Oxfordshire, England

Shrivenham Canal Park slipway (Ron Martin Memorial Slipway)

Launch — The Ron Martin Memorial Slipway, built by the Trust's West Vale branch in 1998 to a design supplied by the Inland Waterways Association and named for a recently deceased IWA member, lands on the restored pound within Shrivenham Canal Park.

Parking — A small car park serves Shrivenham Canal Park from Stainswick Lane (nearest postcode SN6 8DW); no capacity, charge or time restriction is published.

Access — Reached via Stainswick Lane, off Shrivenham High Street; a permissive footpath the Trust agreed with the landowner runs along part of the old canal line towards Townsend Road. No gates, barriers or opening hours are published for the park.

Season — Water levels are unreliable through dry periods (see Conditions to check below); no closure calendar or seasonal restriction is published.

Regulations — The Wilts & Berks Canal is owned in separate stretches by the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust and local councils rather than by the Canal & River Trust or the Environment Agency. The Trust states elsewhere on its site that it "is unable to authorise use of the waterway by canoers and kayakers etc. but does encourage responsible use by members of the public at their own risk using their own insurance"; no statement specific to this pound has been published.

A short, isolated pound of the Wilts & Berks Canal in Shrivenham Canal Park, on the east side of Stainswick Lane in Oxfordshire, and one of only a few lengths of the largely abandoned 52-mile canal that the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust owns outright.

The roughly 100-metre pound had been infilled and used as the local tip before restoration; excavating at its eastern end later uncovered both the original 1805 brick culvert running beneath the canal bed, found blocked and damaged, and a 1996 replacement pipe leaking at its joints. Wildflower meadow, a woodland copse and ponds now line the banks, with bird and bat boxes fixed to trees around the park.

The wider Wilts & Berks Canal opened in 1810 and ran 52 miles from the Kennet & Avon Canal at Semington to the Thames at Abingdon, but was abandoned in 1914, a fate hastened by a breach at Stanley aqueduct in 1901; most of its course has since been built over or lost to infill.

Nearby

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Grass Roots

Café on The Mall in Shrivenham village, about 1.6 km from the launch.

Conditions to check

Limited exit

A short, isolated pound of roughly 100 metres, not connected to any other navigable length of the Wilts & Berks Canal.

Source

Shallow or rocky

Water levels drop in dry weather because of leaks in the canal bed and are maintained by a solar-powered pump.

Source

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