo ...

(as successor to the London and Birmingham Railway) – needed a rail connection to lines south of the Thames, and in 1859 an authorising Act of Parliament gave authority to a joint venture of several railway companies to extend the railway south from Kensington, converting the canal to a railway. At the southern end the railway diverged a little to the west of the canal, and crossed the Thames on a large bridge.H P White, ''London Railway History'', David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1971, This left a short stub of the original waterway in existence, from the Thames almost to Stamford Bridge: it served flour mills and the Imperial Gas Works, until traffic ceased in 1967. Construction of the railway built over the remainder of the canal, and the later railway developments in Earls Court obliterated the canal. Its original course can best be understood by considering the route of the present-day West London Line from the Thames to Kensington (Olympia) station.

Notes

References

External links

The Kensington Canal, railways and related developments
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Survey of London The Survey of London is a research project to produce a comprehensive architectural survey of central London and its suburbs, or the area formerly administered by the London County Council. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Robert Ashbee, an A ...