Wendover Arm Canal

Wendover Arm Canal
The Stop Lock to Little Tring Bridge
Specifications
Status	Part restored
History
Original owner	Grand Junction Canal Co
Date of act	1794
Date completed	1799
Date closed	1897
Geography
Start point	Wendover
End point	Bulbourne
Branch of	Grand Union Canal

The Wendover Arm Canal is part of the Grand Union Canal in England, and forms part of the British canal system. It is usually known as the Wendover Canal, but historically its builders referred to their branch canals as Arms, hence its historical name of Wendover Arm. It was planned as a feeder to carry water from springs near the town of Wendover in Buckinghamshire to the main line of the Grand Junction Canal at Bulbourne near Startops End in Hertfordshire, but when it opened in 1799 it was made navigable, as the extra cost of making it was so small. Water supplies from Wendover were found to be inadequate, and a series of reservoirs were built. A pumping station at Whitehouses was superseded by the Tringford pumping station in 1817; its steam engines were replaced by diesel engines in 1911 and then by electric pumps.

The canal was used for the carriage of coal to three gasworks, and for transport of straw to London and horse manure in the opposite direction. It was also used by the Heygates flour mill, and Bushell's built boats on its banks. Despite several attempts to rectify leakage, including one of the earliest uses of asphalt for this purpose, no satisfactory solution was found, and most of the 6.7-mile (11 km) canal ceased to be used for navigation in 1904. Water levels in the upper section were lowered, and a pipeline was constructed along part of the bed, so that water could still be supplied to Tring summit.

The canal became part of the Grand Union Canal in 1929, and responsibility passed to British Waterways in 1963. Initial attempts to reopen the canal following the formation of the Grand Union Canal Society in 1967 were unsuccessful. But interest revived in 1985, the Wendover Arm Trust was formed in 1989, and in 1990 the Department of Transport agreed to build a navigable culvert where the new Aston Clinton bypass would cross the arm. The Trust split the task of reopening the canal into three phases, and phase 1 of the project, the first 1.3 miles (2 km) from the junction at Bulbourne to a winding hole near Little Tring Farm, was completed and reopened in 2005. Using Bentonite matting, they relined the section which leaked so badly and in 2009 the first 0.25 miles (0.40 km) of phase 2 were filled with water for the first time since 1904. Another section of a similar length was rewatered in 2015, and a bid made for Heritage Lottery Funding to speed the completion of phase 2. This was subsequently withdrawn, when it was found that parts of the canal had been filled with noxious material, rather than domestic rubbish, but grants were received in 2022 to enable all the contaminated material to be removed.