Category: Waterscape

The Purton Hulks

Abbey, Ada, Alaska, Arkendale H,
Barge Abbey, Barnwood, Barry,
Britannia, Birdlip, Briton Ferry,
Brockworth, Cam, Catherine Ellen,
Cranham, Dispatch, Dursley, Edith,
Envoy, FCB 51, FCB 52, FCB 67,
FCB 68, FCB 75, FCB 76, FCB 77, FCB 78,
Forty Ton Flat, Glenby, Guide (Shamrock),
Harriett, Higre, Hopper No 6, Huntley,
Island Maid, J& AR, Jonadab, Lighter No 6,
Lighter No 9, Lighter No 20, Lighter No 23,
Lighter No 32, Mary Ann, Mary of Brimscombe.
Mary of Truro, Matson, Monarch, Newark,
Petrus, Priory, Rockby, Sally (King), Sandhurst,
Sarah Macdonald, Selina Jane, Severn Collier,
Severn Conveyor, Severn Eagle, Severn Falcon,
Severn Hawk, Severn King, Society, Tirley,
Tribune, Tuffley, Victoria, Wastdale H.

Isn’t interesting that we have the romance of these names,
But no record of the names of the people
Who steered these ships into the unforgiving mud.

IN THE WAKE OF THE FLOWER OF GLOSTER

A Reconstruction of Temple Thurston’s Historic Canal Journey of 1911 John Kemplay

‘It was just after the end of the American war, sir. Not so many red coats were needed, and so I turned my hand to working on the new navigation.

What with springs appearing and disappearing two a penny on our steep inclines, we thought we’d have work on the canal, for ever and a day: “They’ll never keep the water in”, and “How they goin to climb the hill?” was the general talk in the Weavers’ Arms.

But we reached the heights of Daneway by 1786, I think it was; building a basin and coal-yard too, and a road as well – not as fast as a new coach turnpike, but good enough for a wagon to take the coals to Sapperton.

It was hard work, but pay was on time, victuals and beer good, and a roof over your tired head.

But all that changed with the tunnel: over two miles long, and the height of three men, I reckon; and twenty-two shafts of mortal, vertiginous descent.

We said when Jones got the contract, we’d be in trouble; we knew he was a bad un, but the Company ignored us, of course. Some of us had known him a long time; he’d been a mate as a stonemason and miner, but a mate in name only: a mate who never paid his way.

So when we hit hard rock and the Company said, “Build higher and wider”, he refused.

And we didn’t get paid for weeks.

Instead we risked our lives and bodies – and, far worse, dear mates lost theirs and we lost them  – and sweated buckets down there in Hades, or shivered in the dripping damp, catching the ague.

We couldn’t pay the ferryman, as it were, sir, so we had to seek parish relief instead, for our wives and families. Harvests were bad, wheat prices were high and a quarter loaf drained the pocket.

Every brick down there could tell a tale of hardship, anguish and iniquity, if you whistled the right way. Four years of that, sir. We finished the job in the end, though: the year before the Revolution.

And it was in the summer of that year of 1788, when I was walking back towards Coates, when I had the shock of my republican life. I saw at a distance, a sumptuously dressed gentleman, admiring the tunnel’s portal and discoursing with the beech trees: “My colonies, Mr. Tree! How I yearn for the return of my thirteen American colonies! Thirteen is an unfortunate number, is it not, Mr. Tree?”

I had few coins in my pocket, but I knew that this man’s likeness lay upon them. I stayed hidden to watch what might next ensue in this strange, sylvan scene.

But His Majesty was disturbed by the sounds of footsteps on broken branches and twigs. Not mine, but a bricklayer’s.

The king took a coin from his coat, flipped it into the air, and then pressed a golden sovereign – I know it was thus, I saw the flash of light in the sun – into the hand of the itinerant.

He studied the coin. He studied his benefactor. He then fell open mouthed to the ground. Speechless.

The king said something like, “Well done, my good fellow: a most splendid tunnel, but keep this day secret, if you know what’s good for you.”

I kept it a secret too, until now. Reading Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man has made me more confident my republican notions. My wife says it’s high time we had The Rights of Women too. Well, she would.

Any road, back to the navigation, that’s what you want me to talk about isn’t it, sir? The tunnel received its watery tribute in the Revolution-year, but all was not well inside the depths. The fuller’s earth; the limestone; some of the brick work; the clay lining; the springs; the fault line … suffice it to say that the leakages we had predicted all those years ago back in the Weavers’ began to happen. The tunnel had to close for repair: back into the toil of the ‘Stygian darkness’ for us.

But when proper job done, that was me done on the canals; ‘lock, stock and barrel’, you might say, sir.

I might be a republican, but you have to feed and clothe your family, don’t you, sir? It was back to weaving for me. And back to Wallbridge and Stroud. War against the French again. Red coats and Stroud Scarlet again for me – no more inland navigations: and so that concludes my adventures of my life building the canal, sir.

This is the true and faithful account of Samuel Benjamin Butler, husband of Charlotte Alice Butler, April 1^st, 1794.’

‘There is something indescribably forlorn about these abandoned waterways; like old ruined houses or silent mills, they are haunted by the bygone life and toil which has left its deathless, eloquent mark upon them. Just as in old houses the worn steps are the memorial of many vanished feet, so on the canals it is the grooves worn by the towing-lines in the rotting lockbeams or the crumbling brickwork of bridges that bring the past to life.
Most beautiful and most tragic of all is the old Thames and Severn Canal, climbing up the Golden Valley between great hills that wear their beechwoods like a mane. At the summit at Sapperton it pierces the spine of the Cotswold scarp by a tunnel two and a quarter miles in length, and thereafter winds cross the open wolds to join the young Thames at Inlgesham above Lechlade. At Daneway, a tiny village clinging to the steep slope by the western portal of the tunnel, there is an old inn of Cotswold stone where they still remember the boats. The wide windows under their carved drip-stones have seen them moored in what is now a grassy hollow, and they have watched the smoke of cabin fires soar upwards on still evenings against the dark background of the hanging beechwoods. The ‘Flower of Gloster’ was one of the last boats to travel from the Severn to the Thames by this route, and I shall never cease to envy Mr. Temple Thurston his good fortune. Perhaps it is because I have a particular regard for the Cotswold country that I regret most the passing of this, the only Cotswold canal.’

I was baptized Josephine, but I call myself Joe now:
I never felt comfortable in a woman’s clothes,
I was as good at threshing the corn as any man,
And those tales of Amazonian woman-pirates,
And the construction of the Sapperton tunnel,
Made me think of how I might escape this prison
Of womanhood, and so become a man;
So I walked out from my Cotswold hamlet,
Shopped for clothes in Stroud,
Talked myself into a trial run at the Bricklayer’s Arms,
Took a boat through in near record time,
And was signed on as a professional legger,
An inland navigator of sorts, a sort of hybrid,
My sex hidden by fustian, and the subterranean
Depths, down there where the fossils remind us
Of Noah, the ark, the deluge, and the dove of peace.

I quite like that troglodyte world down there,
Your senses are all a-watch:
The dripping of the waters,
The oozings and the tricklings,
The clack of your boots on the brick walls,
The strange sweet smell of our River Styx,
The chorus of a shanty,
The effulgence of the lantern,
The distant pinprick of light,
The chafing of the boards on your hands,
The relish of a tankard and bread and cheese
When you moor up at the Tunnel House,
The joy of seeing your horse again;

It’s not an old man’s, or old woman’s, job:
Your legs, hips, feet, hands and arms
Are full sore after a length of the tunnel,
You only have to look at the grooves that a horse’s rope
Leave in the brick of a canal,
To know that those grooves are being etched
On your bones;
But down there,
In the deep, dark depths,
Of what some might see as a prison,
Is where,
I am free.

Come now begin delving, the Bill is obtain’d
The contest was hard, but a conquest is gain’d;
Let no time be lost, and to get business done
Set thousands to work, that work down the sun.

With speed the desirable work to complete,
The hope now alluring – the spirit how great?
By Severn we soon, I’ve no doubt to my mind,
With old Father Thames shall an intercourse find.

With pearmains and pippins ‘twill gladden the throng,
Full loaded the boats to see floating along;
And fruit that is fine, and good hops for our ale,
Like Wednesbury pit-coal, will always find sale …

As freedom I prize, and my Country respect,
I trust not a soul to my toast will object;
‘Success to the Plough, not forgetting the Spade,
Health, plenty and peace, Navigation and Trade.’

From The Canal Builders by Anthony Burton

Canal Navigators and Legerdemain

Candle in hand in bucket-lift airshafts,

Anonymous men in diseased shanty huts,

Or lost on the tramp in the town or the country,

With no union-pub to rest body and head,

No Blacksmith’s Arms or Plough in the county,

But a damp clay embankment instead for a bed;

Or cutting or gradient, a bridge or a wagon,

A lock-gate or brick works, a clay pit or trench,

Or making the running up the deep cutting,

A thirty-foot climb with barrow and earth,

Two miles of running and landslide bone crushing,

With pick and with shovel, gunpowder and shot;

Tunnelling through the mud and the water,

Conned by contractor and ganger and truck,

Calumnied by the press and the pulpit,

We wander today by their muscle and sweat,

And barge names today tell of eloquent fame,

But who can remember a navvy’s true name?

Their fustian skill and anonymous strength

Built our canals on their horse power length,

But it’s hard to discover a navvy’s true name,

In canal history files and  ledger’s domain.

Jottings, Notes, Re-creations and Re-imaginings after reading
Ferries of Gloucestershire by Joan Tucker

There’s nothing like a November fog in Purton,
Down there by the old turnpike road and swing-bridge,
Where the vapours hang over the cut and the river,
And over where the ferry used to be near Tites Point,
A Magwitch – Pip land, water and skyscape –
A desolate part of the Berkeley Estate,
That became a canal-side port with its own customs house –
But now, just an inn, the Berkeley Arms,
Standing in its own gated meadow,
And a footpath,* and old ferry boat landing steps,
To remind us of what used to be.
While over there, across the river,
Sleepy, sequestered Gatcombe:
Its halcyon port-life shipping and fishing days
Cut short by the coming of the South West Railway.

Poaching and the Game Laws in Gloucestershire: Part One of Three

‘We the undersigned, wish to complain about our arrears of payment from the turnpike trustees. We have worked every day without fail when required and have performed our duties with the utmost vigour and deference, but have not been paid for three weeks.
It is hard enough for us to feed and clothe our families when paid. Our savings are meagre. We do not wish to become reliant upon the parish. We just want what is rightfully ours. With respect and expectation of justice and fair play.
The marks of
Thomas and William Malpass, Anthony Kingscote, James Hinder and William Marling.’

*The right of way would have lapsed but for the determination of George Cooke who drove his pony and cart through once a year as his right. He would demand the farmer should open the two gates that had been erected between Tites Point and the slipway to keep in his cattle. This went on for sixty years.

The law, illegal ferrying, watery rights of way, and poaching at Framilode:

29th August I914 Court Case:
James Harris, lock keeper; Frank Wood, trow owner; Frank Broacher had land next to the canal company and put up a fence ‘next to that of the company’. Broacher went to fetch Wood who had been on the beer and who crossed the river onto company land. He abused Harris – then Wood demanded access to the boat through a company gate. On refusal, Broacher smashed the lock with an axe. The lock was broken another 6 times in the next 6 months. Broacher ‘was a known poacher’ and the police hoped the company would prosecute him.

Framilode:
‘It was a day out to come to Framilode,
Back before the Great War and the next one:

Walking, picnicking, boating, regattas, speed boats,
Swing boats and swings, tea gardens,
Courtesy of that old sea dog, Walter Long;
Downstream at Priding:
The Victoria and Temperance Hotel & Tea Gardens,
Then the Darrel Arms, with the ferry over to Rodley Sands,
To idle the minutes with play and to bathe.’

‘George Leach took over about the time of Dunkirk, I think,
And kept the pub and ferry running until the death of the King,
Took the kids and cyclists over and brought ‘em all back
Before the tide came up.
Charged threepence at the most per person,
Even when the coaches of day-trippers and sight-seers
Turned up on the bank, horns honking.’

The Turnpike and the River:

‘In Saul there was Saul Marsh, arable, and Sandfield common field.’
‘Acccess to the passage was obtained through Saul. The milestone set at the corner of the turnpike to Arlingham with the twisty road to Saul had ‘FRAMILODE’ cut into the stone at the base. This indicated a branch from the main turnpike road to Newnham Passage and was part of the system which from Stroud passed through Paganhill, Cainscross, Stonehouse and Whitminster to Framilode.’

Arlingham:

‘When the road, which turned off the main Gloucester to Bristol road called Perry Way was turnpiked through Frampton-on-Severn, then Arlingham and on to the shore by the New Inn, the ferry obviously gained in importance. The final mile to the crossing point was straight and bleak across the exposed wet meadows … Along this road were at least two toll houses and six milestones, the last being next to an outhouse of the inn. The plate was inscribed: “London 115 miles; Gloucester 14”.’

The Law and the Sabbath and the River in the late 17th and early 18th Century:

‘Passenger boats across a ferry shall not ferry passengers, horses or cattle on Sunday’

‘The names of all such owners and occupiers of the several passage boats on the River Severn who do ferry over on the Lord’s Day any passengers, horses or droves of cattle, contrary to Law that they may be punished the same, or do cause them to be convicted before the same Justices of the Peace.’

‘Our lives round here have been blighted for a century. Once you could walk and roam and boat with carefree freedom. Now there’s fences and hedges and walls and gates and padlocks and spring guns and man traps and tolls.

No wonder there was all that trouble at the toll house at Cainscross on the turnpike down to Framilode: riots, assault, refusal to pay tolls and affray.

We have lost the right to roam on land and on water: just look at the places that have names ending in ‘lode’ or ‘lade’ or ‘load’, like Framilode on the Severn or Lechlade on the Thames. These suffixes are supposed to denote crossing places.

But bridges have by paradoxical logic put an end to that hither and thither.

Thank the Lord for the example of Captain Swing in our county, and the Rebecca Riots over the Severn; no wonder there was trouble at Lechlade at Halfpenny Bridge, last year.

The canal hasn’t helped either. Passing trade used to need us on the river by the sandbanks and rocks around near Newnham. The river gave men work and women had food to cook and children had food on the table.

Now it’s the workhouse instead if you don’t look out.

Let me end with a few words from Mr. Blake and Mr. Clare:

I wander through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier’s cry
Runs in blood down palace walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

“Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky…
Inclosure came in and trampled on the grave
Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave…”

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

** See Also: Searching For The WWI Nissan Huts Above Cowbombe Hill

A to Z of Canals and River Navigations

A is for aqueduct, animals (a boat family’s name for donkeys) and aegre (a tidal wave),

B is for balance-beam, barge, basin, boats, bollards, bobbins, butty, bridge, beck, bore, bow hauling, bye trader,  and boundary post,

C is for canal, cargo, chalico, clough, cock boat, cotting, cut, cratches, coracle and chandler,

D is for day boat, drains, drawbridge, distance post, draw, dydle and dredger,

E is for embankment, ebb and eye,

F is for fishing, fly boats, flash-lock, flight, flat, fleet, flow, fly paddles, freshet, fixed bridge and footbridge,

G is for Grand Junction, Grand Union, Grand Trunk, ground paddle, galley beam, gang, gang planks, gauging, gongoozler and guillotine gate,

H is for Heartbreak Hill, handspike, hane, haling way, hauling path, heel post, henhouse rangers, hold, hollow quoin, horse boat, house lighter and hoppers,

I is for invert and inclined plane,

J is for junctions, joshers, jambing pole, jack clough and joeys,

K is for keels, keb and keys,

L is for ladders, land water, lift up bridges, legging, let off, lee boards, loodel, locks, lode, lighter and long boat,

M is for maintenance yard, marina, mileposts, mooring pins, mitre post, museums and monkey boats,

N is for navigator, navvy, nip, number ones and narrow boats,

O is for ooze, open boats, Ouse (Great), Ouse (Little) and Ouse (Yorks),

P is for paddles, pounds, pound locks, pen, punt, pubs and puddling,

Q is for queues, quant, quarter bits and quoins,

R is for reservoirs, risers, rate, ranters, reach, rimers, roding, rivers, racks and roving bridge,

S is for ships, screws, seizing chain, set to, shafting, slacker, soar pin, staith, stands, stank, steering pole, stop gates, strap, stud, sweep, side pond, sill, slat, sluice, staircase locks, steps, stop-planks, swing bridges, summits, starvationers and staunch,

T is for tiller, tolls, trows, tackle, trow, tying point, Tom Puddings, towpaths, turnover bridges, tub boats, tugs, Turk’s head and tunnels,

U is for underground,

V is for Venice (Little),

W is for water-gate, weirs, windlass, wherries, warehouses, washlands, weigh dock, wide boat, wind to, wings, winding gear and Woolwich (large and small),

X is for the mark of a navvy,

Y is for Berkeley Yellow cloth, stretched out on tenterhooks, above the Stroudwater Navigation,

Z is for the meandering zig-zags of canals, avoiding the expense of locks, as they pursue their elevation.