Hadfield's Canals of Britain series

[stort_mark]

I now have most of the Hadfield series of books, both the area books and the more specific books looking at one or two canals or rivers.

 

I've come to the conclusion that while the general series is a good start, there is a huge amount of information missing. On several occasions when looking for specific details about individual canals or places, I have found the books wanting.

 

However, the more specialist books on individual canals are so hard to plough through. They have almost interminable information about some aspects (toll rates, parliamentary bills) but little or nothing about the real context of the canals. You get, for example, a lot more out of Ray Shill's brilliant publications than from the David & Charles books about the BCN. The downside is that Shill has published suff over numerous smaller books so it's not all in one place.

 

Is it time to encourage David & Charles to 'revise' the series of general/area books, and continue/complete the specialist books? In the last 30 years,many of the canal societies and restoration groups have done a lot of historical research that could be extremely valuable sources for future publications.

 

 

Just idle thoughts.......

[magpie patrick]

Agrre and disagree: I've got all the original "canals of the British Isles" series (It's a fact, I'm not trying to show off!) and a lot of individual histories. I've also mant more modern books, and in total around 25 feet of shelf space for canal books. One reason we don't live on a boat.

 

The originals are products of their time: In the 1950's museums often had lots of stuffed exhibits with little or no interpretation and lots of dust. Charles Hadfield had to work from having nothing to go on: he comments in one book I forget now which: not one of the histories) that he arrived in Hereford not even knowing of the Hereford and Gloucester had ever been finished: in a cafe he noticed an advert for a business on "canal wharf" and that was as much as he (or anyone else) knew. The wealth of detail, all from original sources, is astonishing.

 

That said, they are mainly commercial histories and less useful for the archeologist. For that, you often need to refer to local books and they don't always exist.

 

Market may be an issue: Some canal books nearly broke David and Charles (Ballinamore and Ballyconnel for example) and the same may be true now. And we need researchers. when I can find some time I might be up for it: what about you Mark, or anyone else...

[stewey]

stort_mark, like you I have collected most of the David & Charles "Canals of the British Isles" series. What is particularly strange about the individual canal histories is the choice of some of the canals! David & Charles were based, at the time these books were published, in Newton Abbot in Devon. Thus we have a substantial proportion of the individual canal/navigation histories produced which relate to canals in south western England:

 

The Bude Canal

The Dorset & Somerset Canal

The Grand Western Canal

The Kennett & Avon Canal

The Somerset Coal Canal & Railway

The Thames & Severn Canal

 

In the Midlands/East Anglia we have the following:

 

The Birmingham Canal Navigations Vol 1

The Great Ouse

The Leicester Line

The Nutbrook Canal

The Oxford Canal

The Trent & Mersey Canal

Waterway to Stratford

 

Yet the poor old North Of England has to make do with only one and then only a river navigation:

 

The Yorkshire Ouse

 

Another strange inclusion in the series was "The Royal Military Canal" in Kent. This, as we know, was built as part of the defence against invasion by Napoleon and not really a canal in the way most of us think!

 

It would have been interesting to have been been at the D&C meeting when it was decided the order in which the individual canal histories were to be published. It is understandable that they decided to start with canals in their local region but why select the Nutbrook Canal before, say the Shropshire Union Canal, the Lancaster Canal or the Leeds & Liverpool Canal?

 

It certainly would be great if both the regional series and the individual canal books were updated and it would be even better if the individual canal histories were, over a period of time, completed. With Charles Hadfield being a co-founder of D&C, his great interest and enthusiasm for canals expressed in his many books on the subject undoubtedly helped propel the publishing of canal histories by D&C. Without that drive and also because D&C was acquired in 2000 by an American publishing group, F+W Publications, Inc, it is hard to see this happening. I hope I am proven wrong on this!

 

Stewey

[stort_mark]

stort_mark, like you I have collected most of the David & Charles "Canals of the British Isles" series. What is particularly strange about the individual canal histories is the choice of some of the canals! David & Charles were based, at the time these books were published, in Newton Abbot in Devon. Thus we have a substantial proportion of the individual canal/navigation histories produced which relate to canals in south western England:

 

......

 

 

It would have been interesting to have been been at the D&C meeting when it was decided the order in which the individual canal histories were to be published. It is understandable that they decided to start with canals in their local region but why select the Nutbrook Canal before, say the Shropshire Union Canal, the Lancaster Canal or the Leeds & Liverpool Canal?

 

I also noticed the emphasis on the west of the country!

 

It certainly would be great if both the regional series and the individual canal books were updated and it would be even better if the individual canal histories were, over a period of time, completed. With Charles Hadfield being a co-founder of D&C, his great interest and enthusiasm for canals expressed in his many books on the subject undoubtedly helped propel the publishing of canal histories by D&C. Without that drive and also because D&C was acquired in 2000 by an American publishing group, F+W Publications, Inc, it is hard to see this happening. I hope I am proven wrong on this!

 

Given the takeover, and the fact that the canal books do not show up at all on the D&C website, it wouldn't surprise me if the publishers were prepared to sell the series to another publisher. Isn't this the kind of series that Moorland are good at.....even though they are mainly railway publishers. Come to think of it, didn't they publish some canal books as well?

[stort_mark]

Market may be an issue: Some canal books nearly broke David and Charles (Ballinamore and Ballyconnel for example) and the same may be true now. And we need researchers. when I can find some time I might be up for it: what about you Mark, or anyone else...

 

Perhaps an update of Baldwin's Canal Books would be a start. However, it is clearly aimed at book collectors as there is an emphasis on value. It was this book that helpfully explained the 'Hadfield pyramid' with his single volume British Canals at the top, then the twelve titles in the Canals of the British Isles and then the 19 titles of the Inland Waterways Histories.

 

It was also in Baldwin's book where I learnt that the Ballinamore & Ballyconnell Canal was only ever used by 15 boats, and given the book's appearance in remainder shops, there was according to Baldwin, seemingly little need for either canal or shop.

 

At the same time, as an example, Oakwood Press' "Wilts & Berks Canal" by L.J. Dalby is better than most of the D&C guides.

 

 

 

Isn't this the kind of series that Moorland are good at.....even though they are mainly railway publishers.

Sorry. I was thinking of Oakwood Press, not Moorland.

[stewey]

Given the takeover, and the fact that the canal books do not show up at all on the D&C website, it wouldn't surprise me if the publishers were prepared to sell the series to another publisher. Isn't this the kind of series that Moorland are good at.....even though they are mainly railway publishers. Come to think of it, didn't they publish some canal books as well?

I agree that the one hope would be for the series to be sold to another publisher.

 

Moorland have certainly covered industrial archaeology and transport in their published works. I have Britain's Lost Waterways by Michael Ware in my collection. However they have never been big canal publishers. A possible candidate would be Tempus, an imprint of The History Press. They already publish a large number of canal books such as Pennine Pioneer, The Story of the Rochdale Canal by Keith Gibson and The Thames & Severn Canal, History & Guide by David Vineras and are thus appear to be founding their own canal series. Wouldn't it be great if the D&C publications could be integrated with those from Tempus in some way, and updated at the same time!

 

We can live in hope!!

 

Stewey

[Joseph]

Hello everyone

 

Sorry, I'm new to this forum and the way it works. But I do think I can comment on this very interesting posting.

 

Stewey wrote:

 

"It would have been interesting to have been been at the D&C meeting when it was decided the order in which the individual canal histories were to be published. It is understandable that they decided to start with canals in their local region but why select the Nutbrook Canal before, say the Shropshire Union Canal, the Lancaster Canal or the Leeds & Liverpool Canal?

 

It certainly would be great if both the regional series and the individual canal books were updated and it would be even better if the individual canal histories were, over a period of time, completed. With Charles Hadfield being a co-founder of D&C, his great interest and enthusiasm for canals expressed in his many books on the subject undoubtedly helped propel the publishing of canal histories by D&C. Without that drive and also because D&C was acquired in 2000 by an American publishing group, F+W Publications, Inc, it is hard to see this happening. I hope I am proven wrong on this!"

 

Readers of my book Charles Hadfield: Canal Man and More (long remaindered, btw, noone seems to have read it) could find part of the answer to this. There was no selection meeting, and no grand plan as such. Baron Duckham's book preceded the idea of a series. Charles did know a number of RCHS members and persuaded some to contribute titles to the Inland Waterways Histories series. Peter Stevenson and Philip Stevens, for instance, planned to write on the Derby, Erewash, Cromford and Nutbrook canals, and the Leicester line and Leicester Navigation. Peter Stevenson wrote the Nutbrook Canal and part of the Derby Canal. In other areas, all depended on whether there were authors who could be approached, or who approached Charles.

 

The Canals of the British Isles series was partly conceived in similar fashion. Charles had written British Canals and the Southern England and South Wales volumes, and then safter D&C was formed made it a formal series. The authors for the Irish and Scottish volumes were recruited by revising one pre-existing MS (Vincent Delany's book on the South of Ireland) and by commissioning Jean Lindsay (RCHS member) and Alan McCutcheon (industrial archaeologist, Charles met him at a conference). Anyway, it's all in my book, if you can find a copy anywhere!

 

How I wish there was a prospect (any prospect) of revising the British Isles volumes and the individual histories (and extending the latter series to cover all waterways). And indeed, bringing the stories up to date, with much more emphasis on the post-1947 scene. Charles would agree with you over that. BUT - the reason why the original series faltered was a simple one - markets. Roaring inflation in the 1970s, very little scope for specialised books, expensively produced.

 

Today - brief rant follows - mainstream commercial publishers look for what can turn a safe, quick profit. Books full of a lot of text, meticulously researched and prepared, are great for us to read, but they don't sell profitably enough. I have recently seen published the 9th edition of British Canals, after long delays while the original publisher was sold to two successive publishers. The new owners have just written to tell me how good they have been in honouring the contract to publish the book, when this was a contract with the previous owners (whom, presumably, I could sue for lost royalties if it wasn't published). Which, I suppose they are in the circumstances....

 

Sorry, but if anyone wants to see the classic books updated back in print (noone more than me), someone will have to win the jackpot on the Lottery and turn their winnings into huge subsidies. Or, (dream on!) if governments saw the publsihing of important histories as part of their function (in some ways, this did happen in the past). That would be, if authors were available and forthcoming, willing to accept minimal financial rewards. Authors of this kind of book rarely make any money at all, and only grim and determined enthusiasm drives many of us along. And there are very few people carrying out detailed historical research into waterways, sadly. Very expensive and very very time-consuming.

 

That doesn't stop me - or anyone else - dreaming!

 

Joseph Boughey

Edited May 17, 2008 by Joseph

[Joseph]

Just to add that, sa far as I know, D&C stopped producing canal books in any quantity many years ago.

 

JB

Edited May 17, 2008 by Joseph

[stewey]

Joseph, many thanks for such an interesting post. Unfortunately I haven't got any time to reply in detail to your post at the moment as we are heading off tomorrow for a week on the LLangollen Canal!! However I am going to ensure that I read your book on Charles Hadfield, a man so important in recent canal history.

 

I was somewhat shocked in looking over my post of 27th April 2008 to see that I overlooked showing Alan Faulkner's marvellous book The Grand Junction Canal im my list. There was a new edition of this book published by W H Walker & Brothers Ltd in 1993.

Apologies for this omission.

 

This is a most interesting thread and I hope it will continue to run for awhile longer!

 

Stewey

[Lady Muck]

THis thread is a coincidence, because I just bought the Canals of Yorkshire and North East England Volume 2, today. It seemed pretty good, to me. I also picked up a book called Surrey waterways, mainly because it has quite a bit about the Croydon, canal, which I've barely found anything written about in the past.

[boatmanckp]

Charles Hadfield was his own man,a true gentleman,not a hard nosed business man looking for a profit.He was the C in D&C . He was passionate about what he did and generous with his help and encouaragement to other canal related writers who wanted to dig deeper into a particular waterway.I often wonder what happened to his vast archive of unpublished material. CKP

[stewey]

I often wonder what happened to his vast archive of unpublished material. CKP

Perhaps this is what you are looking for:

 

http://library-2.lse.ac.uk/archives/handli...d/Hadfield.html

 

I totally agree with your comments regarding Charles as a fine man. This is even more reason why many of us would love to see his work updated into the future. However this hope looks bleak because of the economics of the enterprise.

 

Stewey