Old boat moored near Chestnut Lane canal bridge

After an appointment at my doctor’s surgery I drove on to arrange a service and MOT at Dinwoodie Motors,  my small garage on a trading estate west of the town centre and lying between the old canal and the River Frome. To get to the garage I had to drive across the recently replaced swing bridge over the canal, and as I did so I spotted this old wooden boat moored by a new landing.

On my return I parked near the bridge and grabbed a couple of pictures of the canal looking towards the west. This Stroudwater canal is being renovated in stages, with the main burst of energy a few miles closer to the River Severn where a section of the old abandoned canal has to be rebuilt. As the canal has yet to rejoin the national waterway network, this boat must have been brought to be launched at the newly built slipway nearby. I knew that I would be too busy for the rest of the day to get any other pictures.

I turned around and thought I’d also record this little house (as an 'Extra'), which is unusual. It is one of very few Cotswold Stone buildings in this area down in the flood plain of the river. The stone was almost certainly quarried a few hundred yards away on the opposite side of the valley, where Fromehall Mill was built to use the river’s water for power. It is built of very similar stone. I think this was originally two cottages as you can probably see the two front door frames in the stonework. If they were originally canal worker’s cottages they would probably have been built in the early 19th century, if not earlier, when the canal was built.