Catalogue description Wey Navigation Claims

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Details of E 177
Reference: E 177
Title: Wey Navigation Claims
Description:

This series consists of 87 claims to a share in the profits of the Wey Navigation (built 1651-53), submitted to the chief justices of Kings Bench and Common Pleas and the chief baron of the Exchequer, as ordered by the private Act for Preserving and Settling the River Wey, 1671.

These claims are the culmination of 20 years of disputes concerning ownership of the canal, non-payment of compensation for lands lost or otherwise damaged by its construction, and outstanding sums of money loaned and wages unpaid.
Date: 1671
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 1 bundle(s)
Publication note:

All 87 claims have been calendared in H Carter, 'The Wey Navigation Claims of 1671', Surrey Archaeological Collections, 62 (1965), pp 94-108 For information on the trade and profits of the Navigation, see M Nash, 'Barge Traffic on the Wey Navigation in the second half of the seventeenth century', Journal of Transport History, 7 (1970), pp 218-224 See too, O Manning and W Bray, The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, vol iii (London, 1814), appendix, pp liv-lviii
Administrative / biographical background:

The Navigation, stretching 15 miles between Guildford and the Thames at Weybridge, was one of the first canalisations of an English river. The project was begun by Sir Richard Weston, a Surrey landowner, who raised the necessary money principally through loans and shares. Quarrels between the investors, however, and with neighbouring landowners, caused the project to stall.

By the Act of 1671, ownership of the Navigation was vested in six trustees, who were to pay the claims submitted under the Act out of the profits of the canal within three years. Most claims seem to have been settled by 1677.

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