Canal lease signed on 'historic' day for Stroud (From Stroud News and Journal)

Canal lease signed on 'historic' day for Stroud

STROUD'S canals were signed over to restoration leaders at British Waterways this week in what has been heralded as a "momentous day" for the district.

Landowners the Company of Proprietors, one of the oldest canal companies in Britain, signed the Stroudwater Navigation over on a 999-year lease on Wednesday, April 13.

Company and British Waterways bosses signed the document with quill pens in the shadow of the Old Company Headquarters at Wallbridge, just a stone's throw from the canal.

The move will help ensure public access onto the land and represents a vital step in British Waterways' ambitious canal restoration project, expected to cost more than £23 million.

"It is a proud moment for us," said Robin Evans, chief executive of British Waterways.

"It is a great setting,, a great idea and I know we will look back on this as a really significant step in a great endeavour."

The Cotswold Canals partnership, led by British Waterways, is planning to restore a six mile stretch of canal from The Ocean at Stonehouse in the west to Brimscombe Port in the east.

Now the lease is secured the partnership hope to start work in 2006, in a project they claim will provide a tourism boom and as much as £6.8 million a year for the local economy.

The Company of Proprietors, who were formed in 1779 and have been masters of the Stroudwater Navigation ever since, expressed their excitement at the handover.

"I think it is a really momentous day," said Neville Nelder, chairman of the Company of Proprietors.

"We want to look at it as a positive step that is vital to the restoration."

The second stage of British Waterway's bid for £11.3 million of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, just under half the expected cost of the project, is due to be submitted in August this year.