St.Johns Village

By admin on Friday, June 11th, 2010 | Comments Off

St.Johns Village

St.Johns Village takes it’s name from the church of the same name in the village, nothing more glamorous.

The Canal was built in the late 1780s and ’90s, with work starting at Woodham in 1788 and the canal being opened to Horsell in 1791 and Pirbright in 1792 (Basingstoke was finally reached in 1794). Pictured here is the bridge over the canal at St.Johns Village.

It was a mainly agricultural waterway, with timber and flour being carried downstream to London and coal and finished goods carried upstream to the towns and villages along its route.

In 1787 they estimated that over 30,000 tons of goods would be carried each year on the waterway, but on only three occasions did the canal actually carry the projected amount of tonnage – in 1838 (when the canal was used to carry goods for the construction of the railway), and in 1934 and 1935 (just before the transportation of coal to Woking Gas Works ceased).

After the railway opened the canal started to decline and in 1869 the original company was wound up. It was revived (and failed again) on several occasions in the late 19th century before being bought in 1923 by Mr. A.J. Harmsworth. After he died in 1947, however, the canal once more fell into decline until in the 1970s Hampshire and Surrey County Councils bought their sections of waterway including the part running through St.Johns Village and the Surrey & Hampshire Canal Society set about restoration work.

The work in this section took several years with five locks and two ancient bridges (Langman’s near St.Johns Village and Woodend) to be restored, as well as the canal bank and towpath. Indeed, in a way, work is still continuing with the provision of a new ‘back-pumping’ scheme at St Johns Village , designed to maintain the water levels in the canal even in the driest of summers.

The bridge across the canal at St Johns Village – Kiln Bridge – was one of the first bridges over the canal to be rebuilt. Originally the bridge was a simple brick arch – like Woodend Bridge – but in 1899 Woking Council rebuilt the bridge at the request of the War Department, who feared that the old bridge might collapse with the heavy traffic being carried over it from Woking to Inkerman Barracks, near St.Johns Village. In the event it was Hermitage Bridge that collapsed (in 1904) when a traction engine pulling a wagon of potatoes for the barracks was passing over. Woking Council eventually rebuilt that bridge too, although it took them nearly twenty years to do so!

Kiln Bridge gets its name from the brick kilns that were once situated beside the canal between Robin Hood Road and Copse Road. Robin Hood Road starts at St.Johns Village and runs through to Knaphill, or it used to before Goldsworth Park and Amstell Way were built, affectively cutting it in half.

The pits here were some of the first to be dug in the area and must have been exhausted soon after the canal was opened. Other brick fields were situated on the site of Winston Churchill School and the Lansbury Estate, Lower Guildford Road (just off Hermitage Hill), with more lower down the canal on what is now part of Goldsworth Park. These were developed by the Jackman and Slocock families as part of their nursery businesses.