John Hore

John Hore (baptised 13 March 1680 – 12 April 1763 ) was an English engineer, best known for making the River Kennet and River Avon navigable. Hore was one of the earliest English canal engineers, and Sir Alec Skempton wrote that he was "in the first rank among the navigation engineers". The Hutchinson Chronology of World History described his work on the Kennet navigation as "[setting] a new standard for inland waterways, and is an important forerunner of the canals of the Industrial Revolution". Hore's mother was Frances.

Career Hore was recorded as working as a millwright, possibly in relation to the family business. In 1718, however, he was appointed to survey and engineer the River Kennet to make it navigable from Reading to Newbury. It is likely that Hore's father, as a proprietor of the waterway, had a hand in arranging his son's employment on the project.

Hore recognised the inappropriate nature of this solution, proposing more locks and artificial cuttings to be dug. Further setbacks came the following winter, when extraordinary floods damaged the works. In March 1721, an extension to the original timescale was granted. The following July, Hore reported that good progress was being made:

The screw to which Hore refers is an Archimedes screw, used in the lock excavations to remove water. Despite referring to brick locks in Padworth field, all of Hore's locks in the area—from Aldermaston to Tyle Mill—were turf-sided.

Hore's specifications for the canal defined cutting widths of , with a depth of . The navigable sections of river were wide. providing a navigable waterway as well as wharves and basins at Aldermaston and Newbury. The Kennet Navigation opened on 1 June 1723 —although it is speculated that the cost of the towpath itself cost a further £30,000 . After the canal's opening, Hore retained his salary and was appointed Surveyor of Works and wharfinger at Newbury as a lifelong position. However, the navigation proprietors (appointed in 1720) dismissed Hore in 1724—he had incurred significant costs from landowners in the early 1720s, and was unable to account for these expenses to the governing body.

Avon Navigation

In March 1725, two years after the opening of the Kennet Navigation, Hore was employed by Ralph Allen in the direction and chief management of the construction of the Avon Navigation near Bristol. In addition to Downs, Hore's chief mason, Edward Marchant, was paid £2 per week pro rata.

The committee also urged Hore to purchase screw engines from the Kennet project, justifying that "this appears to us the Speediest Method" to complete lock work.

Hore's locks on the Avon totalled six, with slightly smaller dimensions than those on the Kennet. However, they were all masonry-walled, and catered for larger cargoes than those on the Kennet—closer to 140 tons. After the completion of the quay at Bath in 1729, tolls on the navigation began averaging just less than £1,000 per year . This, coupled with the fact that the Act specified for the river to be made navigable (and not for the construction of a separate canal), meant that Hore's recommendations were never realised. Hore's work here also included a semi-circular canal on the north side of the river.

Legacy Although Hore's proposals for navigable waterways at Stroudwater and Chelmer were never adopted, both waterways were eventually made suitable for traffic. In the 1770s, Thomas Dadford Jr. and John Priddy (who had worked alongside James Brindley on the construction of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire and Droitwich Canals respectively) surveyed the route which was constructed by Priddy and Edmund Lingard between 1776 and 1779. Similarly, the Chelmer was finally made navigable between 1793 and 1797 by John Rennie. Shortly after this, Rennie worked on the Kennet and Avon Canal, linking Hore's two sections of navigable river with a canal from Bath to Newbury. L. T. C. Rolt writes that Hore had a son who became resident engineer on Rennie's project to build a canal linking the Kennet and Avon navigations.

In the decades after Rennie's Kennet and Avon Canal opened, Hore's wide locks on the Kennet Navigation were narrowed to match the standardised locks on the newer waterway. This work used Great Western Railway broad-gauge rails and sleepers (made available after the "gauge war") to rebuild the lock chambers.

Two of Hore's turf-sided locks on the Kennet Navigation still exist—Monkey Marsh Lock, near Thatcham, and Garston Lock, near Theale. Despite both having been restored over the lifetime of the canal, Garston retains more authenticity as the entire chamber remains turfed. In the Hutchinson Chronology of World History, Hore's work on the Kennet is described as "[setting] a new standard for inland waterways, and is an important forerunner of the canals of the Industrial Revolution".

Despite praise for Hore's work on the waterways, William Fordyce Mavor recognised that even by the 1810s—when Rennie's canal was completed—Hore's name and association with the navigations had disappeared into "oblivion". Mavor stated that Hore's legacy needed rescuing, noting that he had "adopted and executed a navigation, of which [Mavor believed] there then existed no model in England".