The Basingstoke Canal

Reading Road South (Fleet, Hants) crosses the canal - 1959.
Vera and Rosemary Knight with a neighbour from No. 1 Johnson Way, Evelyn Fletcher.

One day while Malcolm was loitering around Pondtail Bridge in Fleet he noticed that the canal was flowing like a river in a westerly direction, so he alerted his family who were by then living in nearby Aldershot Road and rode his bike along the towpath as far as Dogmersfield where the canal ran along a raised embankment. The bottom had dropped out of the canal filling the surrounding nearby fields with water and fish.
On the left, Leslie Knight with his friend Eric Lewis and his daughter Erica with Judy.
1964 approximately.

A dam was rapidly built and frantic rescue missions were mounted for fish that were transferred by net to the other side of the dam.

Thanks to the hard work normality was eventually restored but the poor state of the canal and the danger it represented in that condition were recognised over the following years and efforts were made by the county authorities and volunteer organisations to remedy its various problems.

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