Survey of the Wilts & Berks and North Wilts Canals by C.E. Faulkner

The Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre in Chippenham has a set of documents, correspondence and photos of Mr C E Faulkner, who had hoped to publish a book on the Wilts & Berks Canal during the mid-1960s. He kept a field notebook of his visits from about 1959 onwards, but there are a few references to visits made in 1954.

Mr Faulkner was a member of the Railway & Canal Historical Society, but it seems that he never joined the Wilts & Berks Canal Amenity Group. He failed to interest fellow R&CHS member Charles Hadfield (a canal historian, book publisher and member of the British Waterways Board) in his book, and seems to have lost interest in the subject by the late 1960s. The most recent references were from 1989 when he passed his papers over to the then Wiltshire County Archive.

He always referred to himself as ‘C E Faulkner’, we know that he was married to Eve, who accompanied him on at least one field-visit from their home in Essex.