Hawkesbury Junction

Hawkesbury Junction
The engine house and Coventry Canal on the left, with the Oxford Canal on the right
Specifications
Status	Open
Navigation authority	Canal and River Trust
History
Date completed	1803

Hawkesbury Junction or Sutton Stop (grid reference SP360846) is a canal junction at the northern limit of the Oxford Canal where it meets the Coventry Canal, near Hawkesbury Village, Warwickshire, on the West Midlands county border, England. The alternative name, Sutton Stop, arises from the name of a family which provided several lock keepers there in the nineteenth century.

The Coventry Canal was authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1768, and although the long term aim was to link Coventry to the Grand Trunk Canal, (later called the Trent and Mersey Canal), the first priority was to reach the coalfields at Bedworth, so that coal could be shipped to Coventry. The first 10 miles (16 km) were completed in 1769, and coal traffic proved profitable. The Oxford Canal was authorised in that year, and was built as a contour canal by James Brindley, which made it rather inefficient for the transport of goods. Brindley died in 1772, and the line from Coventry to Banbury was completed by Samuel Simcock in 1778.

The junction between the canals was the source of great controversy. The Oxford Canal's Act of Parliament contained clauses which stipulated that both companies had the right to the tolls on the other's canal for certain traffic which passed between them. Thus the tolls for all coal traffic on the first 2 miles (3.2 km) of the Oxford Canal were to go to the Coventry company, while tolls which the Coventry Canal collected for the first 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of travel by all goods except coal which had passed through the junction were to be given to the Oxford company. The junction was originally to be located at Gosford Green, but Brindley changed his mind while the bill was in Parliament, and tried to get the junction moved to Bedworth. This would have deprived the Coventry Canal of tolls on all coal traffic using the Oxford Canal, and so a compromise was reached. Longford was chosen as the site for the junction, and the compensation clauses were added to ensure that the Coventry Canal received much the same revenue as it would have done, had the junction been at Gosford. It was a complicated solution, and required both canals to run parallel to one another for some distance.