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A couple of days ago I was at a talk by Mike Palmer,
Chairman of WRG. At one point he used a hypothetical example of something,
which involved the "Nitts and Stuffs Canal". That set me thinking. Why, when
someone from WRG or IWA wants hypothetical example, do they always
choose the Nitts & Stuffs? Extensive research at the bottom of a gin
bottle has come up with the answer, lost to recent generations but presumably
known to the founding fathers of the canal restoration movement. Now I can
reveal the true story of the Nitts & Stuffs Canal, Lord Gomery and Tim
Galaunt.
The valley of the River Stuff, in Uphamshire, was famous for
its sheep. Indeed all London barristers who had not yet reached the eminence of
King's Counsel, were compelled to wear gowns of Stuff wool. But when the wool
industry began to get mechanised, the town of Stuffitt lacked suitable motive
power. The River Stuff was too small and too low-lying to have enough power to
drive watermills, and the surrounding hills blocked off any wind to drive
windmills. But those hills themselves contained coal, which was discovered in
the middle of the 18th Century at Nittinshaw, on an estate which, like much of
the surrounding area belonged to the Barons Gomery. If was Alexander, the fifth
Baron Gomery who decided to build a canal to bring his coal to the town. This
was several years before the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, and may have been
part of the inspiration for the latter. However the Nittinshaw & Stuffitt
Canal did not attract the same public attention as the later Bridgewater. This
was probably because it did not need an Act of Parliament, since the whole
course of the canal passed through Lord Gomery's own land.
The canal was not difficult to engineer. Coal was brought
down from the hills on gravity-powered tramroads, and loaded into barges on the
canal, which crossed the river on the level (thus ensuring its supply of water)
and wended its gradual way down the valley to the town.
A flourishing woollen manufacturing trade grew at Stuffitt,
which came during the Napoleonic Wars to specialise in military and naval
uniforms.
By 1834, when Alexander's grandson, Montmorency, inherited
the title, the lands and the canal, trade was dropping off in the general
post-war slump and specific lack of demand for uniforms. The only factory in
the town still doing good business was a boot and shoe factory founded during
the war and surviving thanks to the patronage of the victor of Waterloo, who
allowed the works to sell its boots under his Ducal title. The other factories
were ailing. Workers were being laid off all over the town. They didn't have
the vote. But other small business - shops, stables, craft workshops - were
also suffering, and their proprietors did have the vote.
On top of these people who felt the effect of the slump,
there was a class of ladies and gentlemen who had made their profits in the
war, invested well, and felt secure against the economic swing, so the
fashionable society of Stuffitt, the surrounding countryside and the
neighbouring cathedral city of Upham continued unabated.
"Mont" Gomery belonged economically to this class, but was
not wholly of their way of thought. He was the richest man in the area, and his
only heir was his beautiful daughter, Araminta. She was sought in marriage by
the two rival leaders of Stuffitt's political scene.
Lord Francis "Greybeard" Dobbins was the owner of the
Wellington Boot factory, the leader of local society and a crony of the Lord
Lieutenant of the County, Lord Bleagh. He wished to establish himself as a
County landowner as well as a businessman by marrying into the Gomery acres.
Tim Galaunt was a dealer, whose business ethics were reputed
to be rather shady. Whether his nickname of "Red" came from his politics or
from the colour of his hair is not recorded. Some years before our story he had
fled in dubious circumstances from his home county of Hertfordshire (where he
was known as "RedG of Rickmansworth") and set up business in Stuffitt, where
his business methods soon earned him the nickname "Wily" Galaunt. He was a
romantic and in love with Araminta.
Red Tim wanted to be Mayor, and so did "Greybeard" Dobbins.
As election time drew nigh, it was obvious that transport was going to be the
main issue at stake. The gentry of the area spent much of the time driving by
carriage to one another's houses. This was causing a lot of congestion and
destroying the rather primitive roads of the district. So "Greybeard" Dobbins
got Lord Bleagh to have a word with another of their cronies, Sir Jonah
Pushpott, who was Commissioner of Turnpikes for the County. This was done, and
Pushpott promised a new road to cure the congestion - the "Stuffitt-Upham
Northern Relief Turnpike". This was popular with the gentry, but offered
nothing towards the problems of the small businessmen, whose cause was
therefore espoused by Wily Tim.
The proposed new road was planned to have no fewer than five
low-level crossings of the Nitts & Stuffs Canal, thus extinguishing all
trade on the latter. "Mont" Gomery may not have been the brightest bee in the
hive, but at least he realised that the family fortunes came from the mine and
the canal, and that without the latter he would soon be broke. So he started
campaigning against the new road. "Could not", he asked at first "the crossings
be made at a navigable level?". This was ruled out as the fashionable
pony-traps of the aristocracy weren't capable of climbing a gradient. And it
would cost money.
At this time Wily Tim decided to throw in his lot with Lord
Gomery in the hope of ingratiating himself and winning the hand of Araminta. He
decided that only deception would win the day. On the far side of Stuffitt from
Upham, in the village of Dotcom he found a disused clay-pit. From a
neighbouring valley he bought a whole load of turnips, which he brought in at
night by pack-horse and tipped into the hole. He then announced the discovery
of an incredibly rich turnip mine, and wrote several pseudonymous articles in
the local newspapers extolling the virtues of turnips as the important new
investment field. With the help of some equally-pseudonymous "market analysts"
he convinced the gentry of the area that they all wanted to invest in the
Dotcom turnip mine, relieved them of large parcels of gold, and organised a
petition to Sir Jonah Pushpott to scrap the Stuffitt-Upham Northern Relief
Turnpike in favour of one of the other new hi-tech fashions, the
Dotcom-Stuffitt Railway.
Pushpott agreed and Red Tim won the Mayoral election. Of
course it was not long before his deception was discovered and he fled to the
colonies to spend the rest of his life in a series of failed attempts to built
a Brisbane, Ayers Rock, Melbourne & Yarawonga (or BARMY) canal.
Araminta, a woman of determination and good sense, married
Ephraim Balaclava, engineer of the new railway, and it was their son Thomas
Balaclava who revived the fortune of Stuffitt at the time of the Crimean war by
setting up a factory to make his eponymous helmets along with cardigans and
raglan coats.
But the Nitts & Stuffs had been saved, and the story was
never totally forgotten. A later generation of people committed to saving
canals commemorated the initials of Wily Red Galaunt, and one of their
chroniclers took as his pen-name an anagram of Red Tim Galaunt.
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