Title:
CHELMER AND BLACKWATER NAVIGATION COMPANY
Level: Category
Miscellaneous archives; Societies' and Organisations' records
Level: Fonds
CHELMER AND BLACKWATER NAVIGATION COMPANY
Admin History:
Plans to make the Rivers Chelmer and Blackwater navigable and thus connect Chelmsford and Maldon had begun as early as 1677. It was not until 1792 that the scheme was revived by Lord Petre and Thomas Bramston MP for Essex, and the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation Company was created. The Borough of Maldon feared loss of revenue from the scheme and it was decided that the Navigation should bypass Maldon and that the canal would run from Springfield wharf to Heybridge Basin.

In June 1793 an Act was passed to enable the Company to raise money to build the navigation and to compulsorily purchase land. John Rennie FRS was appointed principal engineer but was busy working on other canals and visited the site only five times. The survey was carried out by Charles Wedge and the building was supervised by the resident engineer Richard Coates. Building began in October 1793 with fifty men and the canal opened on 3 June 1797. The navigation is 13 7/8 miles long, with a total fall of 76 feet 11 inches, and has eleven pound locks and one sea lock. It is the shallowest navigation in the country.

The first forty-five years were the most prosperous for the company, reaching a peak in 1842 when 60,000 tons of goods were moved. From 1846 the Company had to compete with the railways and with the decline in coastal traffic that brought goods to Heybridge. After 1914 road transport brought a further decline, and by 1947 only 2,669 tons of timber were carried. Commercial traffic ceased in 1972.

The Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation Company became a limited company on 1 August 1913. In 2003 the Company went into administration. Management of the navigation and its finances was taken over in 2005 by Essex Waterways Ltd, a subsidiary of the charitable Inland Waterways Association. The Navigation Company retained ownership of the freehold of the navigation.
System Arrangement:
Minute books D/Z 36/10,25-33
Financial records D/Z 36/1-8,34-39
Letter books D/Z 36/9, 40-41
Title deeds D/Z 36/42-100
Property management D/Z 36/101-148
Canal management D/Z36/149-176
Legal papers D/Z 36/177-181
Maps and plans D/Z 36/11-24, 182-199
Miscellaneous D/Z 36/200-201
Related Unit of Description:
For papers concerning the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation Company see D/Z 1. For a detailed history of the company see P.J. Came's thesis A History of the Company of Proprietors of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation 1793-1914 (University of Sussex 1972).