Canals and Family History – Radical Stroud

It only struck me today, that if you have ancestors from the urban, industrial working class, then odds are that some of them would have lived close to canals. It’s only when you stop to think about it, and do a bit of delving in the census returns, and do a bit of walking in situ, that you begin to discover that canals and your family history might be a bit closer than you think. Here’s mine:

Inland Navigations and Family History

When I walk through Swindon’s red brick streets
(Richard Jefferies’ ‘Chicago of the West’),
Which wander up the hillside from the railway village,
And so to John Betjeman’s Old Town,
I use the old factory tunnel, the railway park,
The canal cut, the alleyways, the ginnels,
And of course, ‘The Loop’ –
Which once joined Swindon Junction
And Old Town Swindon Station
(Scene of sister’s honeymoon train in 1961,
And brothers’ train-spotting and chips trips);

It’s now a footpath,
Crossing the Wilts and Berks Canal:

I stood for a while at the red brick railway bridge
Arching over the canal, where a heron stood sentinel,
Poaching hard by an outfall tumbling from the bank.

Unsure of my path, I asked a fellow pair of walkers,
‘What happens if I turn right?’
‘You’ll end up at Waitrose, where the canal ends.’
‘There’s been a lot of changes since I was here last,
Forty years ago, I should think.’
‘There’s been a lot of changes in the last year, mate.’

By then, I had already roamed around Cambria Bridge Road,
Trying to find the cottage where Edward Thomas used to stay
(Now a Chinese take-away)
When visiting his grand mother before the Great War,
Right there on the banks of the navigation.

My gramp was serving his GWR apprenticeship
(Working alongside his father),
A carpenter in the carriage and wagon works,
In those so-called Edwardian golden years,
A young man taking his snap and grabbing a fag,
Before the factory hooter
Summoned the men back inside.
Did they ever meet and chat, I wondered,
Walking through the Railway Park,
Edward Thomas and Clarence Butler,
Thomas, pencil in hand, recording conversations
And observations in his notebook,
Perhaps watching the steam powered machine
Cut the giant lardy cake on high days and holidays,
Countless slices of Wiltshire for the children.

Did they ever chat to Alfred Williams?
‘The Hammer man Poet’,
Forge-hot from his labours,
Trying to catch a glimpse of the downs above the terraced roofs,
Or pass Will Harvey in the street?
Or have a drink with Archibald Knee,
Once of Stroud,
Now in the Carriage and Wagon paint shop:
Archibald Knee, killed in the Great War,
Commemorated in the STEAM Museum:
Where “Their names liveth for ever”,
Archibald Knee, friend of his namesake
From West End, Minchinhampton,
Drowned in mutual suicide
With Dorothy Beard, from Avening,
In Iron Mills Pond, at the end of August 1916;

My grand dad was a sociable cove though,
Who liked a chat, a pint and a bar room sing song,
I like to think he would have talked with them all,
Walking to the pubs, and back home, along the towpaths,
Wondering what they should do if war broke out,
Talking of the suffragettes, the Home Rule crisis,
The Triple Industrial Alliance;

Gramp went off to London and met Elsie Bingham,
She was a Stroud girl – Bridge Street, by the canal bridge,
And they married in Cainscross in 1914,
Before returning to Hammersmith, where my dad was born:
Gramp then volunteered for the army.
A year later, my mum was born in Swindon
(Her family once lived near Elcombe Bridge in a hamlet
Close to Wroughton’s village wharf),
On the same day that Edward Thomas enlisted,
The day he wrote For These, July 14th 1915*

The Butlers returned to the Cotswolds
After gramp was demobbed,
And then made redundant in 1921:
They found a home near Frampton Mansell,
High above the Thames and Severn Canal,
An ex-army Nissan hut, **
Gramp had a horse and cart milk round up above Sapperton,
Trundling along above the canal tunnel,
Until he got a job again in Swindon,
Where dad fell into the now stagnant waters of the Wilts and Berks

And now, so many years later,
My daughter, Alice, lives a peripatetic life on the canals of London:
What next?
Well, having conversations with your olders and betters helps,
When you have a family get-together:
My brother in law, Rod, shared his photo album:
Pictures of canals and a plaque to Edward Thomas
And Richard Jefferies up on Liddington Hill,
Memories of his dad telling him how he had fallen into the
Wilts and Berks Canal in Stratton, near Swindon;
Recollections from Rod of playing by that canal in ‘the War’,
Seeing what he now thinks must have been
A canal milepost on its side,
But the boys convinced it must be a Viking gravestone,
Playing hockey with frozen cowpats on the icy canal
In the oh so hard winter of 1947;
Telling me the names of the bridges I had found the day before:
Marshgate Lane and Bevan’s Bridge;
Telling me how to find the aqueduct over the River Ray,
Telling me where to find glimpses of old waters
In the Greenbridge Business Park …
What next?

* See Also: July 14th 1915