Built : 1794
The Basingstoke Canal is a British Canal, built to connect Basingstoke with the River Thames at Weybridge via the Wey Navigation.
From Basingstoke, the canal passes through or near Odiham, Fleet, Aldershot, Mytchett, Brookwood, and Woking. Its eastern end is at Byfleet, where it connects to the Wey Navigation. This, in turn, leads to the River Thames at Weybridge. Its intended purpose was to allow boats to travel from the docks in East London to Basingstoke.
After many years of neglect and dereliction, the canal has been restored and is once again a fully navigable waterway from the River Wey as far as the Greywell Tunnel.
The canal was conceived as a way to stimulate agricultural development in Hampshire. Following a Parliamentary Bill in 1778, construction began in that same year and was completed on 4th September 1794. One of the main cargoes carried from Basingstoke was timber.
The canal was never a commercial success and fell into disuse even before the construction of the London and South Western Railway, which runs parallel to the canal along much of its length. Commercial use ended in 1910 but low-level use of the canal continued.
In 1913 Mr A.J.Harmsworth tried to navigate the canal in a boat called Basingstoke. The journey was motivated by a desire to keep the canal open since the Canal Act of 1778 specified that if the canal was not used for 5 years then the land the canal was built on would be returned to the original owners. It is thought that it proved impossible to navigate the entire canal but despite this the canal was not abandoned.
During World War I the Royal Engineers took over the running of the canal and used it to transport supplies from Woolwich. The canal was also used to train soldiers in boat handling.
Mr A.J.Harmsworth later purchased the canal (in 1922) and ran a number of boats on it for a mixture of limited commercial carrying and pleasure cruising. The canal was sold upon his death in 1947 and by 1950 was in the hands of the New Basingstoke Canal Co Ltd. This company did not maintain the canal and by the mid-'60s it was essentially derelict.
A notable feature of the canal is the large number of concrete bunkers known as pillboxes still visible along its length; these were built during World War II as part of the GHQ Line to defend against an expected German invasion.
Odiham Castle is situated at the Greywell (Basingstoke) end of the canal.
The Greywell Tunnel (now disused), at 1230 yards (112 metres) long, was the 12th longest canal tunnel in Great Britain.
