The Braunston Tunnel

A Memory of Daventry.

A short distance north-west of Daventry is Braunston. The village lies on a hill overlooking the Grand Union Canal, one of Britain’s most famous inland waterways, and is a hub of the canal network. This photograph (D83014) shows the Welton end (just north of Daventry) of the long Braunston Tunnel, which was built to connect the Grand Union Canal from London to the Oxford Canal at Braunston. The house over the entrance in this photograph from the mid 1950s was the home of the tunnel keeper, but has long since been demolished. The track up to the left was the route to Braunston for the horses pulling the narrow boats in horse-drawn days, while the boats were ‘legged’ through the tunnel by the crew, by lying on a plank across the boats and using their feet on the tunnel sides to push the boats through the tunnel.