Regent's Canal

• 1. Introduction

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  Regent's Canal cuts an 8.6-mile line across the north of London. It links the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, 550 yards north-west of Paddington Basin, in the west. In the east, it ends at the Limehouse Basin and the River Thames. The waterway began as one man's proposal to connect two existing routes. Within a century it survived repeated attempts to erase it and an explosion that shook the city. It also shifted from hauling coal to carrying pleasure boats and bicycles instead. What was this canal actually built to move, and why did so many people want it gone?

• 2. Crossing North London

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  At Little Venice, a short distance north of Paddington Basin, Regent's Canal forms a junction with the old Grand Junction Canal. From there it passes through two tunnels, the Maida Hill and Lisson Grove tunnels, before curving around the northern edge of Regent's Park. The route passes London Zoo and skirts the base of Primrose Hill. It continues through Camden Town and King's Cross Central, then bends sharply at Camley Street Natural Park. Following Goods Way, the canal runs behind both St Pancras railway station and King's Cross railway station.

  The canal opens into Battlebridge Basin, originally called Horsfall Basin and now home to the London Canal Museum. Beyond the Islington tunnel, the canal forms the southern end of Broadway Market and meets the Hertford Union Canal at Victoria Park in East London. It then turns south toward Limehouse Basin, joins the Limehouse Cut, and finally meets the River Thames.

• 3. Digging The Regent's Canal

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  Thomas Homer first proposed the canal in 1802. He envisioned a link from the Paddington arm of the Grand Junction Canal, which had opened the previous year, to the River Thames at Limehouse. Parliament passed the enabling act, cited as (52 Geo. 3. c. cxcv), clearing the way to build it. Architect and town planner John Nash sat on the company's board of directors. In 1811, Nash had already drawn up a masterplan for George IV, then Prince Regent, to redevelop a large stretch of central north London. The canal was folded into that plan, running along the northern edge of Regent's Park for part of its route.

  As with Nash's other projects, the detailed engineering fell to an assistant, James Morgan, who became the canal company's chief engineer. Construction began on the 14th of October 1812. The first stretch, from Paddington to Camden Town, opened in 1816. It included a 251 meter tunnel under Maida Hill, near what is now called Little Venice, and a shorter 48 meter tunnel under Lisson Grove.

  The Camden to Limehouse section followed four years later, opening on the 1st of August 1820. It included the 886 meter Islington Tunnel. It also included the Regent's Canal Dock, a facility for transferring cargo from seagoing ships onto canal barges. That dock is known today as Limehouse Basin. Builders also added several intermediate basins: Cumberland Basin east of Regent's Park, Battlebridge Basin near King's Cross, and City Road Basin. Smaller basins followed too, among them Wenlock Basin, Kingsland Basin, and the St Pancras Stone and Coal Basin. One more basin sat in front of the Great Northern Railway's Granary. Some of these basins survive today. Every lock on the canal was built with duplicate chambers, a design meant to handle heavy barge traffic. That capacity meant the canal could carry far more than pleasure boats once trade began in earnest.

• 4. Trade And Decline

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  City Road Basin, the closest basin to the City of London, soon carried more goods than Paddington Basin ever had. Coal and building materials made up most of that traffic. It moved locally, not transshipped onward to the Midlands as the canal's builders had originally intended. When the London and Birmingham Railway opened in 1838, it might have been expected to steal the canal's business. Instead, the amount of coal carried by the canal actually increased.

  By the early twentieth century the picture had reversed. Midland trade had shifted entirely to the railways, more deliveries were going by road, and the canal slid into a long decline. Commercial traffic finally died out in the early 1970s. At the end of 1973, the British Waterways Board began a three-year program to convert one chamber at every lock into an overflow weir. The change let pleasure boats pass through unmanned without risking serious flooding from incorrectly handled paddles.

• 5. The Blow-Up Bridge

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  Just before 5am on the 2nd of October 1874, the narrowboat Tilbury exploded right under Macclesfield Bridge, just outside London Zoo. It was loaded with sugar, nuts, three barrels of petroleum, and around five tons of gunpowder. Until that moment, the Tilbury had been travelling west as part of a convoy. The group, a tugboat and three narrowboats, was heading for a quarry in the West Midlands.

  Everyone aboard died: captain Charles Baxton, a labourer named William Taylor, a third man, and a young boy. The blast destroyed Macclesfield Bridge outright. The bridge was rebuilt in 1876, reusing the original cast iron pillars. Those pillars were made in Coalbrookdale, according to an inscription at their top. Workers turned them 180 degrees during the rebuild, swapping the canal side for the tow path side. As a result, tow rope grooves worn into the pillars before the explosion are now visible on their outer face.

  People heard the explosion from 20 miles away. Debris flew in every direction: roofs blew off nearby houses, windows shattered, trees were uprooted, and dead fish rained down over the West End. The tugboat's keel ended up embedded in a house 300 yards from the blast. Locals nicknamed the crossing 'Blow-Up Bridge'.

  The convoy had passed through the crowded streets of Camden and Islington just beforehand. Had the barge exploded earlier that morning, the toll would have been far worse. The canal company that owned the Tilbury was condemned for gross negligence. Carrying petroleum and gunpowder on the same barge was called 'highly imprudent and improper.' The disaster helped push forward the Explosives Act 1875, a law regulating how dangerous substances could be manufactured and transported.

• 6. The Railway That Never Was

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  In September 1845, a special general assembly of the canal's proprietors approved selling the waterway for one million pounds. The buyers were a group of businessmen who had formed the Regent's Canal Railway Company. Their advertisement promised a scheme that would join 'all existing and projected railways north of the Thames' with a general city terminus. It claimed passengers and goods would reach 'the heart of the City at a great saving of time and expense.' That company failed.

  In 1846 the canal's own directors tried to get an Act of Parliament passed to build a railway along the banks themselves. Opposition, especially from a government unwilling to see a railway cut through Regent's Park, killed the plan.

  Two more conversion schemes surfaced in 1859. Directors accepted one, from a company called the Central London Railway and Dock Company, but that venture failed too. In 1860 the Regent's Canal Company proposed laying track alongside the canal from King's Cross to Limehouse, but the money never materialized. The Metropolitan Railway opened to the south in 1863. It ended up serving the same purpose those failed schemes had chased, linking the railway lines that radiated north of London.

  In 1883, after years of negotiation, the canal was finally sold, to a company called the Regent's Canal and City Docks Railway Company, for £1,170,585. That company renamed itself the North Metropolitan Railway and Canal Company, under the (55 & 56 Vict. c. clxxxviii). It never built a railway. Instead, it spent the money improving the docks and canal. In 1904 it became the Regent's Canal and Dock Company, under the (63 & 64 Vict. c. cxviii). On the 1st of January 1929, that company folded into the merged Grand Union Canal Company.

• 7. Life On The Canal Today

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  In 1979, the Central Electricity Generating Board installed underground cables in a trough beneath the towpath, running between St John's Wood and City Road. Those 400 kV cables now form part of the National Grid, carrying electrical power into London. Canal water is pumped through the trough to cool them.

  A waterbus runs hourly through the summer months, connecting Maida Vale and Camden. The canal today is used mostly for pleasure cruising.

  Cycle commuting rose sharply after the 2005 London bombings, turning the towpath into a busy route for cyclists. National Cycle Route 1 now follows the towpath from Limehouse Basin to Mile End. British Waterways studied how cyclists and pedestrians shared the narrow path and repeatedly found relatively few problems. In 2019, however, The Guardian reported on clashes between the two groups.

  Boats using the canal today are limited to a length of 21.95 meters, a beam of 4.27 meters, and a headroom of 2.79 meters. The average navigational depth runs about 1.15 meters, or roughly 3 feet 6 inches.

  In 2012, playwright Rob Inglis received a £16,000 Arts Council grant to write a musical called Regent's Canal, a Folk Opera. It marked the 200th anniversary of the digging of the canal. It played in a number of locations around London that year.