The original idea for a canal…
The roots of the Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway go back 200 years to October 1811, when a group of Bedford businessmen met with the Mayor of Bedford to discuss the trade benefits to be gained from a link between the River Great Ouse and the Grand Junction Canal (as the Grand Union was called then). Local roads were poor, and they hoped that the canal would lead to greater prosperity for towns along the route and into the Fens.
They commissioned John Rennie, the famous canal engineer to ride the route and report on possibilities. Rennie did so, setting out two possible costed route options on just five sides of foolscap (which can be seen in the Beds County Archive). A meeting was held at the (then brand new) Swan Hotel in Bedford, and a prospectus was published. Samuel Whitbread, of the brewing family, MP for Bedford at the time and a radical thinker, was a leading supporter of the scheme.
However, the project fell through, and Rennie’s preferred route was taken by the Bedford-Bletchley railway in the 1840s.
A further attempt to build a canal link in 1892 also came to nothing – by this stage rail and road transport were well developed, and Bedford had acquired new housing by the Embankment and pleasure boats on the river, making canal trade less attractive.
… Brought up to date for the 21st century
Almost 200 years later, in 1994, another radical thinker, Brian Young – a Bedford resident and IWA member - had the idea of getting the canal built as part of the celebration of the new Millennium. His vision was for A Waterway for All – improving the quality of the local environment for everyone, and serving the new industries of leisure, tourism, and communications – in short, reinventing canals for the 21st century.
Brian founded the Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway Trust as an informal group. With local support, the Trust made a bid for funding from the Millennium commission, which got as far as the shortlist that included the Eden project and the Falkirk Wheel, but failed for lack of matched funding.
In the year 2000, British Waterways started working with the Trust to investigate the feasibility of the project, and in November of the same year, the Trust became a formal voluntary organisation with a growing, active membership.
Initial feasibility study in 2001
In March 2001 the project partnership was launched at the Community Forest in Marston Vale. Partners clubbed together to fund the first feasibility study, which was undertaken by Halcrow in study summer 2001. Nine route options were identified for consultation. Click here to see for feasibility study summary. (PDF 48KB). Click here to see a map that shows the 9 options with the labelling 1-3 and A–C at each end.
Over the next 18 months, out of widespread consultation with local people and all the public bodies involved, a clear route favourite emerged, and this was publicly announced in February 2003.
Selecting the chosen route in 2003
The Waterway route with the most public and political support, and the greatest potential to be built, was considered to be ‘route 1A’ – the route that runs:
- from the heart of Milton Keynes, at the foot of the city centre expansion area
- through development sites on the eastern flank of the city to the M1
- down a major drop at Brogborough into the Marston Vale
- through the Forest Centre, skirting Stewartby Lake and under the A421 into Wootton
- into Kempston through the western bypass area
- joining the River Great Ouse where it becomes navigable in Kempston
- through Town Lock in the centre of Bedford and ending at Cardington Lock in the Country Park.
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Making a reality of the route from 2004 onwards
This route has been subject to detailed technical work on line and level, water supply and cost-benefit, and costings created. Click here for our Project Plan to find out more.
In 2006, the Trust, with the full support of Partners and Volunteers, changed its status to be come a charity and company limited by guarantee, so that it is in a better position to raise funds for the development of the Waterway.
Our first major bid, to the BIG Lottery, resulted in the Milton Keynes Waterway Park being shortlisted to one of just 23 projects that were given development funding to work up a full ‘stage 2 bid’ in May 2007. This funding was used for all the planning application studies and civil and landscape engineering design work for the first 6km of the route; Milton Keynes Waterway Park, resulting in the planning application being granted. The B&MK bid to the BIG Lottery was one of 11 projects judged sound and fundable, narrowly missing the final list of 3 projects that were funded.
In 2009, an Economic Impact Report was commissioned jointly by the Environment Agency, Bedfordshire County Council and the Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway Trust from acknowledged experts in the field - SQW consulting – this report shows how the Waterway can offer a unique perspective on stimulating growth in the current climate.
Download the Executive Summary and the Full Economic Impact Report here.
Conscious of the fact that belief in the deliverability of the project is as significant as pulling together the funds to build it, this report provides the hard evidence to match our presumptions about the economic impact the waterway will have at local, sub-regional and regional levels. The report reveals the dramatic (but conservatively estimated) impact of the project at all levels.
The SQW Economic Impact Study demonstrates that the project ticks all the key Government boxes and can deliver dramatic ‘place shaping’ benefits to an area and region that arguably lacks the character and definition it needs to stand out in order to attract inward investment and growth.
Then, in October 2009, the first structure funded for the Waterway; an underpass to carry the B&MK Waterway multi-user path beneath the new A421 near Stewartby Lake was completed on schedule.
The underpass as at 22 Sep 09.
May 2010 saw the setting up of the B&MK Waterway Consortium, and in November that year the Trust held its 1st Annual Partnership Conference, where, one hundred and ninety-nine years to the day since the Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway (B&MK) was first proposed, the Mayor of Bedford Borough, Dave Hodgson, outlined his vision of how the waterway is at the heart of plans to regenerate the locality. He emphasised how progressing with "bite size chunks" would make the project come alive. "More chunks each year will make sure this is deliverable," he said.
Mayor Dave Hodgson, Chair of the B&MK Waterway Consortium and Jane Wolfson, Chair of the B&MK Waterway Trust.
More than 100 delegates from local authorities, agencies, business, academia, sport and leisure and local communities were present at the first B&MK Partnership conference at the Marston Vale Forest Centre last Thursday (November 4), when the 199th anniversary of the meeting called by the then Mayor of Bedford, Charles Short, was celebrated, together with the founding of the B&MK Waterway Trust ten years ago by the late Brian Young, a Bedford resident.
Erin Vos, of the Environment Agency, outlined progress on the Bedford Waterspace Strategy which is jointly funded by Bedford Borough and is focusing on the stretch of the Great Ouse through Bedford from Bromham Bridge to Willington Lock.
Richard Wood (a B&MK director) who, together with Simon Collier (David Lock Associates), Drew Marchant (Renaissance Bedford) and Mark Seward (Halcrow) "walked the A-Z of the route" detailing some of the "bite size chunks" of the project.
James Clifton (British Waterways) outlined the background and thinking behind the organisation's imminent transformation from a quango to charitable status.
Click here for the full story
Watch this space for the next step in our history.
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