Historian 'ashamed' of Oxford Canal

THE Waterway Historian Mark Davies told actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales that he felt 'ashamed' to welcome people to Isis Lock during the filming of their Great Canal Journeys television documentary.

Such was the amount of graffiti on structures and the collapsing banks around the lock where filming was taking place, Alan Tilbury tells us.

Mark, whose boat is moored near the lock tells that 'daubings kept re-emerging on bridges and walls, despite recent cleaning by volunteers'.

State of dereliction

He added that there are however wider concerns among boaters that sections of the Oxford Canal towpath in North Oxford are being left to decay, with Timothy West telling that the state of the Oxford Canal was a 'far cry' from when he and his wife visited 40 years ago, and that the canal was in a 'state of dereliction.

During a sequence in the filming the boat grounded between Jericho and Wolvercote, such was the result of the lack of dredging.

Need of urgent attention

Jon Ody too, an engineer at Green Boat Services, told that many sections of the towpath were in need of urgent attention, though a 'disproportionate' amount of money had been spent on the area near Jericho, where £158,000 had been spent on a very short stretch of resurfacing last month for cyclists, though in Wolvercote the whole bank is falling apart in places. It needs repairing, because it is in decline.

He told that there had been talk of dredging for years that together with overgrowing branches makes the canal shallower and narrower.

A spokesman for the Trust, Neil Owen stated:

"We acknowledge there is a problem with erosion in some places which has caused the edge of the towpath to wash away. We are monitoring the situation to make sure it doesn't get worse and will work out what repairs are needed."