BW144
Ministry of Transport
Description
Records of the Ministry of Transport: records relating to the Crinan Canal 1939, records relating to the Caledonian Canal 1947.
Date
1918-1947
Reference code
BW144
Access Status
These records are available immediately for research
Administrative / Biographical history
The Ministry of Transport was created in 1919 by an Act of Parliament. It assumed responsibility for, amongst other things: highways, railways, tramways, inland waterways, ferries, harbours and all traffic thereon. Both the Crinan and Caledonian canals came under the Ministry's jurisdiction in 1920, and remained so until nationalization in 1948. Merchant Shipping merged with the Ministry during the Second World War but was passed back to the Board of Trade in the 1960s. The Ministry of Transport's organisational structure remained unchanged until 1970, when it was merged into the Department of the Environment.
System of arrangement
It has not been possible to ascertain any original structure of record-keeping from the small number of records held for this company. The fonds has been divided into two series - one for records relating to the Crinan Canal, one for the Caledonian Canal. Within each series the records have been arranged in chronological order.
Associated material
[See also: BW47 for records of the Crinan and Caledonian canals during other periods of ownership]