Anyone know anything about this boat?

[carlt]

Flickr wooden boat

 

or where it is?

 

I assume there's no way of editing the appalling typo in the Topic?

Edited June 25, 2007 by Dhutch

[Lesd]

Hi Carl,

Its just north of Fisheries lock at Boxmoor, nr Hemel Hempstead on the GU. Its been there at the bottom of a garden for as long as I can remember. I dont really know anything about it though.

 

 

I was looking at the wooden canal boat society's boat list recently and saw ''Jester Walkers Butty Near Boxmoor ? Real name, ex Basingstoke craft''.....it did go through my mind at the time if it could be refering to the boat you'vementioned ? (I know vey little about old wooden boats so thats just a wild guess based on its location !)

 

Les

Edited June 24, 2007 by Lesd

[Hairy-Neil]

I have it marked on the photo in my GU collection as the Ricky butty 'Tilbury'. It was most probably identified for me as such by Pete Harrison.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and I'll confirm the location as Boxmoor/Fisheries

[carlt]

Thanks a lot

[DHutch]

Ive corrected the thread title for you also.

 

 

 

Daniel

[carlt]

I've corrected the thread title for you also.

Daniel

Thanks Dan

[Foxglove]

Yes that's Jester and she was still there at Boxmoor in late April when I passed through .

 

I owned her briefly in the mid nineties when I bought her in order to get the residential mooring she occupied above Scotland Bridge Lock on the Basingstoke Canal . At that time there were nine or ten houseboat conversions of ex-working wooden narrowboats in that area , most of which have gradually disappeared and been replaced with more modern steel boats . There are two or three left which are now kept afloat by being either wrapped in a big plastic sheet or having a steel box with pointed ends put under them .

 

Interesting to at last have an original name given for Jester . None of my neighbours seemed to know anything of the history of the boats they lived in . Incidentally I have a BCN number plate found in the area during the restoration of the canal . The number is 23272 . Can anyone identify the boat to which it belonged please ?

 

 

Cheers

[magnetman]

If u r talking about the wooden horsedrawn barge above fisheries lock it may be worth mentioning that it is not a narrowboat in that it isn't 7ft wide (at least i don't think so??), which may be relevant to the original thread topic in that it could be a rare boat. I met the owner late one evening as he was running water from the next lock up to keep her from grounding.

 

If u r talking about the wooden horsedrawn barge above fisheries lock it may be worth mentioning that it is not a narrowboat in that it isn't 7ft wide (at least i don't think so??), which may be relevant to the original thread topic in that it could be a rare boat. I met the owner late one evening as he was running water from the next lock up to keep her from grounding.

[AMModels]

That would make sense with regards to the previous posts about it bing a Basingstoke boat, generally I believe they were 9'6" wide would this tie in with your own experience?

[Hairy-Neil]

That would make sense with regards to the previous posts about it bing a Basingstoke boat, generally I believe they were 9'6" wide would this tie in with your own experience?

 

Lovely speculation but you are definitely wrong about it being wide beam.......

 

Its name might be disputable, its builder most definitely is not as if Pete Harrison says the 'Jester' is a town class ricky butty then a town class ricky butty it is......

[magnetman]

I am 96% sure that it is indeed 9ft6 beam - i know its a basingstoke boat for a start and i've seen thousands of narrowboats if it was one i'm sure i'd know (unless i'm losing my marbles).

[magnetman]

Jim sheads boat list has it as being 0.01m beam which is around 4 inches .

 

No, make that 0.4 inches. Oh maybe its a default figure.

[carlt]

Yes that's Jester and she was still there at Boxmoor in late April when I passed through .

 

I owned her briefly in the mid nineties when I bought her in order to get the residential mooring she occupied above Scotland Bridge Lock on the Basingstoke Canal . At that time there were nine or ten houseboat conversions of ex-working wooden narrowboats in that area , most of which have gradually disappeared and been replaced with more modern steel boats . There are two or three left which are now kept afloat by being either wrapped in a big plastic sheet or having a steel box with pointed ends put under them .

 

Interesting to at last have an original name given for Jester . None of my neighbours seemed to know anything of the history of the boats they lived in . Incidentally I have a BCN number plate found in the area during the restoration of the canal . The number is 23272 . Can anyone identify the boat to which it belonged please ?

Cheers

So, as a previous owner can you tell us the width?

 

The width of the cabin conversion looks to me to be around 9-10' in relation to the bridge, the other nb and my assumption that it was a 6 plank town class Ricky.

 

It doesnt look 9' plus wide and bear in mind there were an awful lot of narrow boats on the Basingstoke. The location of a boat seems to have morphed into it's type.

 

Tilbury is listed by the wcbs as last known location - Basingstoke, and she definitely wasn't a 'Basingstoke boat'

 

Edited June 28, 2007 by carlt

[magnetman]

Were there any 'basingstoke boats' in the sense of horse drawn boats (rather than butties) specifically designed for use on that canal?. If so what were their dimensions and who built them? Maybe they didn't exist. I do seem to think the owner of the 'hemel boat' thinks it is a 'basingstoke canal boat'. (I reserve the right to be completely wrong).

[Paul H]

Were there any 'basingstoke boats' in the sense of horse drawn boats (rather than butties) specifically designed for use on that canal?. If so what were their dimensions and who built them? Maybe they didn't exist. I do seem to think the owner of the 'hemel boat' thinks it is a 'basingstoke canal boat'. (I reserve the right to be completely wrong).

As far as I know this is a narrow boat - one of several taken to the Basingstoke canal to convert in to houseboats by a businessman trading as Floating Homes. There is an interesting short film or at least stills here which tells the story. Search under "Basingstoke" then go "New Barges for Old."

 

Of course as they were never expected to move again no attempt was made to stop the sides spreading out and the superstructure (as can be seen on Jester) overlapped the gunnels - in itself meaning they were over 7ft wide.

 

Of course it could be a one off wider boat but I doubt it. A "hampton boat" from Birmingham which were built oversize for the lockless Wolverhampton level would probably have been too long to get there.

 

Paul H

[Foxglove]

I only owned Jester ( Tilbury ) for a few days as she was sold on straight away as part of the deal to get the Scotland Bridge mooring and I never met the previous owner . It was all done through Virginia Currer . However , I am 99% certain that she and the other converted wooden boats were all narrow beam ex-working boats from a variety of builders . I think there were one or two iron boats also .

 

I lived there for nearly three years and talked to many of the owners trying to find out some history . My memory is a bit fuzzy on the details but I was shown a brochure and told about a company that was , some time in the sixties? , buying up quite a few ex-working boats and taking them to the Basingstoke Canal where they were converted to homes in a make-shift drydock on big trestles on the bed of the canal . Some were butties , some were Birmingham day boats and some were cut in half which then had simple square ends nailed on and were offered as 'half boats' . They were all converted in a similar style to Jester in timber that overhangs the hull and a raised section about half way along which was the main entrance with full height 'front' door . Most were spaced a few feet off the bank and were provided with a wide boarding plank .

 

As to Basingstoke boats , my knowledge there is a bit sketchy as well but I think they were mainly built along similar lines to the Wey barges at 14' x 72' and were built at a yard on the Basingstoke canal . There were also a couple of narrowboats working on the canal at some time , one of which was named 'Basingstoke' but I'm unsure whether they were built locally or elsewhere but in the photos I've seen the do not appear to be more than 7' wide .

I also reserve the right to be completely wrong , infact I'm married so I'm bound to be !

 

I see that Paul H has added some more info while I've been typing .

[magnetman]

The evidence points to it being a (majorly) spread narrowboat but AMModels seemed to think a 9ft6 beam boat (see post previously) did exist but this could of course be the beam when locking bearing in mind the cabin construction apparently added by 'floating homes'. This could also cause an optical illusion making it look a lot wider than a narrowboat.

[Foxglove]

http://www.basingstoke-canal.org.uk/housebt.htm

 

A quick google turned this up . Jester is in one of the photographs .

[alan_fincher]

Yes that's Jester and she was still there at Boxmoor in late April when I passed through .

 

I owned her briefly in the mid nineties when I bought her in order to get the residential mooring she occupied above Scotland Bridge Lock on the Basingstoke Canal . At that time there were nine or ten houseboat conversions of ex-working wooden narrowboats in that area , most of which have gradually disappeared and been replaced with more modern steel boats . There are two or three left which are now kept afloat by being either wrapped in a big plastic sheet or having a steel box with pointed ends put under them .

 

Interesting to at last have an original name given for Jester . None of my neighbours seemed to know anything of the history of the boats they lived in . Incidentally I have a BCN number plate found in the area during the restoration of the canal . The number is 23272 . Can anyone identify the boat to which it belonged please ?

 

 

Cheers

OK,

 

In deference to Laurence Hogg, rather than further messing up his Harefield boats thread further, I'll re-open this one.

 

I'd missed the above highlighted part last time around, and am now more than slightly bamboozled.

 

Myself and OH moved to a house in Boxmoor not even a quarter of a mile from where Jester is still moored on the GU at "Old Fishery" bridge in 1982.

 

We are as certain as we can be that Jester was already moored as a completely static boat at that location in 1982.

 

So I am really struggling to see how the boat that Foxglove identified as being the Jester that he had owned could also have been on a mooring on the Basingstoke in "the mid nineties".

 

In fact, unless the date is wrong, I really don't get it at all.

 

Also just to confirm that while Neil suggested that Pete Harrison miight have been the source for the suggestion that 'Jester' might be 'Tilbury', Pete has actually said in the other thread that there is much uncertainty about the Basingstoke boats, and that he actually has no evidence that 'Jester' is 'Tilbury'.

[Foxglove]

Hi Alan ,

 

How strange . What are the chances of there being more than one Ricky butty renamed 'Jester' with a conversion just like that ?? .

 

Virginia Currer sold 'Jester' and the lease of her Basingstoke Canal mooring to me in 1995 . I can't say how long she'd been there but she was definitely there a couple of weeks prior to me moving on to her mooring . I saw her shortly afterwards just below Thames Lock at Weybridge waiting for a tow . The highest part of the conversion had been removed to get her under the bridges . Virginia Currer told me that the new owner was taking her up the GU near Watford to live on her .

 

The only difference I can see in the photo to the 'Jester' that I briefly owned is the colour the conversion is painted . Are you sure that the boat you have known from 1982 was always named 'Jester' , or could the boat I sold have replaced another ?

 

Duncan

[alan_fincher]

Hi Duncan,

 

Thanks for clarification.

 

Well both OH and I are completely mystified.

 

It does seem highly unlikely that this is anything other than the boat you bought, so it seems our memory of it having been there before 1995 must be highly flawed.

 

After further checking, I have now found a picture in a book, with picture dated "circa 1980", (no exact year, unfortunately) that shows no boat at that location,

 

This seems to point to our memories both being flawed, except that we both remember a boat there from frequent walking of dogs, running, and cycling up the canal. OH specifically remembers raised middle, and thinking it could not have got under a bridge in that state.

 

We moved away in 1991, and certainly something occupied the site a long while before then. I can only assume that Jester got used to replace another boat that was there before then, (but not, apparently before about 1980).

 

A complete mystery, unless two of us have really lost the plot!

[stagedamager]

According to the thread about Umbriel, this boat is also looking for a new home, go on Alan, Sickle would love a restored big Ricky wooden butty to drag around!

Dan

[alan_fincher]

According to the thread about Umbriel, this boat is also looking for a new home, go on Alan, Sickle would love a restored big Ricky wooden butty to drag around!

Dan

Dream on!........

 

I was wondering what had happened to it though.

 

It got moved from the location it had been at for many years, and was at a local boatyard, but I thought it wasn't there the last time I passed - perhaps I'm wrong on that ?

 

With no knowledge of wooden boats, I'd have thought this one had gone unmaintained long enough that it's going to be a big job. That said, it looked pretty straight when afloat, and I never saw it pumping out, or anything other than fully afloat.

 

Not for us, though, (and I've had enough trouble finding a mooring for just a little itsy extra forty foot boat!....)

[stagedamager]

if your mooring is deep enough, you could always moor it under Sickle

Dan

[David Mack]

From the hNBOC mailing list:

 

"Re our conversation earlier.  The boat is called "Jester", she is a 70ft wooden butty in need of restoration, free to anyone who is prepared to take on the project.  We don't know much about her other than she worked on the Basingstoke canal.  Her claim to fame is that she was owned & lived on by Charlie Drake at some point in time.  In recent times she's been lived on by a couple just North of Hemel Hempstead.   He died, sadly, & his wife found living on the boat too much for her.  She asked Kevin Weare of Middlesex & Herts Boat Services to find her a good home.  He towed her to the yard at Winkwell near Berkhamsted & craned her out.  That's where she is now & she still has the conversion on.  He can be contacted on

01442-872985.  

 

It would be very sad if we had to cut her up."

 

David