Great Linford, Black Horse Bridge c.1965

Photo ref: G347070

More about this scene

However, perhaps they eavesdropped on an animated discussion between a group of men who were studying a large plan. A young man seemed to be dominating with his forceful arguments; there was much nodding of heads, and one opulently dressed gentleman seemed particularly impressed. At the end of the meeting, with handshakes all round, John Barnes, the young engineer, had secured agreement from all the local worthies - and finance from the Marquis of Buckingham himself - to build the new 90-mile-long Grand Junction Canal from Braunston to Brentford. Thirteen miles of this proposed trade route would pass through Fenny Stratford, Simpson, Woughton, the Woolstones, Great Linford and Wolverton. By 1800 an average of 35 coaches and 350 animals were crowding Watling Street every day. Road tolls had been set up during the previous century to contribute to its upkeep. The turnpike at Fenny, Stony, and at Two Mile Ash between them, charged from a halfpenny for a packhorse to a shilling for a coach. The area's trade was burgeoning. For example, the 70-odd Stony Stratford occupations of the 1790s included sixteen victuallers, fifteen grocers, nine carpenters and eight bakers, as well as a collar-maker, a fisherman and net- maker, a hemp-dresser and roper, a salesman, a staymaker, a 'surveyor of houses and windows', a potash maker, a toyman and a tinman. Such traders had diverse business needs, and all were dependent on an efficient transport system which was unaffected by the vagaries of muddy ruts. They, along with local innkeepers, must have been delighted when the canal diggers - 'navvies', derived from 'navigators' - arrived in 1797 to make the first cut in Wolverton's soil. Within seven years a direct canal route from the Thames to the industrial midlands was ready and open for business.