Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation (EHER 15085)

The Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation connects Chelmsford with the tidal estuary of the River Blackwater at Heybridge Basin. Proposals to make the River Chelmer navigable originate in the late 17th century, but the town of Maldon objected on the basis that they did not wish for traffic to bypass Maldon and go direct to Chelmsford. This is why a more rural route, connecting to the sea at Heybridge, was eventually chosen. The Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation opened in 1797, following an Act passed in 1766 to make the River Chelmer navigable from Maldon to Chelmsford. The navigation was used by commercial traffic (barges) until 1972, and it is now used by pleasure craft.

Probably the most obvious feature of the Industrial revolution surviving in Essex. There are remains, in various conditions, of 11 locks. The earliest plans for this navigation were in 1677, but it was in fact built under the act of 1793 and completed in 1797. There was still timber trade on the navigation until recent years. <1> The Act to construct the Navigation was passed in 1793, the aim being to make the Chelmer navigable between Maldon and Chelmsford. A sea lock was constructed at Heybridge Basin, from where an artificial channel was cut to Beeleigh Abbey, to the confluence of the rivers Chelmer and Blackwater. The waterway was busy with commercial trade and Maldon prospered as the port for the County town. The railway age diminished the use of the Navigation, but major Heybridge industries, especially Bentalls, continued to use it to import raw materials from the sea routes. <2> In 1793 Edward Lord Petre and Thomas Bramston of Roxwell, MP for Essex, gained support and finance for a Navigation which bypassed Maldon, reaching the Blackwater at Heybridge, and therefore lessening that town's influence of opposition. Estimated costs of £40,000, eventually to be £52,000, were raised by selling shares to Essex (and Leicestershire) landowners as speculators or more local beneficiaries of improved business around Chelmsford. The newly formed Company of Proprietors of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation Ltd bought small areas of land along the riverside both for the towpath, to create the cuts and weirs and to bypass meanders and mills. These pieces of land can still be recognised as field boundaries, some marked by posts. The surveys of John Wedge of Gazeley, Suffolk, and Matthew Hall in 1792/3 for Lord Petre provide detail of the rivers and mills prior to the new construction. John Rennie FRS (1761-1821), who had designed several canals, was appointed Chief Engineer but the work was in effect supervised by Richard Coates of Marske, Yorkshire, who had just completed the Navigation from Ipswich to Stowmarket. Coates brought many of his navvies from Suffolk to work on the new Chelmer Navigation, and eventually settled in Chelmsford founding the Springfield Church School and in 1819 the gas works whose premises he sited next to the Springfield basin wharves for ease of coal supplies. The waterway from Chelmsford (Springfield) to Maldon (Heybridge) makes use of the courses of the Chelmer and Blackwater rivers, providing artificial cuts where necessary, the longest at 2.4km being at Heybridge into Colliers Reach at the sea lock. The locks and bridges along the Navigation are to Rennie's design, used also in Suffolk. For the construction local sources of the red bricks were at Hoe, Ulting and Boreham, while the coping stones for the wharves, locks and bridges are from Dundee. Construction work started in October 1793 and by 1796 the Navigation was in use between Heybridge and Little Baddow (the coal wharf, EHER 40051, was situated just east of the road bridge). The full length of the Navigation, from Heybridge to Springfield Basin, was opened on 3rd June 1797. <3> - <12> For aerial photographs, see <13> <14>. Information from NRHE import: Ideas to make the Chelmer navigable down to Maldon on the Blackwater were first put forward by Andrew Yarranton in the late 17th century. Maldon was against the scheme because improvements to the Chelmer would allow traffic to bypass Maldon and go direct to Chelmsford. After Yarranton's scheme nothing was done until 1733, when John Hoare made a survey. He proposed either a river improvement or a canal on a new line. Again Maldon objected, and overrode the proposals. John Smeaton and Thomas Yeoman made surveys in 1762, and Yeoman a further survey in 1765, used for an Act passed in 1766 to make the Chelmer navigable from Maldon to Chelmsford. However, lack of funds lead to nothing being done and the scheme languished until the 1790s, by which time Chelmsford found itself out of date, and pressure to make a waterway increased. In 1792 a scheme was put forward which would avoid Maldon and end the navigation near Heybridge. John Rennie was in charge of the surveys, and sent two assistants, Charles Wedge and Matthew Hall. Maldon opposition was unavailing, and the Act passed in 1793. Work was nominally under Rennie, but his assistant Richard Coates was actually in charge. By the spring of 1796, the lower part of the Chelmer & Blackwater was open to traffic, but the whole navigation was not open until 1797. After the Second World War, the sea lock at Heybridge Basin was enlarged for bigger timber ships from the Continent. There was one branch canal built privately, a line of about half a mile leaving the navigation just below the locks at Beeleigh. It opened at the same time as the main line and the last barge came up the branch in 1881. On the main line, traffic in timber continued from Heybridge Basin to Chelmsford up to 1972. Now pleasure craft use the navigation. See <15>.