Request for info on unrepealed legislation permitting canal construction

[Roberta]

It is my understanding that more legislation was passed than was acted upon, given Canal Mania and financial bubbles etc. The routes were surveyed to enable the construction of a canal from A to B, and Parliament was persuaded to pass an act specific to that route, with the historical equivalent of compuslory purchase orders, or the right to serve such orders upon the hapless landowners. Then the canal was never built. Is there any case where those orders still hold some legal water? Could anyone direct me to resources or experts who could help me understand these issues better? Many thanks!

[Derek R.]

Interesting thought, but I feel that is all it can be. If you fancy coughing up for a bit of canal building resurrection of former Acts passed before Parliament, you will not only find most of them under housing estates, ring roads and motorways which in the process of planning would almost certainly have caused any prior unused Acts to be repealed or made null and void by some means - but also the little problem of raising the finance necessary - the very same problem that stopped their construction in the first place!

 

A great many canals were projected at one time, and many failed the test of perceived viability therefore not gaining the necessary Acts. But that's another matter.

 

Try BW Archives at Gloucester, I would think they would be a fair bet for more info.

 

Derek

[Pluto]

It is my understanding that more legislation was passed than was acted upon, given Canal Mania and financial bubbles etc. The routes were surveyed to enable the construction of a canal from A to B, and Parliament was persuaded to pass an act specific to that route, with the historical equivalent of compuslory purchase orders, or the right to serve such orders upon the hapless landowners. Then the canal was never built. Is there any case where those orders still hold some legal water? Could anyone direct me to resources or experts who could help me understand these issues better? Many thanks!

It could depend upon the original Act, which could contain a time limiting clause. The Douglas Navigation Act certainly had one, the permissions granted by the Act disappearing after ten years, IIRC, if construction was not completed. In this case, there was a second application to extend the time limit by ten years, and construction was rushed through to complete the navigation in 1741, twenty years after the initial Act.

[Roberta]

Thanks for the prompt reply! My theoretical interest is not in trying to finance my own canal, but in ensuring that someone else does not nefariously attempt to dig a ditch through land I am considering buying. Just as a parcel of property is checked by solicitors before a client purchases it to ensure that it is not bisected by rights of way, so -- I would hazard -- it should be checked to see if ancient possibilities of canals snake through it. Who might know about this?

[Derek R.]

Thanks for the prompt reply! My theoretical interest is not in trying to finance my own canal, but in ensuring that someone else does not nefariously attempt to dig a ditch through land I am considering buying. Just as a parcel of property is checked by solicitors before a client purchases it to ensure that it is not bisected by rights of way, so -- I would hazard -- it should be checked to see if ancient possibilities of canals snake through it. Who might know about this?

 

Apply to your County Council with regard to a search of some sort for title deeds to planned and aborted navigations through your land.

You might also like to contact David Sharpe who has written a paragraph here:

http://www.lhcrt.org.uk/cbw37.htm

 

I have no connection nor knowledge of that society nor its persons, and this is only from a quick Google search headed 'canal through land'.

 

Hope it helps.

[magpie patrick]

Thanks for the prompt reply! My theoretical interest is not in trying to finance my own canal, but in ensuring that someone else does not nefariously attempt to dig a ditch through land I am considering buying. Just as a parcel of property is checked by solicitors before a client purchases it to ensure that it is not bisected by rights of way, so -- I would hazard -- it should be checked to see if ancient possibilities of canals snake through it. Who might know about this?

 

I would strongly recommend that, assuming you have some idea which canal it is that was proposed, you do some research yourself on this, unless you can get a legal expert who is experienced in these matters they can miss things, and reading the original act and any subsequent acts IN THEIR ENTIRETY may be necessary (you may need legal assistance on how to interpret them though.)

 

It has already been mentioned that powers may be time limited, it is also the case that if part of the canal were built then legally abandonded then the powers to build any more of it were probably repealed upon abandonment.

 

Also, if the company proposing the canal were wound up, measures would have been taken at this stage and it is likely that any powers were extinguished then. In any event, a court of law would, some one or two centuries later, determine that in winding up the original company had abandoned it's rights to exercise these powers.

 

Just occasionally however land and powers are vested in a legal entity that has become moribund, and then it gets sticky.

[Roberta]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply. It has been a thought-provoking thread -- especially the phrase immediately above. Gotta love those adjectives in combination: "moribund" and "sticky"!