A beginning. And an end.

[davidwheeler]

Stroudwater 1's photo, quite apart from being a beautiful photo in its own right, I find quite impressive. It does look as though most of the 18 barges, all strung out in a long line, have been completely covered by the Severn mud. I remember that concrete barge 51, just a little way east of the swing bridge, was high and dry in 1965. By 1969 covered by mud apart from tops of bow and stern, and within 10 years completely covered over, with only its retaining steel warps, secured to a tree on the bankside, to show where it remained below the surface. Very powerful river, the Severn. But then the men who put the barges there knew that, and knew its ways.

[Stroudwater1]

27 minutes ago, davidwheeler said:

Stroudwater 1's photo, quite apart from being a beautiful photo in its own right, I find quite impressive. It does look as though most of the 18 barges, all strung out in a long line, have been completely covered by the Severn mud. I remember that concrete barge 51, just a little way east of the swing bridge, was high and dry in 1965. By 1969 covered by mud apart from tops of bow and stern, and within 10 years completely covered over, with only its retaining steel warps, secured to a tree on the bankside, to show where it remained below the surface. Very powerful river, the Severn. But then the men who put the barges there knew that, and knew its ways.

You’re too kind David! In fairness my photo is angled slightly to the right and further up away from Sharpness to Plutos. It also looks like the course of the river has changed so the bank is not under the erosion pressures it once was. This is common with the Severn. I will try to get down again soon. 
 

There are some very definite boats remaining alongside the canal up to the old railway swingbridge. 
 

I will see if I can find any plaques. I was fairly sure there weren’t any where Plutos dumped boats are beached. This is strange because there are a good number of plaques elsewhere in the area even where there’s nothing visible remaining. 
 

 

The stone is from the railway bridge 

 

[Tam & Di]

22 hours ago, Stroudwater1 said:

 

 

Sadly Lotta's British courtesy flag is upside down. 😡

[Pluto]

Has it put you in distress?  

Here's one of the row of barges at Sharpness in 1981.

Edited April 3 by Pluto

[davidwheeler]

Well, if you do, as you write that you might, make a visit to the Purton site and just happen across the plaques for Newark, and Glenby, and F.C.B. 76, and decide they merit a photo or two of what the areas are like now, and then decide to stick them on as part of this story, which they are so far as I am concerned, because they really were and are the end of my physical contact with Purton and the canals, that would be more than I could hope for. Just as a matter of fact, all three are right at the top NE end, nearest to the houses, the road and the village. I don't think the Friends of Purton erected any information plaques SW of Harriet. They have been confined I think to the wooden vessel remains and the FCBs.

[davidwheeler]

This is, I hope, a rather better version of the photo reproduced earlier.

To the left, the complete hull of the former Perth-built schooner, the Sarah MacDonald, dating from 1867. Latterly, renamed Voltaic. To the right, intact save for her name cut from the stern, is the Edith, a former ketch rigged trow. You can compare her boxey lines with that of the former schooner. This is 1969, when arguably Purton was at its best as the collection of wooden vessels without comparison anywhere else in the British Isles for its diversity and interest. The Voltaic, sixteen years on the banks at Purton, the Edith just 12.  But by 1986 these two vessels had been  destroyed by arson as were others on the site. 

[davidwheeler]

What I am trying to convey is an impression of the Severn bankside at Purton, where it lay close to the Canal, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The first thing is that the land was grazed by cattle so the ground was close cropped and quite smooth, rather like a well maintained lawn, not trimmed too closely as indeed they recommend these days. On top of this lawn were plonked large wooden hulls of lots of different shapes and sizes, reflecting the original purpose of the vessel. They weren't placed neatly, as in a municipal car park, they were all over the place. Some broadside to the hedge between bank and canal, some pointing directly at it. Some sunk down into the earth, so that one could step from the grass outside the vessel, onto the grass inside it. Others high up above, with their bottom planks just resting on the ground. That was part of the mystery of it, these things were quite out of their context. You do not expect a  whacking great ship to be sitting in your garden, let alone dozens of them. Granted if one had thought about it, the reason would have become obvious but one didn't and there was no explanation, no information as to how these things got there, how anyone managed to get them so far above the river, and why. They were just there. Just beyond the hedge. You pushed through and there in front of you was a great big wooden hull. Magic it was.  Unbelievable. Unreal.

Here are a few more photos, not much good, but perhaps you can see a bit what I mean. The top one, looking through the hedge, was a very shapely vessel although you can't see that, a former schooner, 'Shamrock'.  Middle left is the 'J & A R', a former trow, in the foreground the towed barge 'Barry', and in the background one of the concrete barges, '67' or '77'. Middle right, the Voltaic, in 1965. Bottom, I can't remember, but a double ended towing barge, wooden but with a iron or steel rudder. 

[davidwheeler]

By the 1980s, things began to change. I visited regularly during the late 1950s and through the 1960s. Then a bit of a pause until the early 1980s. To that time, the site seemed to remain relatively undisturbed, save for the arrival of a few new wooden hulls and the last of the FCBs. Access to the site was not easy and not obvious. During those early years I never met anyone there, nor any sign that people had been there although clearly they had. But they left no footprint. 

Not so by early 1980. Many of the hulls had been daubed with white paint,  crude and obscene words and outlines of genitalia. That was that. For me,finish. I learned that later that decade arsonists got seriously to work and destroyed many of the best of the ships. Only Harriett seemed to escape, perhaps because it was too far to walk. Not until the 1990s, when I got to know Paul Barnett, did my interest rekindle.

But the site now is a mere ghost of what it was.

Here to end my contribution, a couple of photos from 1996. The Harriett has at least some legal protection as well as the physical protection provided by the Friends of Purton. The poor old Severn Collier, never the most beautiful example of a wooden barge, and not a particular success as such,  was still recognisable. What she is like now, I do not know. 

As has been written before during this story, the Friends of Purton website gives masses of information, not only of the history of the ships and barges, but also of Paul Barnett's struggle to identify them and to protect them. His book is full of interesting facts, comments and pictures, not only of Purton, but the other sites as well.