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Glastonbury Canal
The Glastonbury Canal ran for approximately through two locks from Glastonbury to Highbridge in Somerset, England, where it entered the River Parrett and from there the Bristol Channel. The canal was authorised by Parliament in 1827 and opened in 1834. It was operated by The Glastonbury Navigation & Canal Company.〔 Most of it was abandoned as a navigation in 1854, when a railway was built along the towpath.
An earlier canal had been built in the Middle Ages to supply Glastonbury Abbey and the town with stone and produce. In the early 19th century a new canal was proposed to improve commerce in Glastonbury and help with drainage of the surrounding area of the Somerset Levels. Several alternative routes were considered and costed before obtaining an Act of Parliament and issuing a prospectus to raise funds for the building of the canal. Construction commenced in the 1820s; however it was more expensive than invisaged and further funds had to raised. It finally opened in 1833 but was only prosperous for a short period. The shortfall in income and engineering problems with water supply and waterlogged peat causing the clay puddling to fracture meant that it was sold to the Bristol and Exeter Railway. They used the canal to transport materials for the construction of the new Somerset Central Railway which opened in 1854.
==Background==
Glastonbury is situated in an area of low-lying land, known as the Somerset Levels, through which rivers and drainage ditches (locally called "rhynes") run. There is evidence that the town was served by a medieval canal connecting it to the river system in the Saxon period, and the waterways were later used by the monks who were located at Glastonbury Abbey, both for draining the land and for transport of produce. In the 1750s, the town became a spa town, when the waters of the Chalice Well spring were thought to have medicinal properties, but this did not last for long, while the predominant wool and cloth industries declined as the mills of the north of England took the trade.
The area was hit by severe floods in 1794, as a result of which the Commissioners of Sewers obtained the Brue Drainage Act in 1801, which allowed them to improve the course of the River Brue by the straightening of major loops at Highbridge and East Huntspill, and to construct the North and South Drains, which collected water from the peat moorlands and channelled it into the lower River Brue. Under the terms of the Act, two small canals, called Galton's Canal and Brown's Canal, were built near the North Drain to serve peat extraction workings. The drainage works were not wholly successful in preventing flooding, and the Commissioners often failed to obtain the levies they required to finance their operations.
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