Canal Navigators and Legerdemain
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...
Ferries Reimagined
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...
Upton on Severn 1813
From Phil Smith: ‘some of our family ancestors were ‘watermen’ on the Severn, living at Upton – the Oakleys – and I found this reference to one of them: “A most melancholy accident on the river Severn at Upton upon Severn. Eight young men...
Canals and Family History
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...
A To Z of Canals and Inland Navigation
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...
After An Inland Navigation
After an inland navigation, reading through The Canal Boatmen, Harry Hanson, Manchester University Press, 1975, I would like to record the following points in my Waterscape Ledger: Commentators such as Temple Thurston and LTC Rolt, thought a goodly proportion of barge...