Pluto

The Record Office shot is almost certainly from the Ceres Street footbridge. St Johns Church was just to the north of Bedford Place, making it in just the right position for the photo, with Bedford Place footbridge visible over the canal. This would then suggest that the postcard was taken from the Bedford Place footbridge with Millers Bridge in the distance. According to the 1895 25 inch OS, the footpath on the off side ends at Victoria Works.

Another interesting fact is that manure was a major canal traffic - nightsoil and street sweepings from the days before sewers and of horse transport. Around 1890, some 150,000 tons were carried out of Liverpool annually, and used to fertilise the agricultural lands around Burscough. The traffic continued until after the Second World War as Bootle still had a good number of houses which were not connected to mains drainage, with the ships importing cattle from America adding to the cargoes. In the days of sail, the cattle boats would be cleaned, the holds lined, and emigrants carried on the return voyage. No wonder many became sick! There's a more complete description of the delights of the traffic in Liverpool and Its Canal.

I don't think it is the right site as the telegraph poles are on the wrong side. Photos of this section of canal are often very difficult to identify as there was so much building and rebuilding going on as a result of the extension of Liverpool's north docks. I am pretty sure that the postcard shows the towpath on the left and it is just a footpath on the right. From the 1895 25 inch OS map, the footbridge at Ceres Street looking towards Millers Bridge in the distance is the probable site for the photographer.

It could be one of the East Anglian waterways which had similar locks with wooden framework. You find such locks where there are poor foundations, the framework forming a stable tube through which boats sail. The tube being fairly strong allows the gate mitres to seal properly and stops the chamber walls from moving. I found a preserved one at Bleiswyck a few miles north of Rotterdam. Edited to say that I recently came across photos I took c1975 when the locks at Runcorn were cleared so that a rainwater sewer could be put in for the new road connection to the bridge over the Mersey. There were vertical wooden pieces inserted into the stonework of the chamber walls, though from the photos it was difficult to decide whether they were part of a framework or just rubbing pieces.

It could be looking towards Bootle from the Ceres Street footbridge as that is one of the few sections with footpath/towpath on either side.

It is important to remember that there were no easy standards for measurement when canals were built. I have always wondered how they were able to keep lock sizes as close to standard as they did. Presumably each canal had its own set of gauges for measuring things like lock width. On length, early narrow canals seem to have locks around 72 feet in length, those from the canal mania are slightly shorter, possibly to keep costs down, then subsequent narrow canals had locks around 74 feet in length. For the pedantics, I am generalising! I do have details for all the locks on the L&LC and it is surprising how they vary, even individual chambers in a set of riser locks.

It's much cheaper in Holland. Have a look at http://www.jachtverhuurfriesland.nl/englis...rter-sneek.html which was the first site I came across in a quick search. In the late 1980s, a group of us went sailing every year on traditional barges on the Ijsselmeer, and it cost less per person than hiring a narrow boat in GB. The barges we used came with a crew of two who would advise about the best sailing and overnight stops. We would usually head out to the Friesian Islands, dropping on the bottom to harvest some fresh mussels. On one occasion we went to the start of one of the barge races in the middle of the Ijsselmeer where we were sailing amongst thirty or so traditional barges with hardly a modern yacht in sight. There is a variety of accommodation, from boats used by youth groups to those with mainly double-berthed cabins. I can certainly recommend it to anyone interested in sailing historic boats. Enkhuisen was one of the best centres for hiring.

Thanks. The twins tended to be used by motor boats which were also used as tugs, and that was certainly the case with those on the East Lancashire coal traffic, though the last steel general cargo boats, built c1950, also had twins. The main engines installed were the CMX and EMX singles of 21HP and 30HP, the twin EMXT of 42HP, and the slightly more modern EM of 15HP. I have taken the HP from Widdop catalogues, but in the L&LC papers they are often quoted at higher rates, such as 18HP rather than 15HP, or 24HP instead of 21HP.

In the Bolinder thread, a few people mentioned that they knew of Widdop engines which had been around recently. With my L&LC Society hat on, could I ask anyone who knows where there is a Widdop, preferably a single as used in L&LC boats, to PM me to let me know where I could find such an engine. The Society is currently taking over the heritage boat Kennet, and it would be good to have a Widdop on display, if not installed at a later date. Even on display, it would get the bow down a bit! The current engine is a JP3 which is much too large for a virtually empty boat and is really to large for the engine room. I used to maintain the JP3 on the restaurant boat Roland at Burscough and once had to burn out the accumulated carbon in the exhaust manifold, the result of the engine not being worked fully, but just pottering up and down a short stretch of canal.

Built under licence? This is a Yorkshire firm you're talking about! They wouldn't go spending money just like that, especially for what is really an inferior design to theirs. Widdops produced a wide range of engines, most of which would have been to big for canal boats. The schooner Result, at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, has a five IIRC cylinder one. If anyone is interested, I can provide copies of two 1930s Widdop catalogues, 32 and 24 page A5 for £4-00 if you PM me.

One of the best books describing work in the Bristol Channel is The Last of the Sailing Coasters by Edmund Eglinton, published 1982, ISBN 011290336. He worked on trows, including one operated for the Weston, Cleveland & Portishead Railway whose wharf was only reachable on certain tides.

I would have thought the warehouse would make an excellent conversion to at restaurant of some sort, where boats passing would be looked on as a benefit. There are too many canalside housing developments where, once people have moved in to the houses, they start to complain about boats and mooring. And why do people like canals, if not for the wealth of heritage structures along them, with more rural sections in between built up areas. If you don't complain and raise your worries about the number of new buildings being erected, canals could end up as linear housing developments.

Not quite right, as on the L&LC many rings used to have a short metal bar attached freely to the ring. You only had to pass the doubled up loop of a rope through the ring and then pass the loop over the bar, and attach the other unfastened end of the rope as normal to your boat. The system is almost as easy as using a bollard as it does away with the need to pass a long length of rope through the eye. Unfortunately, not many have survived and few people realise what they are.

Conor If you go to my web pages, http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/canals.htm there is some background material on the development of canals. With regard to railway competition, it was canals built during the Canal Mania of the 1790s which tended to be those which were bought out and declined in the mid-nineteenth century. The earlier waterways were generally much more successful and were able to compete with railways. The L&LC were giving such good service that the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway were laying staff off at Burnley because the canal had taken their trade. I don't have much on the Stroudwater, but the following notes were made from the Gentleman's Magazine, which occasionally had articles of canal interest. April 1760, pp167-168 Improvements and savings in inland navigation exemplified on the River Stroud, in the County of Gloucester. Machine invented by Bridge of Tewkesbury, description of crane for moving containers, 6-8 or more per boat, between similar boats on sections of canal above and below mills. Reported b Joseph Tucker of Gloucester. June 1760, pp263-265 Comments by Ferd. Stratford on the Dean of Gloucester’s remarks on the above method of navigation. As to leakage of lock gates when the workmanship is well executed, the lock gates will hardly leak a hogshead in twenty four hours. Good water-tight locks are frequent in the French artificial navigations, as are also those executed in Holland, etc. ‘Tis a pity that in England, we have examples of so many ill constructed locks, subject to great leakage, probably the advocates of the new scheme have only seen those leaky locks.

Probably because of the time he spent at Accrington Grammar School.

If you go to Burscough, you can still go to the Boatmen's Mission Chapel which is now on New Lane. It's the last boatmen's mission still in use as a place of worship.

According to a canal boat builder I know, apprenticed at a wooden boat building yard in the 1940s, a barge has to have a moulded breadth of more than fourteen feet, anything under is a boat.

Because they were illegal. There are/were byelaws which controlled the type of shaft used on most canals as anything with too sharp an end could damage the clay puddle. IIRC, the end has/had to have at least a six inch diameter end. A forked end would be fine on a natural waterway, but could cause leaks on one that was man-made.

The Leeds & Liverpool Canal Society will be taking the heritage short boat Kennet, as we have done for the last couple of years. We are usually moored on Springs Branch, with the boat and displays in the hold open to the public each day. Come along and join the society and the Friends of Kennet who look after the boat. We also intend taking the boat to Blackburn in June to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the opening of the canal from Clayton to Blackburn, and to the Leeds Waterway Festival in July.

Landing craft certainly used the canal in 1942, with LCM 905 travelling westward in October and LCM 291 travelling eastward in November. They caused considerable upset as they seemed to create 12 to 15 inches of wash which closed Nelson Power Station, flooded Hodsons boatyard, and broke mooring lines elsewhere in East Lancs. The naval officer undertaking the trial thought that each boat needed an officer, four crew and two mechanics - but then East Lancashire and West Yorkshire were unmarked territory to the navy.

It could have been reported in Waterways, the BW house magazine. They have full sets inn the archives at Gloucester and Ellesmere Port.

I have a copy of this one which shows Suttons WARRIOR in front of the slips at Mayors new dockyard at Tarleton. It is probably late 1930s or later as the yard originally only had the lefthand slip, the righthand one being added some time after the yard was moved from the tidal Douglas c1930. Warrior was L&LC steamer No 43, and sold to Suttons around 1921 when the L&LC stopped carrying. She was sold back to the company in 1946 for use as a bank boat. The brick building extreme left was originally a railway office when the site was used for transhipping goods between rail and water. There was a third end-on slip on the right which used a steam powered deck winch which was worked by compressed air. I think it has only recently been removed.

The boats in the first two photos probably belong to Suttons, who moored their boats by the swing bridge at Tarleton. Amongst other things, they were the contractors for building and maintaining the training walls on the Ribble in the early 1900s when the Port of Preston was being developed. They used old L&LC boats and old Mersey flats for the trade, bringing stone down from quarries near the canal in the Douglas Valley. On the tidal river, tthe boats were usually towed by a L&LC-type steamer after the canal company gave up carrying in 1921. The lowering mast was used principally for unloading in the estuary from that time, but they must have had sails earlier. The boat on the right may not be one of Suttons, but could be a manure boat or a coal boat. Around 1900 IIRC about 80,000 tons of street sweepings and night soil were brought out of Liverpool annually, down from its maximum tonnage of c150,000 tons around 1880. This traffic survived until the 1950s, the manure being used to improve the agricultural land in West Lancashire. I certainly have one photo of manure being delivered by the swing bridge at Tarleton. I have three or four other photos of Suttons boats which I copied 30 or more years ago. I can't remember where the originals were, and would love to find them as they all show good quality L&LC painting in the West Lancashire style. The ones I have certainly look to be from the same collections as yours. The final photo is of the old Mayor's boatyard at Tarleton. This was on the tidal river about 200 yards below the current lock. It was on the site of the old Douglas Navigation half-tide lock, which was only in use for 20 or 30 years around 1760. There was also a wharf there where coal and other cargoes were transferred between river barges and coastal flats. The lock house and wharf house from Douglas Navigation times, c1750, are still there. The boatyard moved in the early 1930s after the branch railway down to the wharf above Tarleton Lock was closed, the boatyard incorporating a brick railway building and using railway line for the slips. The boat, 127, was originally the EAGLE in the L&LC fleet. Numbers were used from c1904 onwards. I have a similar photo of 260 on the slip at Tarleton, but viewed from the other end. I dated this to c1910 from the old boatyard account book which Harry Leyland had. I copied some of it and will try to did it out. Please can I have good quality scans!