Throughout 2025, Glandŵr Cymru, the Canal & River Trust in Wales, and its partner organisations and local community are celebrating the 225th anniversary of the Brecon Canal.

The Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal began life as two separate canals - the Monmouthshire Canal and the Brecknock & Abergavenny Canal. Although the two were joined in 1812 at Pontymoile, this year’s anniversary celebrates the completion of the more northern Brecon Canal 12 years earlier when the first cargo of coal reached Brecon Basin on Christmas Eve 1800.

David Viner, heritage consultant at Canal & River Trust, continues his canal series, exploring Watton as the waterway approaches Brecon.

By the turn of the century in 1800, three years after work began at Gilwern, the Brecknock & Abergavenny Canal had reached the outskirts of Brecon. On the approach to the town, it ran alongside the new turnpike road from Abergavenny and next to the Watton toll house Thomas Dadford built as one of the final canal bridges that was needed.

A few years later in 1811, when work started on the horse-drawn Brecon to Hay Railway, this bridge was extended to include a second arch for the tramway to reach its canalside terminus at Watton Wharf. The double-arched bridge remains as evidence of this early railway, which also included a branch line running a few hundred metres back along the bankside to Watton limekilns.

Burning lime for producing agricultural fertiliser and building mortar was one of the important industries in the 19th century. Transportation of the raw materials and burnt lime by tramway or canal enabled a greatly expanded production. Within 15 years of the canal’s completion at Brecon, banks of canal-side limekilns had appeared at Watton, Talybont, Llangynidr, Llangattock and Gilwern. Like the tramroads all activities have long-since ceased, but they still stand as monuments to the past.