Regular readers of my column will be aware that I have
written on the subject of preserving the history and traditions of the canal
system before; this time however I would like to cover an important aspect of
our Waterways Heritage that has in recent years received less attention than it
deserves.
In these days of increased public awareness of the
canals, no-one can ever again claim that their history is neglected; that
the waterways system is a 'forgotten aspect of history', a 'little-known place
where time has stood still', 'secret monuments of our past industrial
greatness'... no, the cliché-lovers will have to look elsewhere for
inspiration.
One has only to visit a typical canalside to see,
amongst the massed ranks of BW prohibitions, warnings and other sign-boards,
any number of 'interpretation boards' describing what used to happen there in
the days of working boats. Locks, wharves, basins, warehouses, aqueducts,
tunnels and other reminders of the waterways' past are superbly restored. 200
years of history is there for everyone to enjoy. (Apart from the SSSIs, which
are there for Floating Water Plantain to enjoy).
Preserved historic carrying craft abound, and their
numbers - if anything - seem to be on the increase. Formerly rotten hulks have
been restored to their former glory, now that it has become accepted that - for
the purposes of 'heritage' funding grants - the 'restoration' of a wooden boat
consists of salvaging several bits of ironwork from the original boat,
rebuilding it into a brand-new wooden hull and scrapping the rest. Indeed, the
generosity of the Heritage funding bodies has led to the decision by one
well-known hireboat company to re-equip their entire fleet with 'historic'
wooden boats, as the potential for funds from groups like the Heritage Lottery
Fund makes it cheaper than building new steel pleasure-craft.
The only problem with this approach is that the
supply of rotten hulks may one day dry-up. (unlike the cabins of the wooden
boats themselves, which will never dry-up) But already an ingenious solution
has been found - if all it takes to classify a new boat as a 'restoration' is a
few bits of original ironwork, a typical old wreck will probably provide enough
pieces of genuine canal history to provide the basis for several restoration
jobs. My spies at Blue Queen Narrow Boats tell me that 22 pairs of iron knees
and miscellaneous other scrap metal have been recovered from the old Shroppie
fly-boat Syllabub. These are being recycled into a fleet of 44 new
luxury 'restored' 70-footers, while a 'historic' sanitary station is being
built from the pile of rubble ballast found under the back-cabin floor. And the
old Transit tyres formerly used as bow and stern fenders will - once the
'restoration' is complete - provide a welcome addition to the WRG vehicle
fleet... In exchange for which, WRG have donated three pint-glasses, a few
bar-towels and a dart-board which have been kicking around in one of the Canal
Camps kit trailers since they were nicked from the Old Navigation Inn when it
closed down for demolition, but will now be used as the basis for the
'restoration' of a brand-new canalside hostelry at the boatyard - with the full
support of English Heritage, and a grant from English Nature to pay for the
mice in the cellar and the moss on the roof.
Meanwhile BW have been quick to get in on the act,
and are busy re-inventing the traditional 'house style' of each waterway, which
50 years of Corporate Identity have done their best to obliterate. Canal lock
gates are being painted back into the old local colour schemes that pre-dated
the universal black-and-white (which itself is rumoured to date from an earlier
attempt at historic accuracy based on old pictures, but which failed to take
into account the relatively recent invention of colour photography. But I
digress.) Paddle gear of the old canal company designs is being reinstated.
Bollards are being cast in the many different original styles. Even the Tunnel
Safety notices are reverting to the historic regional variation that used to be
such an important part of canal heritage. (For example, "Do not smoke"
becomes "Tha'd best put thy pipe out, tha knows" on northern
waterways.)
And these days, not only do new waterside developments
face towards the canal instead of looking away from it, hiding it behind a
high wall and pretending it doesn't exist, they actually seek to complement the
canal's heritage - for example by being called Brindley Plaza,
Telford Precinct or Tom Rolt Car-park, or by featuring one or two
mock-up loading cranes to replicate the old warehouses that were torn down to
make way for the new buildings.
Yes, all over the canal system, sparkling pristine
'heritage' abounds, where once there were only old run-down canals. To see
the typical bustling historic canal-side of the 21st century, one would hardly
believe that it was once unloved, semi-derelict wasteland frequented by
muggers, vandals, glue-sniffers and a lunatic fringe called the IWA who liked
boating there. One would scarcely credit the tales of struggling with
broken-down lock-gates, seized-up paddles, weed-filled, rat-infested silted-up
ditches, in the face of officialdom that would put more effort into installing
a 'not recommended for boating' sign than fixing a broken paddle.
And that's exactly my point.
With so much effort to recreate the canals as they were
in their heyday (with the odd few entirely necessary concessions to the
modern age, of course, such as warning notices to tell you that the ground is
hard and if you fall over you might hurt yourself, maybe a few waterside
sculptures, some gate-paddle 'baffles' - so-called apparently because nobody
has any idea why they're needed - and signs to tell you whether this is a
40-minute mooring or a 45-minute mooring), nobody has thought to preserve
anything from the canals' recent past.
But history is a continuous process - instead of
trying to 'pickle the canals in aspic', 'recreate a Golden Age that never
existed' or any other choice from the Observer's Book of Canal Clichés
[by John Gaggle, pub. Chas & Dave, available from IWA book service for
£6.99 inc. p&p] we need to preserve a representative sample of each
period in the canals' long history. At the moment, that crucial period of
wilful neglect, official vandalism, general run-down and philistinism in the
choice of construction materials that lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s has
been completely ignored - as if it never existed.
But not for much longer. As part of another bid to
get World Heritage Site listing for our canals, this 'neglected age of neglect'
is to be recreated.....
When was the last time that you arrived at a lock to
find that one gate wouldn't open properly, one paddle wouldn't close properly
and the entire chamber was filled with detergent foam? Think about it - it's a
once-commonplace part of the traditional canal scene that has been allowed to
completely vanish, unnoticed by the boaters, and with not a whisper of protest
from anyone. But now, Stoke Bruerne Top Lock is to receive the 1970s treatment,
thanks to grants from English Heritage (and Fairy Liquid) which will also see
the reinstatement of original leaky hydraulic 'granny paddles', steel joists
for balance beams (preferably on one side only, with rotten wooden ones the
other side) rough concrete patches on the brick-built chamber walls, and a
broken sill board.
And meanwhile on the Staffs & Worcs, the recent
decision to reduce trimming of the towpath vegetation is the first stage in
recreating a genuine 1960s Heritage Towpath. The gravel topped cyclable
disabled-accessible surface is to be dug up and replaced by one that is barely
walkable in spring and autumn, an impenetrable thicket in summer and a morass
in winter. Several strategically-placed holes are to be dug in it wherever
boaters are likely to be jumping off to work the locks, some part-completed
steel pile bank-protection is to be badly-installed, with enormous piles of
squidgy dredgings dumped behind, and the steps which give access at road
crossings will be replaced by traditional mud-slides with rusty barbed-wire
across them. All the signs giving distances to places on the towpath will be
replaced with 'private - keep out' boards, some of which will be torn
down and thrown into the canal by vandals specially recruited from local
schools.
The Hireboat industry will also feature in the plans
- each company will be required to re-equip one boat in their fleet as a
'heritage' hireboat. Replica cut-in-half converted working boats will be built
and noisy 1960s Lister and BMC engines will be installed, specially tuned for
maximum smoke and unreliability. Leaky wooden cabins will give a genuine 1960s
atmosphere to the interior - assisted by the smell from the bucket-and-chuckit
toilets, for which a shovel will be provided so that they can be emptied in the
traditional way. Each boat will be fitted with 12 bunks and there will be
reduced hire charges for parties of genuine long-haired hippy student-types,
provided that they bring their own guitars.
Meanwhile, Heritage Classics Narrowboats are introducing
a new range of plywood-effect replica pontoons and ship's lifeboat
conversions to cater for traditionally-minded private boater, while Coal Craft
are building replica BCN wooden dayboat hulls (using the bits of rotten timber
that are being thrown away by the wooden boat 'restorers' mentioned above) for
conversion to pleasure boats. In true tradition, a fair number of these
conversions are expected to be abandoned incomplete due to the boats' inability
to stay afloat; these hulls will then be dumped at intervals along the
lesser-used BCN canals. And not to be left out, 'Own-a-Share' are introducing a
novel concept in boat sharing, whereby a full-length working boat hull is
chopped into any number of equal lengths, one for each shareholder.
Selected canalside pubs will also be returned to their
traditional 1960s appearance - keg beer will replace real ale, food will
consist of 'Ploughman's Lunch' or soggy salt-n-shake crisps, and the pubs will
close every afternoon for a period of several hours (the precise hours to be at
the whim of the local magistrates). The toilets will be removed to the far side
of the back-yard, and the cubicle in the Gents will have its flushing chain,
seat, door-lock and supply of toilet-paper removed. The bar prices will be
reduced to 1 shilling and sixpence (7½p) per pint, but whether this will
actually persuade anyone to drink Red Barrel remains to be seen. And the pubs
will be re-named - to the Barge or Bargee if they're on a
narrow-beam canal, or to the'Long Boat if they're on a broad one.
On the Ashton Canal, WRG volunteers will join forces with
the local youngsters in returning the waterway to its 'heritage' derelict
1960s state, and the historic BW notice at Marple telling boaters not to
venture down the locks towards Manchester will be lovingly restored.
As reported recently in the waterways press, the
restored Browns Lock at Turnerwood on the Chesterfield Canal has suffered twice
in the last year from having the balance beams sawn off the brand-new lock
gates. This has generally been reported as vandalism, but it is believed that
in fact it was a heritage-minded BW team re-creating their historic sawing-off
of the balance beams at Park Head Locks to prevent navigation on the Dudley
Canal in the early 1960s. Another part of BW's commitment to reviving the
'recent heritage' of the canals involves a traditional blue-and-yellow fleet of
dredging craft, which are to be left abandoned inadequately tied-up at popular
mooring points around the canal system, while their crews drink tea and the
canals return to their historic levels of silting.
Not to be out-done, the IWA is rumoured to be
considering summary expulsion of a large proportion of the membership - just as
it did in the mid-1950s. This will not only bring it back down nearer to its
'traditional' size, but will help to recreate the factionalism and strife that
were such an important feature of the early years of the association.
And it appears that the recent generosity of the
government towards the canals will come to an abrupt end and there will be
a return to the traditional parsimony, under-funding and increasing backlog of
maintenance - once next year's General Election is safely in the bag.
Finally, as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece,
"regular readers of my column will be aware that I have written on the subject
of preserving the history and traditions of the canal system before" - so once
again, a waterways tradition is being preserved: that of canal magazines that
are short of copy having to re-cycle old articles and reuse then, as our
distinguished Editor knows only too well.
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