Women of the Barges.Aug 29th 1942

‘Illustrated Magazine’. August 1942.                                                          

‘Illustrated Magazine’ was published throughout the 1940s /50s and was along with its great rival – ‘Picture Post’ a  very popular source of news and current affairs.
Of the three articles concerning Britain's canals in wartime published in these two magazines; the ‘Illustrated Mag’ shown above has a very early entry which might interest those interested in the origins of the ‘Idle Women’ and the wartime boat training scheme on the Grand Union.
  
Caption reads - ‘Empty; the – ‘Heather Bell’  heads for the collieries to take on a load of coal’.                                                                    
The March family from Worcestershire had owned the ‘Heather Bell’ for some years before war broke out in 1939 when they decided to help the war effort by carrying with the boat. The photograph shows Daphne March (Daughter) and a crew member with the boat at Tipton.. Initially Daphne’s elder brother was involved with the running of the boat but after he entered the armed forces Daphne and her mother ran the boat alone.
The boat carried coal from the Birmingham area for delivery to canal side premises in Worcester with a return trip with flour to Tipton. Occasional trips were made elsewhere.

L T C Rolt living on his boat ‘Cressy’ at Tardebigge on the Worcester & Birmingham canal during the war years would have known this boat and its crew well. He mentions  a boat passing him in the dusk and the ‘Roedean’ accents of the female crew members  floating back to him as the boat passed by.
    The boat started its run to Tipton in February of 1941 but after her brother left to enter the armed forces Daphne advertised in the Times for a new crew member. Molly Trail joined the boat and she in turn introduced Kit Gayford as a crew member.Molly left in the autumn of 1941 but Kit Gayford stayed on until the boat sank in an accident in December of that year
After leaving the Heather Bell, Molly Trail was one of those involved in planning the wartime female boat training scheme for the GUCC and the Ministry of War Transport and in the summer of 1942 Kit Gayford joined her and they both started training the women who applied to join the scheme.
The March family were thus early forerunners of the all women wartime crews  although it should be said that it was not unknown,from early times on, for a wife (after the death of her husband) to steer the family boat perhaps with the help of a daughter.
The subject of Daphne March,the ‘Heather Bell’ and the ‘Idle Women’ boat training scheme is dealt with in much more detail in a great item by Mike Constable in a current article in the Historic Narrow Boat Owners Club newsletter. http://www.hnboc.org.uk . Mike has researched this subject very thoroughly and is able to deal with it in some detail.

                               
Daphne March and her mother.                                                                        

Daphne features in another wartime publication which I will review shortly.

Promoting the canal in 1923.

The larger canal companies occasionally issued promotional material and the booklet shown above is one of the earliest  in my collection.

With its colour printed front cover and tasselled cord binding it looks  quite prestigious and was obviously designed by the Aire and Calder Navigation Co to impress potential customers with the size of their canal and its state of the art equipment.

Coal hoists are featured.                                                  

As are their tugs and carrying craft.                                            

Their ‘tom pudding’ compartment boats for coal carrying.

& their very large modernised locks.

The  undated booklet has 30 pages and 20 plus photos and diagrams and seems to have been issued in the early 1920’s.

A Day Out at Compton Verney & British Canal Art (and other things).

‘Popular English Art’  by Noel Carrington & Clarke Hutton. 1946.

 

I have written in a previous blog of the first recorded mention of the painting and decoration of the English canal  narrow boat (see my Dec 2110 blog – On the Canals in 1858). This was unfortunately just a written description and as vivid and detailed as it is, another 15 years passed before we have our first visual idea of this painting in an engraving by H R Robertson in ‘ Life on the Upper Thames’  published in 1873. I will be showing this and some of the other superb engravings from this book in a future blog.

My purpose here is to take the story on from this point and although we have various mentions of ‘ the gaily painted barge decoration’  and ‘ the decorated pails and buckets’  in various accounts of canal voyages made during the subsequent half century it is not until the years of the second world war and after that the boat decoration is recognized as forming part of a much wider British Folk Art tradition.

Noel Carrington's book was the first to include Canal Boat Art in his book of British folk art in 1946. Carrington was the brother of Dora Carrington the artist of Bloomsbury & Lytton Strachey fame. Before WW2 he had edited Country Life before becoming involved with Penguin Books at the outset of their publication in the late 1930’s.

Carrington introduced a series called King Penguins during the war and their colour printed board covers as in ‘British Popular Art ‘ were often designed by Clarke Hutton.

Published in 1946.                                          Published in 1951.

 

Margaret Lambert a historian and Enid Marx an artist designer are generally credited with recognizing and initiating an  interest in Canal boat art in particular  and British naive art in general. Since the early 1930’s they had amassed a huge collection of paintings and artefacts from all over the country. Nothing escaped their eyes – fabrics,inn & shop signs,fairground items, corn dollies, cig cards , metalwork and ephemera off all kinds – all found a place in their collection.

This collection  is now housed at Compton Verney in the Warwickshire Countryside and a visit there is a really good day out where you can see amongst the Measham Teapots and Old Canal Art, many other strange and wonderful things and yes they do have a cafe. http://www.comptonverney.org.uk/collections/british_folk_art.aspx.

Enid Marx was a fellow student of Eric Ravelious who in turn taught John O’Connor (see my Jan Post) and its noteworthy that all these artists had an interest in ordinary, very humble and yet quirky subjects and artefacts as indeed did Barbara Jones…..

Barbara Jones’s work ‘The Unsophisticated Arts’  was published in 1951.

 

My favourite and probably the most scholarly and yet quirky of all the books mentioned in this article is this lovely book which emanated from a series of articles in the Architectural Review published throughout the 1940’s. This review deserves a separate article of its own since it played an unacknowledged role in bringing together  and publishing for the first time articles,art & photographs by young artists and designers such as Barbara Jones & Eric De Mare. In a future article I hope to show some of these early articles which were the precursors of mature works such as ‘Unsophisticated Arts’ and ‘The Canals of England’.

Barbara Jones was interested in all things odd,unacknowledged and quirky – follies,fairgrounds,shop signs,grottoes and all forms of popular art. She helped to organize the 1951 Festival of Britain and the ‘Black Eyes & Lemonade’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the same year, one of the first exhibitions of popular art to be seen in this country. One of her book jacket designs will be familiar to some and I show this below.

The ‘Salvo’ and Reginald Mills.

 

 

Untitled Print by Reginald Mills. Undated.

 

Canal book ,ephemera and print collectors may be interested in this print from my collection which I recently ‘rediscovered’.

No prizes for guessing the location although ‘artistic license’ and a touch of the ‘Enid Blyton’s’ reigns supreme in the bottom left foreground I feel.!!

Still its an unusual subject and one which many people although they may know the location will not know the boat tied up near to what is now the Canal Museum at Stoke Bruerne,

The original painting is in the archives of the Salvation Army and this will immediately give a clue to the boats identity especially to canal buffs of a certain age.

I have no idea whether the artist Reginald Mills was a Salvationist or not but I have seen another work of his portraying the Salvation Army in a town centre so he could well have been. As a painter he was active in the 1930 – 50’s period and is very well known for his paintings of the London Blitz .

The boat is of course the ‘Salvo’ with Brigadier Fielding standing in the hatches. The Fielding's ran a mission to the boat people on the Grand Union Canal from 1950 – 1964 and the painting I would think dates from the early 1950’s. Brigadier Fielding had known the boat people from an early age as his parents ran a general store patronised by the boaters at New Bradwell.

Like many I can remember the Fielding's in retirement at their cottage on the offside at Norton Junction. B W had awarded the couple the cottage rent free as an acknowledgment of the couples service to the canal boatpeople.

Joe & Rose in the ' Tunnel'.

 

Boaters who were young in the 1960’s may remember Joe and Rose Skinner,their boat ‘Friendship’  and their motive power – Dolly the mule. Joe was a gentleman of the old school and a connection to times long past. When in retirement at Suttons Stop he was a regular attender at boat rallies and the like and it was at one of these that I first came across him.

The cover photo of the magazine above hasn’t reproduced very well so apologies for that but it is an unusual shot that not many of you will have seen. Joe can just be seen behind Dolly on the towpath.

The shot was taken from a bridge over the ‘tunnel’ at Fenny Compton on the Oxford Canal and shows the boat on what must have been one of their last trips.

If you want to know more about Joe & Rose then ‘The Last Number Ones’ edited by Hugh Potter is the book for you. Or for a personal anecdote on Joe I can do no better than recommend an article by Tony Lewery who like me fell in love with the cut, its characters, its boats and its art in the 60’s http://www.canaljunction.com/mainline/0803.htm

The Skinners and their life are also mentioned in the Guardian obituary of Jack Skinner,a nephew of Joes and himself a living legend. Jack died in 2008 at the age of 88 and details of his life and of how he saved the Oxford canal (twice) can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/jun/16/1

The Canal Woodcuts of John O’Connor.

‘Canal’ by John O’Connor. Woodcut. No21 from an edition of 70. (Authors collection)

The year 1950 saw four important waterway books published, all now well established as classics .They were ‘The Inland Waterways of England’ by Tom Rolt, ‘The Canals of England’  by Eric De Mare, ‘British Canals’ by Charles Hadfield and probably the least known of the four ‘Canals Barges and People’  by John O’Connor. As Mark Baldwin says in his ‘Canal Books’  (1984) ‘we can look upon 1950 as the dawn of a new canal age in publishing’.

Its very interesting that of the four authors mentioned above; one was a historian (Hadfield) ,one an  engineer (Rolt) and two artists – De Mare (Photographer) and O’Connor (Artist & Wood Engraver).
They were too, all firsts in their way – Charles Hadfield was the first canal historian of the modern post war period, Tom Rolt as is well known, initiated a public awareness in our countries canal heritage , Eric De Mare produced some of the finest photographs of canal subjects which in many peoples eyes have never been bettered and the same could be said for John O'Connor's woodcuts.

‘Canal Boat’  by John O’Connor. Woodcut. No 70 from an edition of 70. (Authors Collection)

Canals and the canal boat people were a favourite subject for O’Connor and in the late 1940’s he depicted many such subjects on the southern Grand Union including a visit to the boat dock at Uxbridge. In his book he records his conversations with the boat people but it is his wood engravings that are the primary joy of the book.
He was innovative too in his use of colour overprinting with lino cuts which were applied over the top of the black & white wood engraving. This can be seen on the cover of his book ‘Canals Barges and People’ This is full of his woodcuts and was published in an edition of only 1,000 and due to technical problems was never reprinted. This together with the fact that the book has been broken by print dealers and is also collected by those interested in wood engraving has over the years resulted in a scarcity and steadily rising prices.
John O’Connor was a fine artist and master wood engraver and was taught by Eric Ravelious. If you want to know more about his life, influences and work try Wikipaedia or the Guardian or Independent obituary archives. John O’Connor died in 2004.
You may have come across a copy of one of the earliest pleasure cruising guides produced by British Waterways in the mid 1950’s.                                                 
The front cover of the earliest editions has a small woodcut vignette which  I think was designed by O’Connor and I reproduce one of these below. The later editions of these cruising guides had the woodcut replaced by a photograph.
                                                                      
John O’Connor can be included in that loose collection of British artists,designers,architects and photographers who from the mid 1940’s were the first to show an interest in Narrow Boat Decoration as part of a larger British Folk Art Scene. Following Noel Carrington, Enid Marx, Margaret Lambert, Barbera Jones and Eric De Mare; John O’Connor was one of the last  but by no means the least to have his contribution published in 1950.
It is unique and has never been bettered!!
In more recent times Tony Lewery has continued this interest in his books – Narrow Boat Painting & Flowers Afloat.
I hope to blog at some stage on these artist designers and their interest in British Folk Art and on the way in which they focussed attention on British canal boat decoration after the war.

Who was Amy? A signature from 60 years ago.

 

For those of you without specs or a magnifier, the dedication reads…’To Amy Alder . In memory of many very ‘un-idle moments. Susan Woolfitt’

The dedication is in my first edition copy of ‘Idle Women’  published in 1947 by wartime’ Idle Woman’ Susan Woolfitt.

 

So who was Amy?

As the dedication says …’to many un-idle moments’ , the most obvious answer is that she was one of Susan Woolfitts wartime boating companions. Yet no  Amy Alder is recorded as having been on the training scheme as far as we know. It has been suggested that she  might have been the landlady of the Blue Lias pub at Long Itchington. A favourite wartime ‘tie up’ for the boats on their way to Birmingham evidently.

The more visually agile amongst you and those who have perused an earlier blog of mine (See ‘Wartime Ephemera’ in my Nov Blogs) will have noted that the photo on the cover of War Illustrated and that on the dust cover of Idle Women are the same ! - this is because it was an official war time government photograph.

Any ideas anyone? Please let me have your comments.

While we are at it. I thought you might like to see the signature of one of the  other ‘Idle Woman’ who published an account of her experiences i e Emma Smith who kindly signed my first edition copy of her book ‘Maidens Trip’  recently.

 

For those interested Idle Women and Maidens Trip are still in print and well worth reading. Another account is by Margaret Cornish whose ‘Troubled Waters’  was published in 1987.

First Edition copy of Maidens Trip (P’bd 1948) & its nostalgic ‘period ‘ dust wrapper.

I cant resist also showing the rare 1st edition Paperback edition of 1950 again with a nostalgic but very different (period)front cover illustration.                                             

Remember…… more wonderfully nostalgic blogs to come.!!!! Let me know if you have any ideas about  ‘Amy’ or my blogs or anything to do with old waterway books.

Happy Christmas to all my readers!

SNOW  & ICE may be with us but soon…………………we can all be looking forward to……….

So until then A Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year to all my 5 readers and anyone else who may happen across my blog and decide to follow it in the New Year. When they ………
Will thrill to my forthcoming old book ramblings!!……….…….
Discover.!!!!………"Who Was Amy"………………………………………
Experience.!!!!………"Yet more War Time Ephemera"………………
Gasp at.!!!!………"Women of the Barges"…………………
Wallow in Nostalgia with.!!!!!………"A History of Children’s Canal Books"………….and much more in the New Year.

On the Canals in 1858.

                      
‘Household Words ‘  1858.
Up early on this very frosty morning just as dawn was breaking over the top of the towpath hedge next to my mooring. Two dark shapes moving behind the hedge caught my eye,their outlines silhouetted against the dawn by the rays of light made me realise that they were a pair of donkeys.
For a Christian this might have been a deeply symbolic moment what with the time of year and all !.Instead my thoughts turned to the proximity of the towpath to the animals and reminded me of how once on certain canals these donkeys would have lived a very different life.
No such romantic thoughts would have passed through Captain Randle’s mind when he left London on board the fly boat ‘Stourport’ in the early hours of an August day in 1858. Instead I feel sure that he would have been preoccupied with thoughts of the unusual cargo he was carrying and although he didn’t know it, Captain Randle was about to make a little bit of Canal history.   
For the ‘Stourport’  belonging to the Grand Junction Canal Carrying Co was that morning carrying, apart from the usual various boxes, barrels and packets destined for various up-country wharfs, a journalist and his friend together with a large meat pie brought along for sustenance on their journey to Birmingham.
John Hollingshead was a freelance journalist writing for Charles Dicken’s topical magazine ‘Household Words’. This magazine had been founded by Dickens in 1850 who used it to express his social concerns. Priced at only 2d it was nevertheless aimed at concentrating the minds of a predominantly middle class audience towards the  evils of poverty,working class housing and (with the River Thames at that time an open sewer) the sanitation of the metropolis. To popularize the magazine Dickens found he had to include more popular subjects such as travel and in particular serialized fiction. Some of his first novels and those of Wilkie Collins first saw the light of day here.
Hollingshead had previously written on the state of the gipsy population and had lived with and reported on the railway navvy gangs before now turning his attention to Britain’s floating population on the canals.
Title heading of First part of ‘On The Canal’’   Saturday September 11th 1858.

That Holingshead wrote this article at this particular time is a fact that all succeeding generations of canal lovers, historians and in particular students of popular British Folk Art have reason to be grateful for because it is generally recognized to be the first detailed written account of canal boat life in the UK. The boaters and their life,dress,food,social habits as well as a description of the boat are all given in some detail. Although it has to be remembered that this was a fly boat with an all male crew of 4 travelling night and day that is being described and not a ‘family boat’.
‘The Stourport is rather faded in its decorations,and is not a gay specimen of the fly-barge in all its glory of cabin paint and varnish; but still enough remains to show what it was in its younger days,and what will be again when it gets a week in dock for repairs in Birmingham. The boatman lavishes all his taste; all his rude,uncultivated love for the fine arts upon the external and internal ornaments of his floating home. His chosen colours are red,yellow and blue; ………….The two sides of the cabin,seen from the bank and the towing path, present a couple of landscapes in which there is a  lake,a castle,a sailing boat and a range of mountains painted after the style of the great teaboard style of art.
It is the underlined portion of the above quote from the article that has excited the most interest over the years as it is as far as is known the very first indication of the existence of the now famous ‘rose and castle’ decoration on the boats. What a pity that this article like all the others in the magazine was unillustrated. We have to wait until 1873 for this.
Hollingshead goes on to describe the painted water can and amongst other topics he gives details of – the boaters clothing and habits,diet,living quarters and possessions are all described in some detail. The journey and people encountered are discussed and most illuminating of all, some brief chats with the boaters are given.
The article takes up some 17 pages spread over 3 consecutive issues – those for 11th Sept, 18th Sept and 25th Sept 1858.
Hollingshead’s article like all those in ‘Household Words’ is unattributed and we would not have known of his authorship but for the fact that a paybook has survived listing all contributors and their articles.
The author went on to theatre management and became quite a famous music hall promoter and manager bringing Gilbert & Sullivan together for the first time and presenting their first operetta.
If you want to read the whole article – the Waterways Museum brought out a copy in thin card covers in 1973. Otherwise the Dickens Journals Online has down loaded the whole of the 9 years of production of the mag and you should be able to sort out the relevant issues. Try http://www.archive.org/details/djo . Go to Vol 18 and the start pages are 289,318 & 354.

One of the best films ever? DVD Review.

With the cut iced over for days now and Christmas fast approaching my thoughts turned to an old movie shot during the winter months on the canals of Paris over 70 years ago.It might make an unusual gift for someone this Xmas.So this time not a book but a DVD containing the film L'Atalante for review.

I will say straight away – If you don’t like world Cinema , French Films, Art House films, subtitled films, very old films  or films that do not have a strong story line then forget about this blog and look at another one instead !
However if you are interested in acquiring a copy of the film that came third in the Guardians list of best ever Art House & Drama films then read on.
For non film buffs you may just like the shots of peniche's working on the canals of Paris in the early 1930;s.

The story is a very loose one and concerns a French barge skipper and his new wife and the trials and tribulations of married life in the confines of a peniches cabin. Wife runs away – husband sets out to win her back from the streets of depression era Paris and the characters she has met in her flight.
L'Atalante was shot in the Bassin de la Villette and the Canal de St Martin and the street scenes – in and around Paris. The result  is a film of tremendous beauty and poetry . It’s a Romantic film and so for me any way the story is not important. It is above all an artistic film painted with a camera rather than a brush.
The movie Is an artistic collaboration between the director Vigo and the cinephotographer who was a renowned expert and who went on to shoot ‘On the Waterfront’ with Marlon Brando. The film is full of eccentric characters performing in ordinary working class locations and is beautiful in its simplicity.
I guess you will either love it or be distinctly underwhelmed and wonder what all the fuss is about.
Many others have loved this film over the years and it has regularly featured in Top 100 movie lists e.g it came 6th in ‘Sight & Sounds’ 1992 Greatest films of all time poll.
The film was made in 1934 by Jean Vigo who only ever made 4 films and died aged just 29 just as this his greatest film was released.
For those interested, greater details of his life and work can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2005/04/14/l_atalante_2005_review.shtml. or try www.guardian.co.uk/film and search for jean vigo.
The ‘Artificial Eye’ DVD shown in the picture contains documentaries, biographies and the 3 other films that he made. I have had my copy for some time and so I was amazed at the price being asked for it now. However it is available cheaply as a video or the DVD can be rented.