Swindon’s Lost Locks

Swindon’s Lost Locks | North Wilts Canal | Wilts and Berks

A look at the Moredon and Mouldon Locks on the old North Wilts canal which became part of the Wilts and Berks canal. The North Wilts ran from the junction in the centre of Swindon to Lawton Basin at Cricklade on the Cotswold Canals.

Walking from Mouldon hill country park we first visit the Moredon aqueduct before walking south towards the town of Swindon and onto Mouldon Lock, Moredon Bridge and then the two locks at Moredon. How did the power station and the Midland and South Western Junction Railway affect the canal? Now the Swindon and Cricklade railway it runs through a similar course and is both a heritage railway and a cycle path in the town.

We follow the country park until we hit the Cheney Manor Industrial estate which still has a section of canal in water. The rest of the route can be seen on various videos on the channel.

The mapping that can be seen is the fantastic memory maps with the waterway route maps overlaid, all done automatically when you download both.

WBCT Youtube – @wiltsberkscanaltrust

WBCT – https://www.wbct.org.uk

Swindon and Cricklade Railway – https://swindon-cricklade-railway.org

Rail Map Online – https://www.railmaponline.com

Waterway Routes – https://www.waterwayroutes.co.uk

All drone footage shot with a DJI mini 3 Pro.

All camera footage shot with an Insta360 One Inch with Rode Go mic and Lavalier.

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So Chloe waiting me wait for so long has been an absolute bonus because not only we got the views of been able to see everything but we’ve got a canal in Water we’re on a northw canal today uh the canal runs from Swindon and up to lechlade on on the uh where it joins the cwalk can now at Latin Basin he’s probably seen quite a few videos on that I’m here with Chloe Ford who’s the chair

Of the swinden branch of the wilon BS Canal Trust we’re going to have a little look at some of the structures along the route that still exist uh behind us here we have our first one uh we’ve had this on another video uh do you want to tell

Me a bit about this uh so a few years ago the trust got donated this bridge it’s a foot bridge and it was originally a foot crossing bridge uh going over the river temps um but I think it Ong to the railway Network I haven’t got the

History on it but the idea is it was donated brought here and we will be using it on the restoration of the the northw so we have found modern Aqueduct it’s actually quite visible on top but being the time of year it is we can

Actually kind of uh get a bit closer to it you can see there’s no overgrowth here and this is why we’re recording this video today rather than in the middle of summer so let’s pop down and have a little look so this is a river

Ray that it crosses and it’s a free Arch Aqueduct and it’s in a quite Condition it’s one of the last surviving structures on the canal towards sort of Latin Basin so the canal goes up towards Crick laade uh there’s um there’s one Aqueduct uh one lock and one Aqueduct is

That right one lock Haz and uh the trust have actually owned that so uh we need to clear it out it’s covered under for at the moment where trust hasn’t been out there for some time but the plan in 24 is to to uncover and tidy up Haze null so we’ll see that

In a future video and and um there’s a one FV Aqueduct before Cade which is just about qu of a mile up from hayn towards Crick Direction and that was restored just after the Millennium um that’s in good order um there was a tunnel in cricklade so the canal when it

Got to to crade it went under a tunnel yeah um but that’s been filled demolished filled in and there’s houses on top of that that’s not going to be restored cuz the plan is to go around the other side of CCAD isn’t end yeah so Al um don’t know the camera see which

Way we mean we would go the north side the original route would have gone up through Haz and then would have gone the north side of cricket yeah up to Latin Basin and obviously if you’ve seen Latin Basin from the air Latin Basin a lot of the canal route is still there to

Towards cricklade so we would have gone under a tunnel underneath cric even back then there was a tunnel there was houses and so on um as I say the tunnel’s lost to a housing estate now but the plan is we we’re come up alongside Hazen n and

Then we’ll turn and we’ll come south of cricklade and we’ll have to build a fresh Aqueduct to go over the temps yeah and then we connect up with the CWS under the 419 so the old side used to go over two aqueducts one over the temps and the other river which I can’t

Remember what it’s called then you had Latin Basin then you actually had another siphon um there which went up into the junction of the cotwell canal so the new Junction will be sort of further down the canal then this is Straight From the Bottom of the aqueduct

We’re filming there onto the top you got the old line runs through here and across top of the aqueduct here after this point is largely lost there are sections as Chloe said further up and there’s an ongoing restoration of the Latin Basin although that’s not really restoration it’s more

Of a Community Asset so they’re just kind of keeping it clear and and available for use really so as you can see it’s not really that well maintained at the moment but the trust they’ve just started an ecological report is that right so from January the end of January

We we’ve got uh private funding to do an ecological report here yeah which normally ecological reports take around 6 months uh and hopefully we during that 6 months we’ll get fresh written permission from s The Bar Council to give us fresh permission to work here cuz at the moment we’ve stopped all work

Here um the permissions have stopped and as you can see there’s bits of lit someone’s obviously fed some ducks and take your to home please but they don’t um and the trust used to pick all this up and at the moment we haven’t got consent to uh to work on site we need

The consent renewed and that’s all through here you can see it TI through yeah the first phase would be um once ecological reports done we we restore the toe path from this acct right down to perro Bridge so that would be the first uh first job of the trust is to

Fully restore toe paath makes it more accessible to people exercise wellbeing yeah yeah definitely and just easier to maintain safety of course yeah I always that b we’re walking now towards molden lock and we actually have a little bit in water here which is uh not normally in

Water but good old British summer has meant we’ve had Lads of rain for the last 6 months so we got a good uh bit of water obviously this bit’s clear cuz the trees are above so you don’t really get the reads growing up through like you do

Through through day sections but it’s a good idea of what could be done with this over the next few years if permissions could be sought so this is molden lock it’s it was fully restored by the trust a number of years ago uh the gates aren’t on it yet all the brick work’s

Done on it it’s ready to go it’s quite a deep lock about 10t I believe and it’s taking the canal up here towards Swindon see your gate car outs there I think it was uh around around the year 2000 give take a couple of years this was done and

It’s pretty much a full rebuild I believe you can see some older bricks on the bottom actually so maybe parts of the wall were are existing just be careful coming along here it is fenced off but like I say it’s quite deep and it is obviously not

Got any water in so you it wouldn’t want to be falling in looks like some original coping stones on the top here and you can see just a little wall there to Dam it off to stop all the water from that end sort running through here you

Got your overflows and your paddles and that would have been down there as well pedals down through here look so that would have been way you turn lift the paddle so the walk can drain down so we’re approaching the P and R bridge now we can’t actually get

Under it cuz they doing some sewage works over the other side so we’re going to have a little detour but this was built in the late ’90s as a whole new development in Swindon went on up here and uh you were saying about the bridge

So the the bridge is off skew the the end it was great the highways allowed to work with the trust to allow access under it you know loads of foresight for the restoration of the canal unfortunately it’s skew if it it didn’t it didn’t line up correctly with the

Line of the canal so it is slightly off skew it’s enough that narrow boats won’t won’t have too much of a problem but it is like I say off skew is the key word here um underneath all gated off at the moment for safety purposes and over the

Other side the series treatment works as you said TS water putting in a brand new uh scheme of works there what’s in the background but because this was offs skew what they did was they did a concrete channel so right up to to sort of here

This is a con concrete Basin to give enough flow and enough depth for the water to keep and ironically to keep the re out so that the boats could come in and have the right depth to get the angle to go underneath but uh and it it

Has an extra feature that the the the rain water that runs off can fill the canal nice Source yeah yeah there a nice source of water so what what happens on the other side then is it just a tight turn then to to get around to the

Original alignment the canal ends on the other side this is all soil that’s been displaced from the building s you know there the other side has had various different buildings of from the M Power Station through to the the hous in the state that’s there now so a lot of soil

Has been displaced so for some of it we’ve lost a little bit of The Canal at Beyond this bridge uh what we’re going to do is walk be beyond the estate now and then I can show you where the original locks and that were but we’ll

Have to rethink about how we’re going to connect this quarter mile back up around about 2008 the BBC funded uh the Canal Trust to put a walk through from Pon Road Bridge up to what’s now going to be the brand new Sports Hub the M Field Sports Center there yeah um

And I say these remnants of of the walk are still present a lot of the undergrowth has grown over and sadly due to you know volunteer time and resources the path has gone into a bit of a disrepair but one of the things that we’re hoping to do in the future is is

To reinstate this walk but what they didn’t do was they didn’t actually put the walk specifically on the toe path they put the walk from one point to the other so it crosses some Fields with not actually toea and the reason why they did that was because of badges

Sets but what we’re do going forward is we’re doing an ecological survey of the area and we’re try and get this W green stated but much closer to the original topac as we can so somewhere here is the bottom of um mod than locks there’s we we’ve looked right

Through we can’t find anything at all no work no at all you you were saying about the uh Power Station so just to the edge where this this fence here now this is was more than power station our M Power Station was established for the railways initially um so we believe

And that was made after the the canal was dissolved with the extension of the power station so I believe this area was cleared and flattened for the power station so it looks like this lock has been lost there is signs just up where Peggy is over there there’s some bricks

And stuff but uh yeah I I don’t think we’re going to find anything more it may be that there’s a wall underneath this it comes up here the turn path of cornner canal Maps is kind of in line where we are here but like we said think

It’s just been dug out yeah it does it does um but you know never know this could be back fi you know it could be anywhere here really so but let’s go and see what we can find on the top lock there’s there’s a bit more to see there

We think it’s coming away from the lock there which was just kind of behind Chloe there somewhere you’re coming up to the next lock which is in these trees now there was a wide pound here it was only a narrow section between each of the locks and so this I think this was

Original and they I think they followed this roadway around the side of what was the pound the power station that was built here was built sort of out the canal was abandoned so they would have just flattened all of this and I think that’s why we can’t find any Trace down

Through here so coming from the road behind us there we have the line of the canal up ahead of us and as I said there was a lock here and if you look at the ground here it rises is up and just to the left hand side you have a wall now

We’ve been trying to figure out on the on the maps we think the I think this was a lock here so we we’d be in the in the water now you’ve got the Wall comes up here which would be the left hand side of the wall and that runs all the

Way up through there’s no real signs of where the lock Gates would have sat which would have made things a lot easier but chlo would be kind of Midlock now so the other wall would have been here which has obviously been lost for for this road down through here

Here uh and if you look all the way through here you can see the walls it’s in pretty good condition this side SWA and when they were destroying these things the coping Stones were just flicked out the way and if you look where Chloe is now that yeah you reckon that’s one yeah

That’s definitely cooc Stone there there is one that that tree is growing out of but this is also Rick work out here so maybe this was the strengthening wall to hold point so that that is protruding more there there’s definitely brick work yeah that makes a lot of sense I think

That definitely does mean yeah there we go close on the brick there look so I can’t remember what they were called but they literally they built sort of peers out and they just anchored the lock into the wall and gave it the support from from basically going either

Way to be honest with you CU especially when the lock is empty there’s no nothing stopping the force of the mud from that side kind of pushing the lock in so that is is an anchor into the BR bank and if you’re going this way it’s

You know again giving you an anchor as well so so Chloe’s kind of in the canal now you can see it’s doing what it should be doing with all the rain and the cold we’ve had you’ve got a frozen Bank there which runs down through and

That lock we were on is kind of just behind that bush on the other side of there just down the path slightly so the line is straight through the middle here the Tail taale Signs you can see the fast growing trees in it which always come with canals you got the canal here

Going into the into a bridge just there and there’s quite a bit of water in it so still holding water this is quite overgrown but we’re we’re going to have a quick look so we’ve been talking about doing this video now for about 8 to 10 months haven’t we it’s about April

When we did the walk I think when we we first discussed it and the reason why we didn’t do it like I’ve said before is it’s so overgrown down here and as you can see is as we’ve come through here and all around us it’s give it another

Couple of months you won’t get into it you won’t see it and the other good thing about it is we’ve had loads of rain so this canal down through here is actually visible where wouldn’t normally be so Chloe waiting me wait for so long has been an absolute bonus because not

Only we got the views have been able to see everything but we’ve got a canal in water look at that still holding water to this day so just here we have you can see signs of there was a bridge coming across here and the canal would have ran down

Through here and back towards the locks just up through there if you aren’t subscribed to the Wilson Barts uh YouTube Channel please get on it the link will be in the description and you’ll get to see uh chlo doing lots of things on there as well as all the

Branches are starting to do stuff as well you’ve just taken it back over haven’t you literally taken back on it’s reinstated now so you’ve got the moment You’ got uh the maam KH Chipman Branch MCC as we call it have done a work party

So you get to see what it’s like to join a work party and um we’ve just got the dredging at Royal W Basset oh they got that cool machine haven’t they coming through machine yeah so we got that in action so there’s some there’s some good footage

On there so what we’ve got here is we have the top half sort running behind me here this is going towards that’s going towards winding that way and the direction we walk from is behind us here now the it doesn’t follow the canal all the way through it comes across some

Field it’s quite thick over there but it does drop back in and then you’ve got this section here now this here you can see there’s an old boundary fence here this is the old boundary fence from the school which runs along the side here and they’ve moved their fence across to

The other side and now you’ve got the canal bed here now this canal bed runs all the way through and is largely untouched from The cheny Manor industrial estate right up to kind of the edge of the power station where there’s a little housing estate which is

Almost on the main road uh where we were much earlier on so there’s quite a lot of canal here that could be restored and put into a nature area and this runs through a massive uh nature Coral basically all the way through here with the river Ray and uh various other

Things as well so it would be a massive asset to the to the town if this could be restored this is as far as we can go at the moment as you can see we’ve got the fence behind us you’ve got cheny Mana industrial estate kind of weapon

Behind us uh and you’ve got the recycling center where the canal would have run through this is really good from the air this is one of the bits you can really see partly because it’s been maintained as it’s as it’s sort of the council land but this hasn’t had uh a

Lot done to it it’s still as you can see very much in water and this go is on then across to the of molden Hill Country Park but thanks for watching have a great day