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Somerset Coal Canal Photographic Survey - complementing an access survey
Somerset Coal Canal Photographic Survey - how it happened
Somerset Coal Canal Photographic Survey - future possibilities
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Somerset Coal Canal Photographic Survey - complementing an access survey
Location: Bath and NE Somerset
Martin Leathwood has lived in the Thornbury area for thirty years, quite a long way from the coal canal with which he has been involved for about five years:
"I am a chartered accountant, and first became involved when AIBT (Avon Industrial Buildings Trust) were awarded a large Lottery grant, about £750,000, to restore the Midford Aqueduct, a lovely Bath stone aqueduct on the Somerset Coal Canal.
Part of the scheme was to produce a conservation and access study of the whole canal, so we started looking for suitable consultants. Some people from UWE (University of the West of England) wanted to produce a computerised model of the canal but that would have cost an absolute fortune.
Richard Aston and Chris Giles, working as the Rural Environmental Partnership, suggested that, as well as the study, we also do a photographic survey. They showed us a photo survey they had already done as part of their job in South Gloucestershire on the River Frome, from Frenchay out to Iron Acton.
We realised that we would need more funds to do the photo survey, so we went to LHI because this relatively small project seemed to fit their objective of involving the community in local heritage.
Our idea was that this would be the human face of the access project. We hoped to include people from along the whole line of the canal. This would provide a user-friendly way into the conservation access study, which is a huge tome of a document, and, hopefully, get people interested in follow up projects in the future.
Without LHI, it wouldn't have happened. We would probably have gone through and produced our very worthy study, but it might have ended up sitting undiscovered in public libraries because people didn’t know of its existence! The photographic survey really excited me and the rest of our council because it brings awareness of the coal canal to a much wider range of people.
We knew about LHI through BTCV - the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers. They had introduced an exceptionally good guide to grants and money available for conservation and environmental projects.
Richard and Chris made the application and they found it quite easy to fill in the forms and put the project together, with a bit of advice from the LHI regional team to make certain that they were going along the right tracks."
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