Kennet & Avon Canal Museum

The Kennet and Avon Canal Museum sits beside Devizes Wharf in Wiltshire. It occupies a former bonded warehouse built to store wine imported through Bristol and carried inland by canal. The museum belongs to the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, which keeps its headquarters and shop inside the same building. The displays include papers, photographs and memorabilia from the canal’s construction between 1794 and 1810. After decades of disuse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the waterway was restored and reopened in 1990, an event marked by Queen Elizabeth II signing the visitor book. Visitors can also see detailed models of locks and narrowboats, plus the traditional tools once used on working boats. Inside the converted warehouse, exhibits line the ground floor around the original loading bays. Models show how locks operate and how narrowboats were once fitted out. Photographs and documents illustrate the canal’s busy past and its modern revival. The building itself, with its high ceilings and brick walls, still carries the atmosphere of a working wharf.