Tudor & Stuart
Long before the Medway became a working highway for barges, the Weald of Kent and Sussex was a vast stretch of woodland. That ancient forest survived largely intact until the Elizabethan age, when two great demands fell upon it at once. The Navy of Elizabeth I drew heavily on the Weald for shipbuilding timber, and at the same time the iron industry, which was spreading rapidly across the district, consumed wood for its furnaces and for the charcoal that fuelled them. Between them, these two enterprises stripped great quantities of timber from the Weald.
Getting that timber to where it was needed was itself a formidable undertaking. The logs travelled overland by road to the naval yard at Chatham, and the journey demanded enormous teams of draught animals — as many as twenty-four oxen might be harnessed to haul a single load of logs along the deep-rutted Wealden lanes. It is little wonder that men began to look at the river running through their midst and wonder whether it could carry the timber for them.
The Medway was, in fact, navigable by small craft for a considerable distance, from Penshurst down to Maidstone, and had been for a long time. But the river as it stood was no more than a natural waterway. Its banks and its weirs were looked after by the farmers and landowners whose land bordered the stream, and they maintained them for their own purposes — for fishing, for watering stock, for milling — rather than for any notion of through traffic. Elizabeth I recognised the potential of the river and appointed a Commission to look into its navigation, but the Commission achieved very little in practical terms.
A more determined effort came in 1627, when Charles I appointed a new body of Commissioners with a definite aim: to make the Medway navigable for boats between Penshurst and Maidstone. The Commissioners were given clear limits to their powers. They were not permitted to alter the course of the river itself — whatever improvements were made had to work with the river as it lay. In all, fifty-two Commissioners were appointed, and they gathered at The Bull in Tonbridge to organise the scheme.
To carry the work forward, the Commissioners chose Michael Cole to head the enterprise. His instructions were demanding. The river was to be made passable for boats of four tons, and Cole had to pay for the entire undertaking out of his own pocket. He was not allowed to construct locks or sluices to control the water, and if his works caused flooding to neighbouring land, he would have to compensate those who suffered. In return for his risk and expense, he received a monopoly lasting thirty-three years over all income from trade and passengers on the river.
Cole made real progress. By 1630 small barges could reach Yalding, a meaningful stretch of improved waterway. But he ran into sustained opposition from the landowners along the banks, whose interests were threatened by the changes to the river, and under this pressure the whole project collapsed and died.
The idea did not vanish entirely. In 1660, Charles II took an interest in the Dutch approach to waterways — the canal systems that had transformed transport in the Low Countries — and an Act of Parliament was passed providing for navigation from Forest Row down to Maidstone. Yet despite these stirrings, the period from the reign of Elizabeth I through to that of George II produced remarkably little of substance on the river.
Real progress finally arrived during the reign of George II, which ran from 1727 to 1760. The driving force came from John Hooker — he held the manor of Tonbridge and owned its castle too — and it was he who assembled a Company of Proprietors to back the scheme, and the enterprise received its legal foundation in an Act of Parliament dated 30 April 1740. The Act covered navigation from Maidstone all the way up to Forest Row in Sussex, and the company formed to execute it took the name of The Upper Medway Navigation Company.
Money was raised in the modern manner, by issuing shares. Three hundred shares were offered at one hundred pounds each, and Hooker himself took the maximum allowed to any one subscriber, ten shares. Subscribers were locked in to their investment: nobody could sell their shares until the river had been opened for navigation as far as Tonbridge. Construction began at the downstream end, at Maidstone, in September 1740.
The works were substantial. The locks along the navigation were built of oak, and it was reported that Hooker used masonry taken from Tonbridge Castle in their construction. Wharves were established at Branbridge and at Tonbridge, the latter standing on land known as the Outfield Mead. The house beside the Tonbridge wharf obtained an inn licence and traded as The Six Bells, though it was also known as The Castle. When the accounts were totalled, the whole enterprise had cost £11,419, and fourteen locks had been built along the river.
One thing the navigation lacked was a horse towpath. Instead, the barges were hauled by men known as hufflers, who worked in gangs of three and started out from Maidstone. At Branbridge a fresh gang took over the tow. The hufflers pulled with tow ropes attached to their own bodies, hauling against their own weight and strength. The journey was punishing: there were more than a hundred fences to be climbed or negotiated along the way, and in times of flood the men waded through water up to their chests. For all this labour, a gang of three earned just one pound between them for the trip.
The company's income came from tolls, charged at four pence per mile per ton between Maidstone and Branbridge, and six pence per mile per ton on the upper stretch from Branbridge to Tonbridge. Fishing boats and pleasure craft were exempt from these charges. From March 1743 cargoes were moving regularly on the river, and at last the timber and goods of the Weald could float down to Maidstone and beyond, replacing the long ox trains of earlier generations.