Liquid Assets
Developers are
now looking to Southern England’s lost canals
as lucrative new sites, says HUGH PEARMAN
I’m driving down rutted tracks in the Wiltshire countryside, scrambling over fences and squelching along overgrown paths. I am looking for a muddy ditch. Also known as a lost waterway. The Wilts & Berks Canal, opened in 1810, abandoned since 1914 but now being restored, is the key to a whole series of new rural housing developments. Somewhere along it, “Canalville” will be born.
The Wilts &
Berks, as it is known, is 52 miles long. It runs (or ran, since parts are
obliterated) from Abingdon on the Thames in a long, gentle curve through some of
the most evocative place names in England: Wantage, the Vale of White Horse at
Uffington, Wootton Bassett and down past Lacock and Melksham to join the Kennet
and Avon Canal not far from Bradford-on-Avon and Bath. Branches fork off to
Chippenham and Calne. A spur, the nine-mile North Wilts Canal, runs up to
Cricklade. There it joins another live restoration project, the Thames and
Severn Canal. And in the middle of it all — the very opposite of bucolic — is
fast-expanding Swindon.
A glance at the map shows the possibilities for boating enthusiasts.
They’re talking of the Wessex Waterway Network, a sequence of interlinking
restored canals and rivers that will extend the existing largely Midlands based
waterways system to the southwest. Which is just lovely if you like messing
about in boats, but what has it got to do with new homes?
It is a marvellously simple equation. Homes built next to (safe) water
sell for more money than exactly the same homes built elsewhere. About 20%
more, according to research by the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust and evidence from
local estate agents. Even being vaguely near water is enough to lift prices: up
to 500 metres from a canal, houses still fetch about 8% more. So you can
persuade house builders to help pay for the restoration of a canal because this
creates a waterside that will increase the value of their product.
Thus you have a string of country towns — where lots of people want to
live — plus a biggish, expanding town with lots of jobs, all connected by a
canal that lots of other people want to restore and use. British Waterways,
meanwhile, has done research on other restored canals and found they generate so
much money for their local economies that they will cover the cost of their
restoration in about 10 years. So it looks like a win-win situation.
left, the
Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal near Wantage.
I did find the canal, in a number of places. Sometimes fully restored,
with brand-new locks and bridges, sometimes scarcely discernible. But it’s
there, lurking away, ripe for discovery. Now a plan has been drawn up by the
Wilts & Berks Canal Partnership, which includes all the relevant local
authorities and interest groups, plus national waterways organisations. The
plan is this: to get the canal largely back into use by 2014, a century after it
was officially abandoned. To get started, they want to tackle “flagship
schemes” at the four main canal junctions in Melksham, Swindon, Cricklade and
Abingdon. Then they will join up the dots.
House builders Bryant Homes and Tarmac are in the early stages of working
with the canal partnership on developments in Swindon and Cricklade
respectively. But these will be extensions to existing towns — can a true
“Canalville” be created in its own right? Plenty of people in Grove and
Wantage think so. The waterway passes between the two closely neighbouring
towns. There has always been resistance to the idea of them blurring together
with conventional suburban estates. However, a separate canal village, built on
an industrial site, is another matter.
Plans
for the canal network.
This idea is widely supported because the revival of the waterway — complete with new lagoons — will create a clear line of demarcation between the two settlements. Supporters include Sir Frank Williams, whose Formula One motor-racing business is based in Grove. “The scheme adds a whole new dimension to the amenities in the local community and will enrich the environment for everybody, including many WilliamsF1 employees who live in the area,” says the motor-racing legend. He has another reason: rival schemes for the district, following the local council’s plan, involve building homes north of Grove near his factory, which Williams believes would create a conflict with his expanding (and often noisy) business. The canal village would be to the south of Grove.
A public inquiry to
assess the rival schemes opens next month.
The
“Canalville” plan was
drawn up by a locally led consortium, the Grove & Wantage Waterside. It plans to
create lagoons with moorings leading off the canal, with housing running round
the inner lagoon. And it has made a straightforward calculation. The added
value of 750 new homes with water views is about £18.75m. If the developers
keep half that, and the rest goes towards restoring the canal, then that,
combined with other public-sector money available, is a lot of cash towards
reviving the waterway.
Typically, a new canalside home in Wiltshire fetches £60,000 more than an
average home, bringing it to about £300,000. Homes a bit further away from the
water but with glimpses of it are worth about £19,000 more than a landlocked
one. If house prices rise, the differential increases and more cash goes into
the pot for the canal.
You don’t want any old development, though. There are already far too
many bad housing estates around the waterways network. With any luck, the
added-value element ought to encourage better-quality developments, but don’t
count on it.
Perhaps a quality standard to aim for is that offered by the upmarket
homes to be found not far away in the nature reserve of Lower Mill estate in the
Cotswold Water Park, near the Thames and Severn Canal. There, waterside homes
designed by architect Richard Reid sell for between £295,000 and £2m. The
message for the dear old Wilts & Berks is clear. Aim high and hold out for the
best.
¯Grove & Wantage Waterside, 01235 227 700, www.ourwaywaterway.org; Lower Mill
estate, 01285 869 489, www.lowermillestate. com; Wilts & Berks Canal Trust, 0845
226 8567, www.wbct.org.uk
Times On Line April 3rd 2005
