Canal Cottage And Outbuilding

Canal Cottage and Outbuilding, Padworth

A two-storey 18th-century cottage and single-storey outbuilding, associated with the Kennet Navigation and subsequently the Kennet and Avon Canal. Both are constructed of handmade brick with tile roofs and some later brickwork. The cottage was originally a simple two-up-two-down design, but a small extension has been added. The outbuilding is a single-room structure.

The cottage's south-east facing façade has a central doorway with a hood carried on carved brackets, flanked by a casement window on each side, with corresponding casements on the first floor. The ground floor windows have segmental brick arches. A half-hipped tiled roof features an external end stack projecting from the north-east gable end, which partly covers two bricked-up windows, one at each storey, both with segmental arches. The rear (north-west) elevation has a casement window with segmental arch at ground floor level and a single casement window at first floor level. There is a modern brick extension with a 20th-century window and door. The south-west end has a bricked-up window at ground floor level and a casement window at first floor level, both with segmental arches. All windows are 20th-century replacements.

The outbuilding has an entrance on the south-west side with one 20th-century window and a pitched roof. There is a 20th-century replacement window on the rear (north-east) side. The north-west end has an internal gable stack and the south-east end shows the exposed queen post roof construction.

The cottage interior has been modified to serve as a tea and book shop for the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, with modern fittings, but retains several 18th and 19th-century features: six-panel front and back doors with glass in the upper two panels, internal panelled and plank doors, and tall beaded skirting board on the first floor landing. The main ground floor room has a boxed-in cross beam and an exposed wall plate. The straight enclosed staircase has 19th-century panelling on one side. The fireplace was not seen and may be boxed in; it would have been a later addition. The outbuilding contains an early 19th-century cast iron range and copper. Both buildings have timber queen post roof trusses with clasped purlins. The outbuilding has a pair of large raking struts on its south-east wall, which may indicate a date earlier than the 18th century.

The buildings date to the early 18th century and probably predate the wharf and canal construction, though they were subsequently used as canal buildings from the late 18th century into the 19th century. The cottage and outbuilding stand on a different alignment to the canal, as shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1878, and their plot is cut by the wharf. The map reveals they align with a group of farm buildings to the north-west, now no longer extant, and shows the outbuilding was larger than its present size.

The Kennet Navigation, completed in 1723, was the first attempt to make the waterway navigable for larger craft, though the River Kennet had been navigable from the Thames to Reading since the 14th century. Aldermaston Wharf became a major centre on the Kennet Navigation; the cottage and outbuilding may date from the early phase of its 18th-century construction. In 1788, a decision was taken to connect the Kennet Navigation at Newbury to the Avon Navigation at Bath, incorporating Aldermaston Wharf. Construction of the Kennet and Avon Canal began in 1794 and was completed in 1810, enabling waterway navigation from Bristol to Reading. Aldermaston Wharf comprised numerous buildings including Canal Cottage, which became a Lengthman's cottage (for a man responsible for a set length of the canal), with the outbuilding used for washing and cooking. Contemporary 18th and 19th-century wharf buildings have largely disappeared or been converted, such as the Wharfinger's cottage, stables, malthouse, brewery and cranes. The nearby Aldermaston Lock was enlarged in 1760 to accommodate Newbury barges.

With the advent of the railway from London to Bristol in the 1830s, the canal began to decline. In 1852 the canal was sold to the Great Western Railway. It continued in use to a lesser extent until nationalised in 1948 under the British Transport Commission. In 1962 ownership passed to the British Waterways Board.