INDUSTRIES with the aid of other benefactors of the town, built the bridges of Burford and Culhamford and a fine causeway connecting them, making Abingdon a considerable thoroughfare for the traffic of merchandise to Cirencester and the west. These bridges also benefited the ancient town of Faringdon, the western traffic being diverted and made to pass through it. In the eighteenth century there was a great movement for the improvement of inland navigation by the means of canals, and a very complete system was inaugurated, which opened many markets and wrought many changes in the county. The Kennet was rendered navigable from Newbury to Reading by certain projectors under powers given them by Parliament. 1 Much opposition was at first encountered on the part of the cor- poration of Reading, the proprietors of water- works, mills and wharfs. But the scheme was at length accomplished, and Mr. John Hore was the engineer who also made the Kennet and Avon Canal which passes through Hunger- ford. Between Reading and Newbury he constructed twenty locks, and a wharf was made at Aldermaston. The trade of both Reading and Newbury was greatly increased by this means of communication with the west. ' The wharf at Newbury became the dep6t of a very extensive inland carrying trade to London and all parts of the west of England, and was provided with a bason or wet-dock, where ten of the largest barges might load or unload with the greatest facility, which gave quite a maritime and commercial appearance to the place, and bespoke the extent of its trade.' 2 Till a late period Reading was very deficient in the possession of large and convenient wharfs, without which the advantages arising from good water-ways are considerably decreased in value. There were few places for landing goods, except such as belonged to the Crown- lands, and for the use of them, being let to an under-tenant, a heavy toll was demanded. There was at one time a ' common landing place ' near High Bridge, but the Corporation acquired the right of buying wharfage dues. A commodious wharf and dock were however completed in i828, 3 and were of much advantage to the trade of the town. In the north of the county an important engineering work greatly improved the means
- Statute I Geo. I. cap. 24, 7 Geo. I. cap. 28
and 3 George II. cap. 25. Money, Hist, of New- bury, p. 367. 2 Ibid. p. 368, andMavor, Agriculture of Berks, p. 440. 3 Doran, Hist, of Reading, p. 236, of traffic. In 1730 a canal was formed by Act of Parliament from Framilode on the Severn to Walbridge near Stroud, and called the Stroudwater Canal. In 1789 this canal was connected with the Thames and made to pass through Sapperton to Lechlade, and thus to connect the great river with the Severn. Another canal, the Wilts and Berks, com- menced in 1793 under the direction of Mr. Whitworth, runs from Abingdon past Wan- tage to Semington in Wilts, where it joins the Kennet and Avon Canal. No less important to Berkshire was the Oxfordshire Canal, which connects London, Reading and Windsor with Birmingham and the Midlands, constructed in 1790. This water-way brought Berkshire into touch with one of the great manufactur- ing centres of England, and was especially valuable in providing a much cheaper supply of coal. Previous to its construction all the coal supply came from London. At the end of the eighteenth century we see the county provided with an admirable system of water communication, the construction of which showed much industrial enterprise and en- tailed the expenditure of vast sums of money. The extraordinary advance of science and the introduction of railways and steam power were destined to produce startling changes in the near future. We may note here that Wantage has the distinction of being the first place in England where a steam tramway has been made. This was constructed to connect the town with Wantage Road Station on the Great Western Railway, a distance of about two miles. An Act of Parliament was obtained in 1874 and a company formed ; at first only horse power was used, but two years later steam traction was introduced : one of the results was the revolution of the coal trade of the town, the supply of which for"nearly a century had been dependent upon the canal, the coal being brought from the Somerset and Gloucester- shire coalfields. The new steam tramway enabled the townspeople to receive trucks from all parts of the Midlands. 4 Before we turn over a new page of the industrial history of Berkshire it may be well to record the rise, progress and decay of certain trades which once flourished in the county, and to note the kind of goods which were transported along their great water-ways. The extensive range of down-land on the chalk hills furnishes excellent pasturage for sheep, which formerly laid the foundations of the pre-eminence of Berkshire as a rich cloth- making county. Abingdon, Reading and 377 Gibbons, ffantage, Past and Present, p. 98. 48
