The River Wey is a strange beast, neither a river nor a canal but a navigation, a canalized waterway and one of the very earliest in the country, having been created between 1651 -53. Sir Richard Weston was the motivating force behind the project. He lived at nearby Sutton Place, later to be infamous as home to John Paul Getty and today one of the finest, privately-owned Tudor houses in the country. Interested in agricultural improvements to his estate, Weston created a 3 mile cut through his land in 1618-19, complete with towing path, bridges and sluices to allow him to control the river flow and flood or drain his land at will. However, as a Catholic and Royalist, his property was sequestrated during the English Civil War and he fled to the Low Countries where he studied inland navigation and the working of pound locks (ie with two gates whereas before the English had only used the more primitive flash locks with one gate).
After much lobbying, Weston was later acquitted and his lands returned to him. He subsequently became interested in improving navigation on the Wey and presented a Bill to Parliament allowing the creation of the navigation we know today. The work was completed within two years and cost a, then huge, £15,000. There were around 9 miles of new cuts, four weirs, twelve bridges and a wharf at Guildford. Ten new locks were constructed between Guildford and the Thames, dropping the water level by 60 feet.
Soon the navigation was transporting heavy goods to London – corn, flour, timber from the extensive Surrey forest and gunpowder from the nearby Chilworth works. Coal, sugar and bark (used for tanning) were the principle return cargos. The trade in timber was long-established and accelerated rapidly with the extra convenience offered by the navigation. Much of the timber used in the reconstruction of London after the Great Fire was transported down the navigation as was stone from the Guildford quarries for the new St Paul’s Cathedral.
The navigation was extended as far as Godalming in the mid C18 and trade continued to flourish until the coming of the railways in the 1840’s. The traffic in corn however remained at a respectable level and it was not until the 1930’s that trade started to decline to serious levels. When the last mill closed in the 1960’s, the navigation was no longer viable and it was passed to the National Trust in 1964, who have managed it ever since, restoring it where necessary and maintaining locks, towpath and bridges. It is now used almost entirely by recreational boaters and its towpath by walkers and cyclists. It provides a wonderful peaceful, traffic free and tranquil route through the towns and countryside along its way.
The National Trust now own and maintain the Wey and Godalming Navigation from their base at Dapdune Wharf in the centre of Guildford. They have a café and information centre and provide boat trips along the navigation from here.
