Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Brentford Waterways | |
Posted by: | Nigel Moore | |
Date/Time: | 20/01/10 23:12:00 |
To balance the previous answer to Mr Kenton’s post, the shambolic picture that was painted is certainly true of the mid-60’s, when the newly formed BW understood the area to be outside their navigational control and the PLA who patrolled the area were mainly concerned with whether boats employed accredited watermen according to Union rules. In fact, unregulated chaos was the order of the day ever since the PLA’s predecessors [the Thames Conservancy] temporarily abandoned control of this section to BW’s predecessor [the Grand Junction Canal Company]. Early 1960’s, barges drifting across and blocking the channel above Thames Lock, narrowboat half sunk below Johnson’s Island By way of demonstration, it was the Thames Conservators who licensed the construction of the relevant embankment in the first place – with the attached condition that access at either end from the water was prohibited. The Conservators actually had a sign up at the entrance to the canal/river Brent forbidding transhipment of cargo in the area. - It was only following fraudulent representations by the Grand Junction Canal Company in the first years of the 20thC that the Conservators shrugged their shoulders, removed the sign and let the GJCC take charge for the first time. The GJCC in their total inexperience allowed transhipment of cargo at the embankment, so that the entry was invariably clogged with moored boats from the turn of the century onwards, contributing significantly to the difficulties of commercial traffic navigating to and from the canal system. The moored barges in the illustration above are in the same position as the proposed scheme, effectively impeding free passage contrary to the Thames Conservancy policy and conditions of licence for the embankment. BW as successors to the GJCC continued in the same vein of leaving matters here unregulated – until 2001, when they acted on the advice of the expert they’d commissioned to report on the situation; refused to re-license the houseboats that had been moored there with Council planning consent, and ultimately forced them out. |