WILTS & BERKS CANAL TRUST

The Wilts & Berks Canal was a narrow canal,  that is to say that it was 27ft wide at the top, 14ft wide at the bottom, and 4 and a half feet deep, the locks being 7 and a half feet wide. This reduced the cost of building the canal by about one third compared to the wider canals like the Kennet & Avon.

The cut to Longcot was done in 1803 that was 2 years before the canal reached Swindon and was left dry for 2 years waiting to be joined up which happened on the 29th November 1805. The Wilts & Berks Canal Company had its last and its largest brick works here at Longcot but there are no clay pits in the area. The brick works was built by a man called John Jobson here on the old Wharf road.

So where did the clay come from, The answer to that is very simple really if you know the geology of this area.One hundred million years ago this village would have been called Longcot by the sea and those would have been the cliffs. So when they started digging the canal it was all clay, no need to puddle here, Hey Presdo problem solved, They dug out the clay sent it back to the brick works and a few days later it came back as bricks to build the bridges, locks, and Wharves.

In just 5 years this brick works made well over 6 million bricks from the clay dug out of the canal bed. One more thing to tell you about those bricks, The canal company never missed a trick when it came to money. There was a tax on bricks at this time but it was on each brick made not its size. The bricks the canal works made were 10in x 4 ¾ in x 3in almost a third bigger than standard so 700 canal bricks equalled 1000 standard bricks thus this cut their tax bill by about 30 per cent.No fancy decoration on them either or any bonding recess's, Why bother as most of the bricks would never see light of day again once they were in the lock, or wharf.

Those bricks would have been amongst the very first things carried on the canal as it moved northwards