1777 A plan was considered ... 
Robert Whitworth, (a pupil of James Brindley), suggested a canal from Stourport-on-Severn to Hereford, via Leominster, with a return link to the Severn near Gloucester, making a semicircular route of at least seventy miles.

 

1789 The route was submitted...
Richard Hall submitted plans for a route from Hereford, via Ledbury to the Severn near Gloucester. Hall was a local surveyor of repute, who had worked as an efficient clerk of the works, for both the Stroudwater and Thames and Severn Canal Companies. Shortly afterwards the course east of Ledbury was revised down the Leadon Valley to Gloucester, with a branch to Newent.

1790 An Engineer appointed...
At a meeting held on the 18th March, Hall’s plan met with general approval and a share subscription of £100 shares was opened. The presence of a coalfield of sorts near Newent may have been used as a ruse to encourage investment in the canal company. Josiah Clowes of Middlewich, Cheshire, was appointed as engineer and he estimated the cost of a canal following Hall’s route, for boats 70’x 8’x 3’6’’ draught, to carry 35 tons as £69,997.13.6d. In 1783, Clowes had been appointed as resident engineer at £300 per annum, to the Thames & Severn Canal Company.

It was here, at Over Basin, that work began on the Canal, with a gang of 350 men, in the spring of 1793.