The Kennet River Navigation, commencing from its junction with the Kennet and Avon Canal at Newbury, to its fall into the Thames a mile and a half below Reading, is twenty miles in length. Its elevation at the highest point is 264½ feet above the level of the sea. From Newbury to the High Bridge at Reading, in a distance of eighteen miles and a half, there are twenty locks, with a fall of 126 feet; this constitutes the River Kennet Navigation. These eighteen miles and a half may now be reckoned as a continuation of the Kennet and Avon Canal,
From Reading to the Thames, about a mile and a half, the river is under the control of the Thames Commissioners, who have made a cut and lock on this part. The breadth of the water in the river is between 60 and 70 feet; on the cuts, 54 feet; the average depth about 5 feet. The locks are 120 feet long, by 19 feet broad, thus allowing the passage of vessels 109 feet long and 17 wide, drawing 4 feet water. In its course it passes Sandleford Priory, Padworth House and White Knights.
Its utility for the transit of corn and other agricultural produce, coals and various articles of home consumption is very great, particularly when considered in conjunction with the various canals of which it forms a part. The turf and peat pits between Reading and Newbury afford the opportunity of producing an abundance of peat ashes, which, by means of this navigation, is distributed over a large district of country, and found highly beneficial for manure.
KENSINGTON CANAL.
5 George IV. Cap. 65, Royal Assent 28th May, 1824.
7 George IV. Cap. 96, Royal Assent 26th May, 1826.
THE first act granted for the purposes of this work was obtained in 1824, and bears for title, An Act for widening, deepening, enlarging and making navigable a certain Creek called Counter's Creek, from or near Counter's Bridge, on the Road from London to Hammersmith, to the River Thames in the county of Middlesex, and for maintaining the same. By the preamble of this act it is stated, that the town and parish of St. Mary Abbot's Kensington,
