3 c. 100), entitled "An Act for amending and improving the Navigation of the River Arun, from Houghton Bridge, in the parish of Houghton, in the county of Sussex, to Pallenham Wharf, in the parish of Wisborough Green, in the said county; and for continuing and extending the Navigation of the said River Arun, from the said Wharf, called Pallenham Wharf, to a certain Bridge, called New Bridge, situate in the parishes of Pulborough and Wisborough Green, in the said County of Sussex", received royal assent on 13 May 1785.

[3] Houghton Bridge was the absolute tidal limit; Newbridge lay much closer south-west of foundry-rich Billingshurst than to Pulborough.

The cuts were officially abandoned in 1896, but some traffic continued on the old by-river cuts into the 20th century, notably bricks from Harwoods Green below Pallingham and chalk from Houghton Bridge;[7] most south coastal traffic was stopped in 1938 by a new, fixed bridge on the Havant to Brighton railway line at Ford.

[8] In 1810, the 3rd Earl of Egremont began to promote the idea of a canal to link the Wey and Arun, the case being they were separated by 15 miles (24 km).

Part of the justification for this canal through these overwhelmingly rural counties, with few of the cargoes which made canals profitable, was to provide an inland route from London to Portsmouth and the south coast of England, an important consideration as England was at war with France and thus coastal shipping at risk of attack.

3. c. xix), received royal assent on 19 April 1813, entitled "An Act for making and maintaining a navigable Canal, to unite the Rivers Wey and Arun, in the counties of Surrey and Sussex".

B. Dashwood,[13] the same year in which the Wey and Arun Junction Canal (Abandonment) Act 1868 authorised closure.

[19] The Waterway Recovery Group, which gave active support to restoration schemes, developed a strategy of "a guaranteed labour force for guaranteed work" in 1992, which ensured that local societies would have the funding and relevant planning permission in place before a group of volunteers arrived to carry out the work.

[20] The practical outworking of this approach was demonstrated in the following year, when a section of the canal at Billingshurst was cleared, and three accommodation bridges were rebuilt by a working party of 250 people, as part of a Waterway Recovery Group initiative called "Dig Deep".

[21] The trust has reached agreements with several landowners to allow restoration work to be undertaken over half the length of the 23-mile (37 km) canal.

By 2009, twenty-four bridges had been reconstructed, eleven locks restored, two aqueducts re-instated, and several miles of canal bed cleared and dredged.

The lock was reopened on 17 April 2010, and the opening ceremony was carried out by Colonel Paul Rutherford, the Senior Army Adviser to the Canadian High Commissioner.

[25] The lock was reopened on 21 June 2014 by Simon Carter, a local landowner with land adjoining this section of the canal.

The hump-backed road bridge at Loxwood was removed and in-filled in 1905, (to be confirmed) severing the canal in two and leaving a major obstacle to restoration.

Modern regulations prevented the installation of a replacement hump-backed bridge, so restoration required the canal to burrow underneath, leaving the road at its existing level.

This was a major engineering exercise, achieved by lowering a 440-yard (400 m) length of canal so that there is adequate headroom for a boat to pass under the road.

The design of the bridge was not appreciated by many of the residents of Loxwood, because of its steel barriers, and following a period of consultation and fund-raising, planning permission was obtained to replace them with lower, brick-faced parapets, to match the adjacent lock and footbridge.

The lock and footbridge achieved second place in the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Community Benefit Awards in 2010.