This is a most desirable advantage, as the fly boats from Manchester bring a variety of fine articles that require every care. Since the canal has been brought to Paddington, this place has become an extensive and well frequented market for cattle, sheep, butter, poultry, etc.
In the travel writer and watercolourist John Hassell published an illustrated account of a journey from London to Braunston along the route of the Grand Junction Canal. At Watford he began his journey during which he wandered quite widely from the Canal to visit places of interest.
Churches, manor houses, stately homes together with their occupants and artworks , villages, towns and historical events all come under his pen. Thus, while he provides some interesting cameos, Hassell too often frustrates by dwelling on subjects of no relevance to the matter in hand. By the s, the Grand Union Canal Company listed only six of the sixty wharfs north of Berkhamsted as hosting tenant traders, and most of those were connected with the sand trade in the Leighton area.
Grand Union canal: Birmingham to Marsworth. Within its length it passes through the counties of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire for a short distance , Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex; crosses summits at Braunston and Tring; passes through long tunnels at Braunston and Blisworth, and negotiates locks [ 0 ].
At Braunston, the Grand Junction and Oxford canals meet at an unusual triangular junction. The effect of the amalgamation together with the negotiation of running rights over a 5-mile length of the Oxford canal was to extend the former Grand Junction main line from Braunston to the outskirts of Birmingham.
