 Wooden canal boats, particularly the former working boats, are a
crucial but sadly neglected aspect of the waterway heritage. The
Wooden Canal Boat Society (WCBS) looks after a fleet of 6 wooden
narrow boats at Portland Basin Museum in Ashton under Lyne.
Beside The Huddersfield Narrow Canal in nearby Stalybridge the WCBS is setting up a heritage boatyard where wooden boats will
be able to be restored. A crucial part of the work of this
boatyard will be to retain and teach the skills of wooden canal
boat building and maintenance. These skills are rapidly being
lost. A crucial role will also be to introduce the public to
wooden canal boats and the crafts associated with them.
In order to obtain funding to support this project it is
necessary to prove the need for it. The need seems obvious to
anyone who has a wooden boat, but proving it to a grants
committee is another matter. The problem is that no-one knows
how many examples survive, who owns them, what condition they
are in etc. A few years ago in collaboration with the Historic
Narrow Boat Owners Club the WCBS produced a list of all the
wooden boats anyone could think of. This came to about 200, but
it was something of a back of an envelope exercise. There were a
lot of question marks and a lot of boats that no-one had heard
of for years. The results of this work can be seen on the WCBS
website at www.wcbs.org.uk. |
One very fortunate wooden narrowboat,
the Shropshire Union Flyboat Saturn during
complete restoration by Malcolm Webster. |
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Proper research now needs to be done. We need to find all the
surviving wooden boats and get them to fill in a questionnaire
that we have prepared. This is where the co-operation of boaters, walkers, cyclists,
canal enthusiasts and, of course, wooden boat owners themselves
is needed.
If you are able to help please contact the W.C.B.S. to get a
pack of questionnaires.
Adopt your local stretch of canal and walk the towpath every now
and then. Identify any wooden former working boats and report
back on them. Track down and contact the owners and ask them to
fill in the questionnaire. You can also send in photographs,
some of which may appear on the website to illustrate the
existing list of boats. At the same time the WCBS is looking for more people to take on
ownership of wooden boats. Each year several are abandoned to
their fate when people give up on them. The society is no longer
in a position to adopt further boats itself. Over the last few
years several boats have been saved by informally networking
information. At the same time some have been lost because no new
owner could be found.
The contact person for boat spotters is Colin Scrivener,
17, Upland Grove,
Norton,
Bromsgrove,
Worcestershire.
B61 0EL
01527 577 994 colin@uplandgrove.freewire.co.uk.
Photographs are best sent by Email if possible.
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