Richard Weston (canal builder)

[4] In the early 1630s, Weston decided to copy the canal and lock system prevalent in The Netherlands to make the River Wey navigable between Weybridge and Guildford.

Sir Richard Weston was the first to introduce, at any rate into the Surrey district, the system, long prevalent in Holland, of rendering rivers and canals navigable by means of locks.

It was perhaps the expenditure necessitated by his canal scheme which forced him in 1641 to sell Temple Court Farm at Merrow, with the mansion at West Clandon, to Sir Richard Onslow, MP for Surrey in the Long Parliament.

[2] In 1649 Weston entered into an agreement with Major James Pitson, commissioner for Surrey under the parliament, that the latter should solicit the discharge of his sequestration and forward his schemes for rendering the Wey navigable.

[2] Sir Richard set to work at once with great energy, employing two hundred men at a time, and using timber of his own to the value of £2,000.

Weston died within less than a year of the act's passing, but he had so far expedited the work that ten out of the fourteen miles were completed, though at an expenditure much exceeding the original estimate.

[2] The completed canal had ten locks, four weirs, and twelve bridges; but, though it produced a large revenue, it involved the family in litigation, which, when finally settled in 1671, had more than swallowed up all the profits.

[2] He tells us himself that "at the time he went out of England" he had had "thirtie years" experience in husbandrie" and had "improved his land as much as any man in this kingdom hath done."

It was probably Sir Richard Weston who about this time introduced into Surrey "the grass called Nonesuch," and we know that, following on the track of Rowland Vaughan, he raised rich crops of hay from irrigated meadows[5] Sir Richard's irrigated meadows are referred to by a contemporary writer:[2] Because hay is dear in those parts this year, near three pound a load, Sir Richard Weston told me he sold at near that rate one hundred and fifty loads of his extraordinary hay which his meadows watered with his new river did yield.

[6]Speed also refers to another improvement of Sir Richard's, the most characteristic of all: his introduction of a new system of crop rotation founded on the cultivation of clover, flax, and turnips.

[2] In Weston’s Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders, published by Hartlib in 1645, we may mark the dawn of the vast improvements which have since been effected in Britain.