Stratford Canal
The Stratford-upon-Avon Canal is a historic waterway of approximately 25 miles running through the heart of Warwickshire and connecting the canal network at Kingswood Junction near Lapworth with the River Avon at Stratford-upon-Avon. Completed in 1816 after a construction programme that stretched over two decades, the canal was built primarily to carry coal from the Warwickshire coalfields southward and to enable the movement of agricultural produce and goods throughout a region that lacked good road connections. The canal fell into progressive disuse as road and rail transport developed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and by the 1950s much of the southern section was completely impassable, its locks collapsed, its channel silted up and its infrastructure crumbling. The restoration of the Stratford Canal between 1960 and 1964, organised entirely by volunteers working under the aegis of the National Trust, was one of the pioneering examples of canal restoration in Britain and helped inspire the broader canal preservation movement that eventually rescued hundreds of miles of waterway across England and Wales. The engineering of the canal includes several features of particular interest. The Edstone Aqueduct near Bearley is at 475 feet the longest cast-iron aqueduct in England, carrying the canal across a shallow valley on a trough of cast iron that gives the extraordinary sensation of sailing across a field above the level of the surrounding landscape. The wharf-side buildings at Lapworth and several other locations retain authentic canal heritage character, and the distinctive barrel-roofed lock keeper's cottages that appear at intervals along the canal are some of the most photographed structures on the waterway network. Today the canal is primarily used by narrowboats and hire cruisers enjoying the peaceful countryside through which it passes, connecting the Shakespeare country of Warwickshire with the broader Midlands canal network. Walking and cycling the towpath provides an accessible and thoroughly pleasant way to experience the landscape along the canal's route.