Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Firepool Lock in Taunton, the first on the canal .
The Norman Taunton Castle, its Great Hall built in 1245, was defended by the Parliament-
arians against 10,000 Royalists. Used for the law courts, it was where Judge Jeffreys con-
demned 500 men in the Bloody Assizes after the Monmouth Rebellion. It now has the Somer-
set County Museum including the Somerset Light Infantry with an American flag captured
by them in 1813.
Downstream is the former wool and cider town of Taunton, Hardy's Toneborough. The
canal leaves the River Tone at Firepool Lock, with a mere 500mm drop. It is tucked in a
corner beneath tall trees and the first of the red-brick arch bridges, overlooked by the noisy
cattle market and the railway goods yard and water tower that was fed from the canal.
The canal breaks out into open country. Until Bridgwater, the canal passes through nothing
larger than the occasional agricultural hamlet and meets few main roads. It is an area of at-
tractive rolling Somerset countryside, neither Sedgemoor and the Somerset Levels, which it
skirts, nor the Quantock Hills, around which it arcs and which can be seen on the left at this
point and on numerous later occasions. Banks are usually low, allowing extensive views.
Beyond the M5 is the site of railway water troughs and then a large brick mill on the banks
of the River Tone is opposite the first houses of Creech St Michael. On the downstream side
of the mill is an aqueduct across the river, one of the few remaining signs of the Chard Canal,
which joined the Bridgwater & Taunton here. Operational only from 1842 to 1868, it was
something of an engineering marvel with no less than four inclined planes along its length.
This point is also marked by the first of the pillboxes that line the canal. During the Second
World War the War Office requested that the canal be turned into a defence line. So, in 1940,
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