Old Stratford
The Buckingham Arm is a canal that once ran from Cosgrove, Northamptonshire to Buckingham.
The Marquis of Buckingham decided that a canal spur from the Grand Junction Canal would help the town of Buckingham. The continuation to Buckingham was surveyed in 1793, and included in an Act of Parliament, passed in September 1794.
By the 1850s, the Buckingham Canal was suffering from competition from the railways and the last recorded commercial traffic was a delivery of chemicals to Leckhampstead in 1932. It was abandoned in 1964 and is now the subject of a restoration programme led by the Buckingham Canal Society.
The Society’s magazine, The Buckingham Navigator, includes articles on the history of the canal. The current issue, Issue 104, Summer 2020, discusses When is a canal bridge not a canal bridge?, concerning the crossing of the canal by Towcester Road in Old Stratford.