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Aurelia

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Everything posted by Aurelia

  1. Very sorry, Magpie Patrick. All condolences.
  2. I visited the Rea aqueduct in 2018; it was not in a good state.
  3. In view of current stringent - 'strapped-for-cash' - conditions, it seems unlikely that the corrections will be made. But that doesn't alter the fact that it is an important point and well made.
  4. That's sad news. I didn't know him well, but we met once or twice and he struck me as a warm-hearted, interesting man. RIP, Andrew.
  5. Ursamajor4148 - there is, for the record, an article in the Autumn 2017 NarrowBoat magazine entitled 'Brick Boating' which is probably the one you have in mind. Written by Chris M Jones, it takes a broad look at vessels used by the west London brick-manufacturers, including businesses based at the places you mention. It includes a short section on independent carriers. Hope that gives some indication of its scope.
  6. It's an impressive set, Pluto. Thanks for posting.
  7. The old Barton Aqueduct caught several artists' attention. It is intriguing to examine (and a cheerful way of wasting time) the various modifications made to the bridge over the years. G.F. Yates, for instance, painting in 1793, shows a modest sized room occupying the upper portion of one arches. William Orme, sketching at the site slightly earlier, appears to show this storage space (if that is what it was) in the process of construction. Alfred Dunnington's 1893 picture bears comparison with two slightly earlier paintings (c. 1890) by one H.J.Hawkshaw. Entitled respectively 'Barton Aqueduct' https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/barton-aqueduct-165191/view_as/grid/search/works_auto:barton/page/1 and 'River Irwell and Barton Old Aqueduct' https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/river-irwell-and-barton-old-aqueduct-165192 , the originals are both in Salford Museum and Art Gallery. Apologies for not posting the pictures themselves, but I'm not clear whether Art UK's image permissions allow it.
  8. Delightful, Pluto, and a very agreeable diversion. Thanks for posting.
  9. For what it's worth, on 1 August 1767, this notice appeared in the Oxford Journal:- 'It is proposed to make a navigable canal from the canal now making along the Vale of the Trent in Staffordshire, to pass through the parishes of Tamworth, Amington, Polesworth, Grindon, Atherstone, Caldecote, Weddington, Nuneaton, Chilver's Coton, Bedworth and Foreshill [Foleshill] to the city of Coventry, with communications to all the great collieries betwixt Tamworth and Coventry, and a survey has been made and found practicable and [?construction (word missing)] will be undertaken as soon as an Act of Parliament can be procured; And a further proposal has been made for continuing such navigable canal from the city of Coventry southwards through the parishes of Stoke, Binley, Newbold-Revel, Lawford, Rugby, Barby, Willoughby, Granborough, Stockton, Ladbrook, Wormleighton, Banbury and rom there down to the City of Oxford, to communicate with the navigation of the Thames.' No mention whatever of its being a 'bottom' route, but perhaps that isn't entirely surprising at this date. What the notice strikingly shows, is that in their initial conception, the Coventry and Oxford Canals appear to have been viewed as a single waterway - a detail which may owe something to the energetic promotion of both by Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury, sometime MP for Oxford University.
  10. Much recommended! I caught this morning's installment, thanks to a kind neighbour who knew I'd be interested and alerted me. Julian Glover has an eye for the telling detail and the reader - sorry, can't recall his name - is excellent.
  11. Visiting the Bridgewater Canal in the winter of 1767, Sir Joseph Banks observed a 'broad-stemmed boat' drawn by a single mule thrusting her way through ice 'near an inch thick'. On board, seven or eight men 'swayed her with great force [and] struck any large pieces of ice with clubs they held in their hands'. Swaying the boat created a sizeable wave which ran ahead of the party, cracking if not shattering the ice in its path before the vessel's advance. Banks recounts the sight in his 'Journal of an Excursion of Wales, etc. 1767-68.' The manuscript is in Cambridge University Library but sadly it does not appear to exist in printed form.
  12. I cannot let Pluto's remark 'Praising Brindley's work was, in effect, praising the governing elite' pass unchallenged. About three weeks after James Brindley's death, the Oxford Journal published a letter chronicling the recent opening of a section of the Trent and Mersey Canal. 'The banks on each side' writes the correspondent, 'were covered for many miles with an innumerable crowd of spectators, whose shouts with the ringing of bells, and the discharge of cannon, seemed to rend the sky. A solemn goblet was drank to the immortal memory of our lamented engineer, the late Mr Brindley, who is now supposed to preside (a guardian genius) over this canal.' (For anyone who is interested, the letter appeared on 17 October, 1772). The October 1772 festivities celebrated a big boost to the economy of the Potteries. To view the carnival as a grovel to the aristocracy requires cynicism of no small order.
  13. Maybe some of the fine detail in the ‘Canal Pioneer’ piece has gone awry, and I don’t suppose Machpoint005 is the only reader to quibble about the lock claim. At the same time, it is worth bearing in mind that it very much easier to cavil over errors than it is avoid them. Cheers to the BBC for celebrating James Brindley’s 300th anniversary in such style.
  14. It was an impressive performance. Arguably the cheese was on the small side.
  15. Thanks for posting the stanzas by John Wain, SG - and what distinction that he should have written them for your father. They're a delight.
  16. To put the word 'lasher' in some context:- And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames, To bathe in the abandoned lasher pass, Have often pass'd thee near Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown.... Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888, The Scholar-Gipsy
  17. Congratulations on your appointment, Jodie. I hope you enjoy your research and look forward to reading the results.
  18. Here, in case it is of interest, is a picture I took some 18 months ago of the surviving Brinklow Arches:
  19. Intriguing discoveries. Thanks for the account of the excavations.
  20. Thanks, Ray. I haven't seen a plan for Henry Bradford's survey; I wonder if one survives. Charles Hadfield certainly mentions Bradford and indicates that 'in1766 and 1767 he 'surveyed for a canal from Coventry to Tamworth, with a river extension thence to Fazeley,' ( Charles Hadfield, 'Canals of the East Midlands' (1970 edn, footnote to p.15). As for Brindley, Wedgwood is very clear about his reluctance to let the Coventry promoters rush him (see my original question quoting Josiah Wedgwood’s letter to Thomas Bentley, 2 March 1767.) Over the spring and summer of 1767, he was supposed to be undertaking canal-related business both in Scotland and Ireland. In the event, unwell, he appears to have delegated the Irish work on a section of the Lagan Canal for Lord Hertford to Robert Whitworth and postponed his surveying commission in Scotland for Samuel Garbett until the following year. Uncertain health notwithstanding, over April, May, June and July of 1767, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal occupied much of his time. Notebooks (now in Stafford RO) kept by Staffs & Worcs Clerk of the works, John Fennyhouse Green indicate that Brindley made site visits on 24 and 30 March; 15 and 29 April; 15 May; 6, 20 and 30 June and 10 July. Nevertheless, it appears that somehow Coventry got the survey it wanted. As early as 4 August 1767, the Leeds Intelligencer reported that ‘a survey has been made and found practicable ’ for a canal’ initially intended to run from the Trent & Mersey through Tamworth, Amington, Polesworth, Grindon, Atherton, Caldecote, Weddington, Nuneaton, Chilver’s Coton, Bedworth and Foleshill, ‘to the city of Coventry.’ Did Brindley, in between inspecting the works in progress on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, accede to the Coventry promoters’ pleas after all and complete the survey with Joseph Parker’s assistance?
  21. Thanks so much, Ray and Pluto. They're very helpful suggestions and much appreciated. Aurelia
  22. Has anyone any information, please, about Henry Bradford, credited with surveying a line from Coventry to Tamworth in 1766, supposedly a fore-runner to the Coventry Canal? Is he, for instance, the Quaker timber merchant (b.1698) from whom, apparently, Birmingham's 'Bradford Street' is named? I ask, because the Coventry promoters seem to have taken things ahead with their canal very fast. Although Jim Shead's website claims that Brindley surveyed for them in January 1767, Josiah Wedgwood - rather closer to the action - notes in March 1767 that when the Coventry men asked James Brindley for a survey, he had told them they were 'too precipitate' but that he would 'look over the country in a year or two if he could.' In the event, by November 1767 the Coventry contingent were petitioning Parliament for a Bill on the basis that they had ' a survey lately taken.' So might it have been Henry Bradford's line that they meant? Of course, this question may be one to which there's just no clear answer.
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