The Portsmouth and Arundel Canal

The canal that briefly connected Fishbourne to the inland waterway network

The Portsmouth and Arundel Canal, opened in 1822, passed through the Fishbourne area as part of an ambitious scheme to create an inland waterway route between Portsmouth and London. The canal was intended to allow barges to travel safely between the two cities without risking the open sea passage around Selsey Bill, which was dangerous for small craft.

The section of the canal relevant to Fishbourne ran from Chichester to the harbour at Birdham, crossing the flat coastal plain. The canal used a combination of cut channels and the natural harbour creeks, with locks to manage the tidal differences. The enterprise was commercially unsuccessful from the start. The canal was expensive to maintain, the locks were slow, and the arrival of the railway in the 1840s made the waterway obsolete before it had established a viable trade.

The canal closed in stages during the 1850s, and most of its route has been filled in or built over. Traces survive in the landscape, including sections of the canal bed visible as depressions in the fields south of Chichester and the remains of the lock at Casher. The Chichester Canal, the section between Chichester Basin and the harbour at Birdham, has been partially restored and is navigable by small boats, with the Canal Trust running boat trips and restoration work.

The canal's brief life is a reminder of the transport ambitions of the early nineteenth century and the speed with which the railway made them redundant. For Fishbourne, the canal was a passing episode in a much longer history, but it left its mark on the landscape and the local memory.