£1.5m canal restoration at Cwmbran

The project to restore a derelict section of the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal in Cwmbran has begun. £854,500 of the £1.5m funding has come from a Heritage Lottery Fund. The rest of the funding has come from Torfaen County Borough Council and regeneration grants.

Eight locks will be restored over the next three years along the one and a half kilometre stretch of canal. The money will be used to train new and existing volunteers, including the long term unemployed, with the heritage construction skills and canal management techniques needed to carry out the restoration work.

An estimated 270 volunteers will take part in the project, clocking up 6510 volunteer days with 150 taking part in training and a further 50 receiving accredited training. The aim is to see boating, fishing and canoeing taking place along this stretch of waterway once again for the benefit of visitors and locals.

According to British Waterways, 13 million people visit waterways every year, almost 20 million cycle visits are made to canals and with 35,000 boats afloat across the UK, canals and rivers are now busier than they were at the height of the industrial revolution.

The project will follow in the footsteps of the successful Fourteen Locks project which HLF supported with a £700,000 investment. The project was completed in 2010 and now welcomes 53 thousand visitors per year to the Canal Centre at Newport and many more to what is considered to be Britain's most picturesque canal.

The Monmouthshire and Brecon canal was constructed in a number of phases during the late 18th Century and early 19th century to transport coal, iron, ore and limestone to the docks at Newport. Starting life as two separate canals, the two were linked in 1812. At the time, roads were poor and transportation by water was the cheapest and most efficient way to move goods.

The use of canals for transporting goods died out in the latter half of the 20th century and this stretch of canal was formally abandoned in 1962. This project will restore the 1.5km stretch of the canal, to the south of Cwmbran between Ty Coch Lane Bridge to Pentre Lane, which includes a flight of eight locks and five Grade 2 listed bridges.