page_title: Wilts & Berks Canal
section_title: Abandonment
hierarchical_section_title: Wilts & Berks Canal / Abandonment
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographer: User:Ballista Talk
context_page_description: The Wilts & Berks Canal is a canal in the historic counties of Wiltshire and Berkshire, England, linking the Kennet and Avon Canal at Semington, near Melksham, to the River Thames at Abingdon. The North Wilts Canal merged with it to become a branch to the Thames and Severn Canal at Latton near Cricklade. Among professional trades boatmen, the canal was nicknamed the Ippey Cut, possibly short for Chippenham.
  The 52-mile canal was opened in 1810, but abandoned in 1914 – a fate hastened by the collapse of Stanley aqueduct in 1901. Much of the canal subsequently became unnavigable: many of the structures were deliberately damaged by army demolition exercises; parts of the route were filled in and in some cases built over. In 1977 the Wilts & Berks Canal Amenity Group was formed with a view to full restoration of the canal. Several locks and bridges have since been restored, and over 8 miles of the canal have been rewatered.
context_section_description: The canal was formally abandoned by an Act of Parliament in 1914. The Act was sponsored by Swindon Corporation, which gained control of all the land within its boundary. In other areas ownership returned to the owners of adjacent land.
  From the early 1930s much of the canal was filled in and generally used for dumping rubbish. Chippenham Wharf, once home to Brinkworth's Coal Depot, was used by residents as a refuse tip, and council minutes from 1926 show a decision to dump pig offal in the disused waterway. A bus station was built on the site, the buried wharf being uncovered briefly during redevelopment in 2006.
  During the Second World War many of the locks and other canal structures were used for army exercises and damaged by explosives.
  Very little of the old canal survived in usable form, but long rural stretches are clearly delineated.
caption: Overgrown section of the canal, west of Wantage, in 2006.
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