The forgotten 100 years of Waterway History

[Heartland]

There are times when it seems to some that the defining moment of canal history began with the publication of the large scale Ordnance Survey maps. The IWA Blue book of the BCN gives this impression and other few other works often resort to the Ordnance Survey to show waterways development#.

 

Listening to an Alarum Theatre recording on the Netherton Canal, excellent though it is. led me to wonder on the concentration of recent history, and that is what this group choose to tackle. Yet with the Netherton Canal there was some hundred years of history that perhaps deserves better mention. The opening of the Lapal Tunnel, the coal traffic from the mines to the Dudley Canal owned basins at Gas Street, Birmingham, the early merchandise carriers wharves, the development of the iron industry and the linked industry of chain making. James Dadfords plan of the railway at Netherton- the list goes on....

[Athy]

12 minutes ago, Heartland said:

There are times when it seems to some that the defining moment of canal history began with the publication of the large scale Ordnance Survey maps. ..

When was that?

[Heartland]

This time is best described as the 1880's in the Midlands and earlier in the North West and North East.

[Captain Pegg]

Anything that acknowledges there were carrying boats before the GUCCCo and that Joe Skinner wasn't the only boatman is a step forward.

[Heartland]

When the subject of carrying boats is delved into there is the diversity of narrow boats, trent boats, trows and flats for a start and many more. But confining the topic to the narrowboat. That evolved with time. There is a host of canal carrying stories which can be traced in records as are sometimes the individual boatmen and boat women. Some women like Elizabeth Swain operated narrowboats for a time. The Swain family warehouse faced Summer Row and backed onto the Newhall Branch in Birmingham. Then there are the male carriers, Thomas Sherratt, George Ryder Bird,and John Whitehouse are all in the early mix. Risk was pat of their business. Theft was not uncommon and Bird issued his boatmen with firearms, powder and ball in 1816!

[magpie patrick]

I'm more interested in infrastructure than vessels (same applies for my interest in railways and roads too) and in most instances there is very little known, or at least very little published, between the canals opening and them closing again. Clearly upon opening the "big stuff" had largely been done but there were often numerous smaller changes. On the Coal Canal a lot of accomodation bridges started lift as swing bridges but almost all of these were gradualy replaced as the canal company profited from a revenue stream. At some point the decision was made to use iron sheets rather than planking to clad the gates - no idea when though. Paddle gear is another area where there may well have been subtle changes as the years went by. 

 

The period I'm thinking of is early 19th century, by which time most canals had opened, to late 19th century, when closures began. It may also be that records were not so well kept or that they have been lost, changes in the 20th century, for those canals that thrived into this era, seem to have been better recorded. The advent of photography may have had something to do with it - after all the causal observer in 1810 would have had no camera and may have been illiterate, by 1930 both literacy and cameras were more common. 

[Pluto]

Although records no longer survive for much of the infrastructure, much can be deduced from what survives. This is one of the locks at Wigan, and you can see from the vertical 'join' in the stonework that the curved wall which guides boats into the lock was a later addition. L&LC locks often had right-angle corners at their entrance, particularly on those built in the early phase of construction. The photo also shows how the stonework has been raised to compensate for mining subsidence. Wigan locks were 'equalised' at least twice to even up lock falls and thus control excessive water usage. The type of stone dressing also varies according to date, with later reconstruction often having stonework with detailed edges, rather than the simple stone dressing of the earlier locks. Even without the written records, there is much to be discovered about the history of canals.

[Heartland]

It is a wide subject. I came across the newspaper accounts of the meetings for the Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway which in reality only operated a railway between Colwick and Grantham, but also came to own the Nottingham Canal and Grantham Canal and used both as a source of revenue, In fact they seemed to encourage traffic and maintenance in the brief period before the Great Northern Railway gained total control of both  the railway and the canals.