 Today’s
deep canal enthusiasts tend to immediately go all dewy eyed and unnecessary
when they hear the slow thump of any old Bolinder or National diesel engine
and think of them as the true sound of the traditional canal world. What
tends to get forgotten is that this elemental sound was preceded by 150
years of horses hooves, the creak of harness and the crack of the smacking
whip. For the first century and a half or so of canal history every boat
needed a horse to earn a living and the many non-stop fly boats needed three
or four.
 Because
all those animals did such long hours they all required high protein food in
the day and a stable at night. It follows that every one of those thousands
of canal horses of history could find a stable for the night somewhere,
wherever they travelled. Stables along the canal were essential and common,
no more remarkable than a lay-by or a pub car park is today and just as
necessary to everyday traffic. But that was changing rapidly half a century
ago as the ubiquitous internal engine pushed the horses aside, on the
waterways as everywhere else. The stables became redundant, derelict in many
cases and were demolished or converted out of recognition into something
more functional, and the survival of a complete working example of such a
mundane but vital building is something of a miracle. The stable at Wheelock
on the Trent and Mersey canal is just such a miracle.
  It
is a detached building with a little office and loose box alongside, facing
across the wharf to the canal, all in good external repair although the
interior of the office is really beyond restoration. But the four horse
stable itself is in near perfect if fragile condition, complete with brick
floor and wooden stall dividers, hayracks, mangers and harness pegs all in
place, and all still covered with a thick accretion of old fashioned
disinfectant whitewash. It is a gem of simple vernacular architecture, an
example of a genre once so common as to be almost invisible but now so rare
that this survivor perhaps deserves the status of a national canal monument.
What to do about it without altering it and destroying its value?
 When
I first saw the interior of the stable about three years ago I formed the
idea of making a short piece of film, to try and record the stable in
working mode, full of horses, harness and atmosphere and early October this
year was largely taken up with that project. With the full co-operation of
British Waterways we imported four of Sue Day’s working horses and a boat
and set about trying to recreate a moving snapshot of the building in its
working days. With imperfect knowledge and insufficient money, but buoyed up
with massive help and enthusiasm from canal volunteers and local residents
the job is done—‘in the can’ as they say, and now awaits editing during the
winter. Hopefully you will be able to judge the results for yourself in the
spring. Watch this space.
 But,
oh! the mixture of delight and despair whilst doing it! The pure pleasure of
chatting to some of the older locals as they looked into the stable with
nostalgic knowledge, pleased to see it open and full of horses again after
fifty years. But the despair of struggling to recreate something of historic
truth with horses, boats and bits of rope, knowing full well that the four
silver haired ladies watching from the bridge have more knowledge about
horse-boating in their little fingers than I shall ever know. But they and
their memories are not immortal, alas, and they are probably not going to
make a film. Is an attempt at a bit of historic truth better than no attempt
at all? Well, I suppose it depends on how flawed the results are.
 And
then Bill Atkins comes in, a long-retired ex-boatman who remembers
harnessing up his dad’s horse in this very stable when he was a child. Hmm,
he says, yes, quite like the old days, he says, but where’s all the candle
wax? Candle wax!?!? Oh aye, he says, the posts on the end of each stall was
always covered in wax because that’s where you stuck your candle when you
were putting the harness on the horse on a winter morning. I was
dumbfounded. This was clearly the truth, for no sane storyteller would
invent such a practise. Imagine for a moment—a dark stable full of horses,
with wooden furnishings, with hay in the racks, with straw on the floor, and
then balance a guttering candle on the post just a foot or two from the
backside of the horse. Then start swinging harness up onto his back in the
half-dark… It really is a miracle that the place survives. |
