The project gained popularity, and in 2003, a bid was made to the Heritage Lottery Fund for £82 million to restore both the Stroudwater Navigation and the Thames and Severn Canal.

A bid to the newly formed Gloucestershire Local Transport Board for its reinstatement, and to create a long-distance footpath along the route was rejected, but in 2019 the Heritage Lottery Fund made a further grant of £8.9 million towards the section from Ocean to Saul.

Highways England also made a grant of £4 million, to fund the construction of the canal under the A38 roundabout, and it is expected that the Stroud section will be linked to the national waterways network at Saul Junction by 2028.

The plan was to serve the woollen industry, by carrying coal from the Severn to Stroud and transporting the finished cloth away to markets, but it was opposed by mill owners, and it came to nothing.

The idea was revived in 1728, when John Hore, who had previously succeeded in making the River Kennet navigable, suggested a canal around 8.2 miles (13.2 km) long, with 12 locks, suitable for 60-ton barges.

2. c. 13), was obtained in 1730, with support from those who worked in the cloth industry, but opposition from some of the millers, but it seemed to ignore Hore's recommendations, in that it was again based on making the river navigable.

[4] John Dallaway, who had been appointed as a commissioner under the Stroudwater Navigation Act 1729, commissioned the engineer Thomas Yeoman to make a new survey in 1754, and his new plan was published the following year.

It had cost £40,930, which had been raised by calling £150 on each £100 share, by borrowing money from the shareholders, by running up debts, and by using the tolls from the parts of the canal which were already open.

[14] After the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal opened to Sharpness in 1827, the link between Saul and the Severn at Framilode was used much less, although coal from the Forest of Dean still used that route.

[28] In 1974 the BBC featured an interview with a local resident, Michael Ayland, who proposed restoration of the waterway, and a chance discussion by him with a reporter for the Bristol Evening Post resulted in the newspaper carrying an article headlined "Exclusive: canal to be reopened to Stroud."

Offers to help flooded in, and an initial public meeting had to be moved from the Stroud Subscription Rooms to the Ballroom, after it appeared that the expected attendance of 20 people might be exceeded.

[30] Although the Proprietors were initially hostile to the Trust, this gradually changed,[31] and in 1979 granted them permission to start work on the section from Pike Bridge at Eastington to Ryeford, so that a trip-boat could be used on it.

Andy Stumpf became the full-time Regeneration Programme Manager, working on a major bid application to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to finance the restoration, and the canal was visited by Charles, Prince of Wales, in his capacity as Patron of the Waterways Trust.

However, British Waterways had to withdraw from the scheme in 2008, due to financial difficulties, and the role of project leader was taken over by Stroud District Council.

A second application for £650,000 was made to enable part of the Thames and Severn Way long-distance footpath to be created, specifically, the section from Saul Junction to Chalford.

[40] The effort to reconnect the restored section to the national network at Saul Junction was branded as Stroudwater Navigation Connected, and another bid was put before the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The scheme is expected to generate over 100 MWh per year, and income from the sale of the electricity to the national grid will help to fund ongoing maintenance of the canal.

[54] They contribute around 15,000 hours of labour per year, and started work on channel clearance and investigative surveys on the Phase 1b section at the beginning of 2017, in advance of any funding package being available.

Additionally, a further £3 million was to be invested in infrastructure improvements at Brimscombe Port, the original terminus for the Phase 1a project, by Stroud District Council and the Homes and Communities Agency.

[55] In early 2016, work began on a £210,000 project to restore Junction Lock on the Old Stroudwater at Saul, after a grant of £75,000 was received from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Cotswold Canals Trust were given an award of £872,000 in 2018 by the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable them to plan the project, which it was estimated would cost some £23.4 million.

The project included reinstatement of the missing mile of canal destroyed by the building of the M5 motorway and the A38 roundabout, which buried Bristol Road Lock.

In an unexpected turn of events, Highways England agreed to partially fund this part of the work, which would involve two tunnels, a substantial cutting, and two new locks.

[61] However, investigations into the geology of the site revealed that the bridge would require deeper foundations than planned, and its installation was put back to the period between Christmas 2021 and New Year.

One of the driving forces for the project was the fact that the main sewer passed through the canal just below Wallbridge Lock, severely restricting the depth of water at that point, and the Proprietors argued that Severn Trent had not obtained permission to put the pipe there.

The renewal project was expected to be completed by late 2023,[70][71] and in May 2022, a tunnel boring machine named Florence was set to work to cut the 5-foot (1.5 m) diameter sewer beneath the canal and the Painswick Stream.

The project was largely complete by April 2024, after which Galliford Try, the contractor for the scheme, will remove the sewer pipes and the existing CSO tank at Wallbridge Lock to allow deeper draught boats to use the canal.

[3] The canal linked directly to the Severn Estuary (at Framilode) as originally constructed, and terminated in the east at Wallbridge Basin near Stroud town centre.

The Thames and Severn Canal bypassed Wallbridge Basin around ten years after this, and continued across Stroud to climb the Golden Valley, following its opening through the Cotswold hills to Lechlade.

Like most waterways in the UK, the chemical status changed from good to fail in 2019, due to the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS) and mercury compounds, none of which had previously been included in the assessment.