Page:Rivers, Canals, Railways of Great Britain.djvu/118

 River Tone out of the tolls received from that navigation under the acts above-mentioned. The estimates for this canal and branches were made by Mr. Rennie, and are as follow;-

So confident were the subscribers of the ultimate success of this measure, and so eager were they to possess shares in the undertaking, that the sum of £571,800 was actually subscribed before the application to parliament; and yet, thirteen years afterwards, the following act was obtained by the same company, to enable them to abandon a great part of the line and branches.

The act of 5th George IV. is entitled,  'An Act to abridge, vary, extend and improve the Bristol and Taunton Canal Navigation, and to alter the Powers of an Act of the Fifty-first Year of his late Majesty, for making the said Canal.'  This act, therefore, repeals so much of the former as relates to the line of the proposed canal, between Morgan's Pill, on the Avon, and the parish of Clevdon, with the branch to Nailsea; and the company had already forfeited all right to make that part between Clevdon and the Parrett, with the Cheddar Branch, by having neglected to execute them within the prescribed period of four years from the passing of the former act.

Instead, therefore, of a navigation from the River Avon, the company determined to make it only from the River Parrett, a little above Bridgewater, to the town of Taunton, with some alterations in the original line between those places; they, consequently, have abandoned their original title, and are incorporated in this act by the name of "The Company of Proprietors of the Bridgewater and Taunton Canal Navigation." The deviation in the original line was from Mansell, through the parish of North Petherton and chapelry of North Newton, to the Parrett, a distance of five miles and a quarter, with a fall of 35 feet, by five locks. There is also a branch, with a dock or basin, and locks to communicate with the Parrett Navigation, in the parishes of Bridgewater and North Petherton, and chapelry of North Newton.