Honeystreet wharf has been around for more than 200 years.

It started life as a barge building centre, a timber trading wharf, and centuries later now hosts a new and busy cafe and narrow boat holiday hire business.

The Kennet and Avon canal was built by John Hore joining the river Avon and the Thames to provide a waterway from Bristol to London. The canal arrived in Honeystreet in 1810 prompting Victorian entrepreneur Samuel Robbins to begin to build his wharf and timber yard.

In 1860 Robbins was joined by his son-in-law Ebenezer Lane and by Henry Pinniger, and so the company Robbins, Lane, & Pinniger (RLP) was born.

Over the years the buildings on the wharf were added to, caught fire, fell down, and were replaced. The iconic chimney was built after one of the fires, to act as the equivalent of an extractor fan removing fumes from the sawmill’s engine house and reducing the fire risk.

The mainstay of Honeystreet business was timber: importing it, drying it, sawing it, selling it, and building barges out of it to transport it. There is still a saw mill across the canal, and The Barge Inn still proves a popular spot for music, food, drink and camping.

‘Unity’ is one of their most famous barges. It had been specially designed and made by RLP for their own use to maximize load capacity to and from Bristol. It was longer than two double decker buses and wider than an army tank. On these trips one horse walked to Bristol with Unity, while the other horse took the train.

The two horses then pulled the 50 tons of timber (the equivalent weight of 40 Mini Coopers) back to Honeystreet in just three days. The distance was 48 miles and there were 50 locks along the way!

These businesses created many jobs and in1896 there were 136 workers on the payroll. RLP were progressive employers and offered a benefits and savings scheme. They also provided sick pay.

In 1949 the business was sold to John Read who continued working the sawmills.

In 1958 Len Neale bought the site for his fabric recycling business. Mr Neale bred a team of 200 ducks to combat the canal’s tangles of duckweed.