New book celebrates K&A Canal's 200 years

Queen of Waters — a new book about the Kennet & Avon Canal is to be published on the 28th December — 200 years to the day after the opening of the canal that allowed boats to travel from Bristol to Reading.

The book abounds with many previously 

unpublished pictures of the K&A Canal

When the Kennet & Avon Canal opened on 28 December 1810 it really was 'the wonder of its age'. A broad waterway built across southern England as a trade route between the country’s two greatest ports — London and Bristol — and the countryside through which it passed would never be the same.

   Yet only 30 years after it was completed, Brunel’s Great Western Railway opened and robbed it of much of its traffic. Trade on the canal declined and after decades of neglect came ultimate dereliction for the canal.

   The K&A lay like a sleeping princess, weed-choked and silent, its locks and bridges crumbling – but there were people determined to keep it alive and thanks to their effort it became the Queen of Waters — the title of a new book to be published in December by Kirsten Elliott, subtitled "A journey in Time along the Kennet & Avon Canal".

   In the year celebrating the bicentenary of the first cargo travelling from Bristol to Reading — and twenty years on from the grand reopening by the Queen —  this new book pays tribute to the canal that refused to die.

A full review of the book will follow — but in the meantime you can pre-order the book from the KAcanalTIMES bookshop: Queen of Waters

The KAcanalTIMES website is now online at: www.kacanaltimes.co.uk

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