£15 members/£18 non-members

In 1779 Stroudwater Canal opened, from the River Severn to Stroud town, soon followed by the Thames & Severn Canal which ran from Stroud up the steep escarpment, through the world’s longest navigable tunnel at Sapperton to join the Thames at Lechlade, thence to London or north to the rising Midlands. It was a remarkable achievement, a daring engineering feat. The canal was not just a highway for trade. It connected locals and the nation in a new way. It needed locks, double locks, hump-back bridges (so the trows and barges could pass below), weirs, winding holes, and more. It generated monumental canal-side buildings built of Cotswold limestone – including a total of more than 200 multi-story Cotswold stone mills.

Surprisingly, despite the arrival of the railways from London and the departure of wool production to Yorkshire the canals remained profitable into the 20C. The Thames & Severn Canal closed in 1933, the Stroudwater only in 1954. Just 18 years later, it took one person to call a public meeting in Stroud’s Subscription Rooms on 12 May 1972 to start the revival. Today, Cotswold Canals Trust has 7,000+ members. Fifty years on, the project is well on its way thanks to harnessing a remarkable variety of skills, to private/public/government collaboration, and to an army of volunteers (900 or so at any one time). Louise Nicholson will tell the story of the Cotswold Canals restoration and revival.

The talks starts at 6.30pm, doors open from 6.15pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

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