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Georgian
Timeline
The Kennet through Reading
The Seven Streams at Seven Bridges
The Kennet and Avon Canal
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The Kennet Navigation
At the same time as the Bath Road was improved, the thoughts of some people was turning to improving the transport of goods. The Kennet was only navigable to the centre of Reading. After several years of argument, the Kennet Navigation Act was passed by parliament in 1715. This allowed the River Kennet to be made navigable by boats up to Newbury, which could then become a transport centre. The work involved making (short) cuts which cut out the bends in the river, and adding locks which made the water deep enough for the boats to float. The locks were pound locks, with a pound of water between two sets of gates. The earliest locks, or flash locks, had only one set of gates and were very difficult to get though when moving upstream. All the locks along the Thames were of the flash type, just a gate set in a weir. Blakes Lock, which was part of the Thames Navigation although it was on the Kennet, was not converted into a pound lock until 1802.
Although the people of Newbury and along the Kennet Valley liked the idea of the Kennet Navigation, the people of Reading were against the idea. They thought that the Kennet Navigation would take trade away from Reading, and lead to Reading people losing their jobs. At one time the mayor of Reading lead a party of men towards Burghfield with the idea of destroying the work, but they were stopped before any damage was done.
Even when the Kennet Navigation was completed in 1723, boatmen taking their cargoes through Reading to Newbury were threatened, sometimes with death, by some of the people of Reading.
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