Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the bridge is Little Venice or Browning's Pool, one of the best known canal sights in Lon-
don. Opened in 1801, the basin includes Rat Island or Browning's Island, an area of weeping
willow trees, popular with mallards, tufted ducks, Canada geese, moorhens, coots and swans
and named after Robert Browning, who lived from 1862 to 1887 in Warwick Crescent in a
house that has since been demolished.
Little Venice is one of the most colourful canal scenes in London, an urban waterway at its
most classy. Jason's Trip operates from here, inaugurated in 1951 for the Festival of Britain,
and Jenny Wren Canal Cruises operate to Camden along the Regent's Canal, which leaves
the northern end of the basin. Waterbus services began from here in 1959.
The canal continues through a park and beneath the Westway, the A40 on the top deck
and the A404 Harrow Road underneath. The A4206 Bishop's Road Bridge upgrade involved
jacking the old bridge up 10m while its replacement was built underneath, in the process re-
moving an early Brunel bridge for relocation over the canal. Craft are moored in front of
Brunel's railway terminus for south-west England and Wales. Agatha Christie and Arthur
Conan Doyle were among its repeated users in literature. Indeed, Dr Watson's surgery was
near the station in the Sherlock Holmes stories.
One old building has crane brackets and other ironwork bolted to it to help unload barges,
while other buildings are recent. A modern cable-stayed footbridge crosses Paddington
Waterside near St Mary's Hospital where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1828 -
his laboratory now a museum - and there is a stained glass window dedicated to him in St
James' church.
The Regent's Canal, named after the future George IV, was completed in 1820, running
through open country to the north of London to link the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union
Canal with the docks. It was part of John Nash's metropolitan improvements of the Regency,
the only coordinated building plan in the capital's history, a scheme that included Regent's
Park, St James' Park, Regent Street, Trafalgar Square, the Strand and the Suffolk Street areas.
The canal carried much coal, timber, building materials and food produce, serving many
factories along its length, but never made the anticipated profit because of competition from
the railways. Indeed, the canal's owners attempted to turn it into a railway in 1845. It was the
ceasing of munitions traffic after 1945 that really sent the canal into decline although work-
ing narrowboats and horse- and tractor-drawn dumb lighters continued until the early 1960s
and there is still some trade, mostly in timber.
