Horse-drawn maintenance boat...

[davidwheeler]

These are I accept pretty awful photos. The thing is, that I took them with my Brownie Box camera and I had not got the hang of it. I took things when they were too far away. With a Brownie Box, you had to look down into it from the top  to see the image reflected up to you and when you judged the moment right, you pressed a plunger button which worked the shutter with a satisfactory clump. The skill was to press the plunger button at the right time and I never got it. The bottom photo shows a laden narrowboat passing APL's 'Stourvale' which we had hired for the week. I think it must be on the Shropshire Union. It is summer 1955. The narrowboat has I think a large black dog on the back cabin. It was an unremarkable sight in those days and I have included it to fill the page out a bit.

The bottom two if you can make them out are what I hope someone can help me about. One shows a BW Maintenance boat waiting at the lock's bottom gates. You may be able to see the towing post. In fact I think there are two posts, the other in the  bows so perhaps it was also used as an icebreaker. The other one shows the horse and the lengthman above the lock, the horse having some feed. The top gate offside paddle is I think up. I say lengthman because if my memory serves me, this was the last horse-drawn British Waterways boat on the canal at the time. I think I can decipher 'British Waterways' on the cabin side.  Boat and horse were used by the lengthman. What I cannot recognise is where the lock is. I ought to, but I don't. Does anyone? I am not even sure of the canal but I think it is the Welsh Cut. The year is either 1955 or 1956. I seem to remember some publicity about 'the last horse' at the time.

[David Mack]

First photo doesn't look like any of the locks on the Llangollen to me. There are some similarities to Rocky Lock on the Staffs & Worcs, although if it is there, the lock house has been demolished since the 1950s.

[agg221]

Do you have these scanned at a higher resolution? Usually with scanned photographs you can zoom in quite a bit before losing clarity but the scale they are posted at means I can't zoom in at all. I stand a chance of identifying the boat in the first photograph if you can post the highest quality image possible.

 

Alec