Building the canal
The Wilts and Berks Canal was authorised by an Act of Parliament that received royal assent on 30 April 1795. Work began in 1796 near Semington, where the canal was to join the Kennet and Avon, and it was built eastwards in stages, reaching Swindon in 1804 and the Vale of White Horse in 1805. The whole 51-mile route, with 42 locks, opened through to the Thames at Abingdon on 22 September 1810. Its narrow locks took boats about 7 feet wide.
The Wantage branch
The main line of the canal skirted the north of the town, near where Mably Way now meets Denchworth Road. A branch about a mile long ran into a basin close to the town centre, and it is usually said to have opened in 1810. Coal from the Somerset coalfield was the main cargo inbound. Grain and other farm produce went out. The Sack House beside the old wharf, which hired out sacks to people sending goods by water and also dealt in coal from a weighbridge outside, survives and is now a small museum run by the Wilts and Berks Canal Trust.
Decline
Traffic on the canal peaked in the 1830s. Coal carried along the canal reached nearly 44,000 tons in 1837, but the Great Western Railway, which opened across the Vale in 1840–41 and through Wantage Road in 1846, soon took most of the trade. The canal struggled on for decades. The collapse of an aqueduct at Stanley, near Calne, in 1901 effectively ended through traffic, and the Swindon Corporation (Wilts and Berks Canal Abandonment) Act of 1914 formally closed it. The basin in Wantage was later filled in and built over.
Restoration
In 1977 enthusiasts formed the Wilts and Berks Canal Amenity Group, now the Wilts and Berks Canal Trust, to restore the waterway. Around Wantage and Grove much of the old line survives as an overgrown channel. The trust’s East Vale and Abingdon branch works on stretches nearby and opens the Sack House on set days.