The Grand Union Canal in England is part of the British canal system. It is the principal navigable waterway between London and the Midlands. Starting in London, one arm runs to Leicester and another ends in Birmingham, with the latter stretching for 137 miles (220 km) with 166 locks from London. The Birmingham line has a number of short branches to places including Slough, Aylesbury, Wendover, and Northampton. The Leicester line has two short arms of its own, to Market Harborough and Welford.
Cowley is a village contiguous with the town of Uxbridge in the London Borough of Hillingdon. A largely suburban village with 16 listed buildings, Cowley is 15.4 miles (24.8 km) west of Charing Cross, bordered to the west by Uxbridge Moor in the Green Belt and the River Colne, forming the border with Buckinghamshire. Cowley was an ancient parish in the historic county of Middlesex.
Yiewsley is a large suburban village in the London Borough of Hillingdon, England, 2 miles (3 km) south of Uxbridge, the borough's commercial and administrative centre. Yiewsley was a chapelry in the ancient parish of Hillingdon, Middlesex. The population of the ward was 12,979 at the 2011 Census.
The Stratford-upon-Avon Canal is a canal in the south Midlands of England. The canal, which was built between 1793 and 1816, runs for 25.5 miles (41.0 km) in total, and consists of two sections. The dividing line is at Kingswood Junction, which gives access to the Grand Union Canal. Following acquisition by a railway company in 1856, it gradually declined, the southern section being un-navigable by 1945, and the northern section little better.
The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal is a navigable narrow canal in Staffordshire and Worcestershire in the English Midlands. It is 46 miles (74 km) long, linking the River Severn at Stourport in Worcestershire with the Trent and Mersey Canal at Haywood Junction by Great Haywood.
The Oxford Canal is a 78-mile (126 km) narrowboat canal in southern central England linking the City of Oxford with the Coventry Canal at Hawkesbury via Banbury and Rugby. Completed in 1790, it connects to the River Thames at Oxford, and links with the Grand Union Canal, which it is combined with for 5 miles (8 km) between to the villages of Braunston and Napton-on-the-Hill.
The Llangollen Canal is a navigable canal crossing the border between England and Wales. The waterway links Llangollen in Denbighshire, north Wales, with Hurleston in south Cheshire, via the town of Ellesmere, Shropshire. The name, which was coined in the 1980s, is a modern designation for parts of the historic Ellesmere Canal and the Llangollen navigable feeder, both of which became part of the Shropshire Union Canals in 1846.
The Colne is a river and a tributary of the River Thames in England. Just over half its course is in south Hertfordshire. Downstream, it forms the boundary between Buckinghamshire and the London Borough of Hillingdon. The confluence with the River Thames is on the Staines reach at Staines-upon-Thames.
The Grand Junction Canal is a canal in England from Braunston in Northamptonshire to the River Thames at Brentford, with a number of branches. The mainline was built between 1793 and 1805, to improve the route from the Midlands to London, by-passing the upper reaches of the River Thames near Oxford, thus shortening the journey.
The Warwickshire ring is a connected series of canals forming a circuit around the West Midlands area of England. The ring is formed from the Coventry Canal, the Oxford Canal, the Grand Union Canal, the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal and the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal. It is a popular route with tourists due to its circular route and mixture of urban and rural landscapes.
The Buckingham Arm is an English canal that once ran from Cosgrove, Northamptonshire to Buckingham. It was built as an arm of the Grand Junction Canal in two separate phases, a broad canal to Old Stratford, which opened in 1800 and a narrow canal onwards to Buckingham, which opened in 1801. It was disused from 1932, and was dammed at the first bridge in 1944 to reduce leakage from the Grand Union Canal, as the Grand Junction had then become known, but was not finally abandoned until 1964. The remains were severed by the construction of new roads in the 1970s and again in the late 1980s. The section through Old Stratford and Deanshanger was sold off in the 1990s, and the route there has been lost to housing development. The Buckingham Canal Society was formed in 1992, and is actively pursuing a restoration programme. Some 440 yards (400 m) of the canal near Buckingham are now holding water, but the main focus in 2020 was at the Cosgrove end, where a restored channel would be accessible by boat from the Grand Union. Progress was made in September 2023, when 550 yards (500 m) of canal were reopened to navigation.
The Stourbridge Canal is a canal in the West Midlands of England. It links the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal with the Dudley Canal, and hence, via the Birmingham Canal Navigations, to Birmingham and the Black Country.
The Wendover Arm Canal is part of the Grand Union Canal in England, and forms part of the British canal system. It is usually known as the Wendover Canal, but historically its builders referred to their branch canals as Arms, hence its historical name of Wendover Arm. It was planned as a feeder to carry water from springs near the town of Wendover in Buckinghamshire to the main line of the Grand Junction Canal at Bulbourne near Startops End in Hertfordshire, but when it opened in 1799 it was made navigable, as the extra cost of making it was so small. Water supplies from Wendover were found to be inadequate, and a series of reservoirs were built. A pumping station at Whitehouses was superseded by the Tringford pumping station in 1817; its steam engines were replaced by diesel engines in 1911 and then by electric pumps.
Bordesley Junction is a canal junction where the Grand Union Canal splits near to Bordesley, Birmingham, England. It opened in 1844, when the Birmingham and Warwick Junction Canal was built as part of a scheme to bypass the congestion at the Farmers Bridge flight of locks.
Kings Norton Junction is the name of the canal junction where the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal terminates and meets the Worcester and Birmingham Canal at Kings Norton, Birmingham, England.
The Middlewich Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal is located in Cheshire, in the north west of England, and runs between Middlewich, where it joins the Trent and Mersey Canal, and Barbridge Junction, where it joins the main line of the Shropshire Union Canal. It is 10 miles (16 km) long, and was planned as part of the Chester Canal, which was authorised in 1772, but the company ran out of money, and construction did not begin until 1827. The Trent and Mersey insisted that there should be no direct connection at Middlewich, and instead built the short Wardle Canal to join the two, charging large compensation tolls for traffic passing along it.
Kingswood Junction is a canal junction where the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal meets the Grand Union Canal at Kingswood, Warwickshire, England.
The Pinn is a suburban, outer west London river. It has dendritic headwaters, the furthest is considered its source – in Harrow Weald. Its confluence with Frays River makes it a tributary of the Colne. It is one of three principal rivers wholly in the historic county of Middlesex.
The Paddington Canal or Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal is a 13+1⁄2-mile (22 km) canal to Paddington in central London, England. It runs from the west of the capital at Bull's Bridge in Hayes. Little Venice — its only junction — is with the Regent's Canal, London that runs to Limehouse Basin to the east. The arm and the two canals it links are fed by water by the Brent Reservoir. The Paddington Arm is part of a long pound that stretches for nearly thirty miles.
