The Story of Kent by Anne Petrie

Author:Anne Petrie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750983211
Publisher: The History Press

The Toll Cottage in Nonington stood beside the toll gate in the village. (Anne Thompson)

In the 1790s, turnpike mania in Kent was replaced by canal mania, following the huge commercial success of the canals built in the North of England to carry coal. Although there was considerable enthusiasm for the idea in the county, there was actually very little trade imperative to dig canals in an area so well served by its coastline and navigable rivers.

Notwithstanding the lack of actual need, there were several schemes to build Kent canals. The first was to link Canterbury by canal to the coast. In 1797 a canal to Reculver was proposed, in 1810 another to St Nicholas Bay near Margate, and in 1824 another to Sandwich. None managed to secure adequate financial backing. Then there were plans to link the rivers Thames and Medway with the River Rother to make a through waterway from London to Rye harbour. A plan was drawn up, a committee of wealthy businessmen organised and the plan approved by Parliament. The proposed canal would carry chalk, lime and coal into the Weald and timber and agricultural produce out of it. The businessmen then realised that the likely traffic would be too low to produce a healthy income from tolls, and withdrew their investment. The plan languished, raising its head occasionally, but always failing to get proper backing, and was finally allowed to die in 1815.

The only canal actually built in Kent was the Thames and Medway Canal, which was not an unqualified success. The canal was first mooted in 1778 as a shortcut for military craft from Deptford and Woolwich on the Thames to Chatham Dockyard on the Medway, avoiding the 74km journey around the peninsula and through the Thames estuary. It would also carry commercial traffic between the two rivers.

Planning did not start until 1799 and digging began the next year, but costs escalated, the route was altered and a tunnel had to be dug. By the time it opened, no less than twenty-four years later, the canal had required five Acts of Parliament and cost over £260,000. However, the tunnel between Strood and Higham was considered one of the engineering triumphs of the age. Three and a half kilometres long, dug through chalk by hand, it was apparently wide enough and tall enough to accommodate a 61-tonne sailing barge with its mast lowered. It is unlikely that it ever had to. In 1846, the canal company sold the tunnel to the South Eastern Railway Company, which filled in the canal and laid a double railway track over it.

Railway mania was the third and last of the transport crazes. The impact of rail technology in the nineteenth century was so far-reaching that it is comparable to the development of the internet, opening up previously unimaginable opportunities for trade and communications.

The first railway in the South of England was the line from Canterbury to Whitstable, which opened in 1830. Until then, Canterbury’s main line of supply for goods had been along the River Stour from Ramsgate on the coast.

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