At Last a Celebration
Talk 9: At Last a Celebration Eight months after the money needed for completion of the Regents Canal had been raised all was ready to open the link between Paddington and Limehouse. In May 1820 subscribers were told the Grand Junction had promised to provide 100 locks of water immediately and 800 over the coming months, so the dry, wide and deep trench beyond Camden was ready to be turned into a working canal. The well laid brickwork, the carefully crafted swing bridges, the heavy, newly finished lock gates and the freshly gravelled towpath would have allowed those associated with the whole project, from the ordinary day labourer, who may not have been born when the Grand Junction branch canal was opened, to John Nash, now nearly 70, to share in a sense of achievement. There was little time for sentiment because, after so many years, there was no time to be lost in generating a proper income, but when the day was set for the official opening, few would have grumbled at the cost of organising a proper celebration. Earlier in the year, on the death of his father, the Prince Regent had become king and so, shortly before the great day it was George the Fourth who sent an expression of His Majesties gratification at the completion of the great and useful work which, so he said, promised so much commercial advantage to the metropolis and such facility to the general commerce of the Empire. By nine o’clock, on August 1st, a crowd gathered at Battles Bridge, where the waterborne procession was scheduled to leave from the Maiden Lane basin.
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