|
Harold Barnet was born to a well-known boating family on the Grand Junction Canal. He worked with his parents for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company, after it was set up in 1929; the family left the boats in 1944 due to his mother's poor health. In the course of conversation, Harold mentioned delivering coal to Maids Moreton on the Buckingham Arm - I suggested they must have been among the last boats to travel the Arm: HAROLD: No - the last boats to load down the Arm that I know of were two pair of Fellers's (Fellows, Morton and Clayton boats) in about 1935 or 36; they loaded sugar beet, off the farmer's fields. Harry Tyler was one of the men - I don't know the other. We took coal to the factory in Deanshanger sometimes, too. STEVE: That was the Iron works then? HAROLD: Yes. That was right up to the war. But Jimmy Canvin - he had a coal business in Old Stratford... STEVE: And the wharf in Deanshanger? HAROLD: That's right. Well, even during the war he would still take his horse-boat up to Coventry for a load. From here (Cosgrove Junction) he'd take the lightener, as we called it: That was like a big punt, used to be tied up over where the weir is. He'd swing around here - there was a swingbridge then, over the lock, to get the horse over, you see - and then shovel about three or four tons out of the boat into the lightener before they could get down the Arm. STEVE: The cut there was very shallow, then? HAROLD: Oh, yes! You'd a job to get along. Then, you know, he'd use the same horse to pull his cart, to deliver the coal around about! STEVE: That was before they damed the cut? HAROLD: There was still water there, of course. What they did was to drive in wooden piles, across under the bridge, and stank it off that way. Still used to leak, mind; Albert Wilson was the lengthsman here then, lived in the cottage - he used to have to go and check it every day, see where the water was going. There was still water all down the Arm, for a long time. I remember, when I was with Waterways, in the late fifties it would be, we had to go and put in some steel piling down near Maids Moreton: You know where the mill used to be? There was a stretch there, right next to the river well, the cut broke through, into the river, and we had to go and stop it off with these piles. From there the conversation turned to other things. I have tried to reproduce Harold's words as closely as possible, without the typical boatman's inflection and emphasis, which had become more and more pronounced as we spoke! He seems to confirm our suspicion that in fact the Arms did not leak substantially even after the damming of 1944 - and the information regarding boat movements is new and interesting. |