Just in case your interested & feeling flush!!!
This boat side panel is for auction at a U S Auction house in Maine –30th Jan. Estimate $500.
Prompts the obvious question how/ why the US. An interesting story here perhaps. From the registration No – anyone know the boat?
The ‘Dabchick’ was hired from Stone in 1951 for a weeks cruising. Fourteen foot long with a two stroke engine she was capable of being fully enclosed overnight although the two women who hired her chose to camp alongside the canal, the hire price including tent and primus stove. Cost for a weeks hire £8.50.!!!! Source ‘Heiress’ magazine –May 1951.
One of the unexpected pleasures in collecting and dealing in old canal books is the occasional chance find that turns up to surprise and delight. One such find occurred recently in a collection of old canal books bought at Auction. In a copy of ‘The Heart of England by Waterway’ by William Bliss published in 1934 (See my 2010 blog ‘ A forgotten book from the 1930’s ) I found a boaters log from 1938 stuck in the back of the book. It consisted of 6 pages of note paper which detailed a trip from Braunston down the Oxford Canal & onto the Thames.
The canoe trip took place over the course of a week in June 1938.
The author is very much preoccupied by wind direction being a canoeist so distances and times taken to travel are detailed meticulously. The author left Braunston at 10.30am and arrived at Napton at 3pm where he was supplied with a ‘winch’ by the lock keeper who told him that he and his father before him had worked the lock for a total of 100years.
At Fenny Compton Supper,Bed and Breakfast at the George & Dragon cost 7/- and consisted of eggs & bacon for supper and bacon & eggs for breakfast ! Pub menus in those days were obviously not famed for their diversity of choice.
Having passed over the summit where he had met two pairs of motor boats and 6 horse drawn boats all travelling north he finally made Claydon at 10.45am , Banbury Wharf for 5pm and Twyford bridge for 6pm. That day he passed about 6 horse drawn boats all going north.
At Weir Lock he was asked to produce his pass for the first time and at Somerton Deep lock he had trouble getting his boat out of the empty lock and had to ask for the lockies assistance. Arriving at Dukes lock he found it locked as it was a Sunday but the ‘very officious’ lock keeper let him through. In the Duke’s cut he went the wrong way – going down the mill leat but finally arrived on the Thames proper at Kings lock. Here he disembarked travelled to Cricklade by road and attempted to canoe downstream to Lechlade . The weather being hot and the river shallow he seems to have spent more time out of the canoe dragging it over shallows than he did in it.
Having detoured up the Evenlode he eventually reached Oxford where he sampled the delights of the Cherwell as far as Islip Mill.
The author of this log had followed routes described in Bliss’s book almost exactly. The final tally was Braunston – Oxford 61 miles,Cricklade Oxford – 43 miles & Oxford – Islip & back 15 miles. Charges for the Oxford canal came to £0 – 13 – 9 pence.
Incidentally I notice that a copy of this book fetched £100 on EBay recently.
MAY I WISH ALL MY READERS A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS.
Amos Burg the author of this article in The National Geographic Magazine seems to have been an intrepid American traveller with several accounts of trips in the Yukon and Oregon to his credit. For this article he shipped his Canadian canoe Song of the Winds 6000 miles from Oregon to the West India Dock in London. Arriving solo he soon decided that he needed a companion for his proposed month long tour of the English canals and chose Harry whom he found stranded on the outbreak of war at the American Embassy.
On arrival at Limehouse Basin he seems to have been treated with some ceremony being met by the head engineer who presented him with a lock key tied with a pink ribbon (which I must say sounds just about the most unlikely canal anecdote I’ve heard but I am just repeating what I read in the Nat Geo!!!) At this time in the very early years of the war – Limehouse basin was so crammed with pairs of boats loading raw materials for the Midlands War effort that they gave up the attempt to leave the basin until early the next morning. After paddling all day they camped on the Island at Little Venice where they were hospitably received by the local kids armed with stones and other missiles.
At Rickmansworth he found Walkers boat yard still building wooden Narrow Boats and talking to the lock keeper at Batchworth Lock whose grandfather had started work at the same lock in 1794, he was told that 40 pairs of boats were passing daily carrying metals and war materials to the midlands.
Bargeman's ‘Service Van’ !!
Amos Burg and The Song of the Winds travelled across Birmingham and up the Shroppie to Ellesmere Port where somewhat amazingly they locked down into the ship canal ,passed through Eastham Lock and travelled on down the Mersey tideway before journeys end at Liverpool.
I thought regular readers of my blog might be interested in some auction prices realised in a recent auction of original railway and canal share certificates.
It seems to be a very specialised field this and not one to which I personally subscribe but for those interested -----
Original Derby Canal Share certificate. £1000 (below estimate)
Gloucester & Berkeley Share certificate. £250 (below estimate)
Wey & Arun Canal. £180.
Huddersfield Canal.Estimate £200-£300 Not Sold or withdrawn.
Somersetshire Coal Canal. Estimate £150-£180.
Regents Canal. ?
In addition a Thames & Severn and a BCN certificate together with several railway certificates seemed a bargain with an estimate of £100-£150.
On the other hand a book containing 25 unused shares in the Grand Imperial Ship Canal fetched £580 which was twice the estimated price. The fact that the shares were unused and had never been issued is explained by the fact that the canal was never built !!.
I thought blog readers might be interested in some recent prices paid at auction for canal collectables.
Measham bargeware can be had at all kinds of prices.A typical Barge teapot usually costs around £100 -£150 depending on condition and there are always plenty of these around. However you need to have very deep pockets when it comes to buying rarer Measham items like the very rare Toby Jug which sold very recently at auction for twice the pre sale estimate of £500.
Despite the fact that so called ‘Bargeware’ is thought to get its name from the boaters who were supposed to use it, I must admit that I have yet to see one inscribed with the name of a boat. The nearest items I have seen were a group of 3 items which sold in the same sale for £700.
The larger of the two mugs was inscribed ‘Navigation Inn 1887’ which gets us a bit nearer to the cut ! Interestingly the large two handled loving cup bears the motif ‘ Cap’n Salt Polran’ – a captain at sea or the steerer or No1 of a NB engaged in the salt trade?? I suppose we will never know.
Other rare Measham appearing at the same auction house in the last couple of years includes the twin spout teapot ,chamber pot and vase shown below which fetched nearly 8 times the pre sale estimate of £300 (£2,300)
Apart from the more usual Teapots,jugs,kettles,tobacco jars,sugar bowls etc one of the most unusual jugs in the shape of an owl and estimated at £300 exceeded this by 5 times selling for £1500 in 2011.
On the other hand a spitoon which I’ve never seen before sold for only £50 which must make it the Measham bargain of the year.
Some of you may have noticed the old Buckby Can on EBay recently which sold for something in excess of £130. It certainly was an old can, the wrought handle testified to that but the painting in my eyes left something to be desired in terms of quality and age.
Elsewhere and also on EBay a superb Canal postcard fetched what must be the record price for a single card of £156. It has to be said that it had all the right qualities that the collector is looking for namely –Subject,Location and rarity. It showed a superb reasonably close up view of a wide beam barge or trow on the detached portion of the Stroudwater at the junction of the canal and the R Severn. The boat is waiting to enter the lock for its journey down river whilst a man and a boy operate the lock . In sepia and around 1906 there cant be many of those around. Whilst the Stroudwater is at present being restored, this portion of the canal is now disused and the site of the junction lock into the river is on private land.
On the other hand a lovely sepia card from around 1922 showed a Sunday School outing from Linslade crammed into one of L B Faulkners boats. This fetched only £12 and was a bargain.
At one time I had a good canal card collection myself but sold them all years ago. With the sort of prices described above you need to be extremely ‘well heeled’ to say the least to collect everything. Personally I stick to books!!!
John Hassell (1767 – 1825) was a Georgian artist, illustrator, author and publisher earning his living principally by producing what would now be termed a travel guide book. The guides of which he was the author and illustrator were an indispensible introduction to many of the great popular scenic sites in the British Isles which were there to be enjoyed by Regency society.
My battered but much treasured copy of his ‘Tour of the Grand Junction Canal’ is a large paper copy with the original paper name plate which unfortunately lacks 7 of the original illustrations.Nevertheless the missing plates seem to be of the London area and are I think mostly of views other than the canal. As all the ‘up country ‘ views of the canal are present I am not too bothered about it.
The book was published in 1819 soon after the canal was opened throughout. Priced at £1 with uncoloured plates and £1.10shillings coloured. Today it sells for £500 - £1500.
So compare familiar well known canal scenes from your watery wanderings with the same views in a somewhat rawer state in 1819.!
Grove Lock ?
Batchworth Lock at Rickmansworth.
Linford Bridge.
Blisworth tunnel.
Regarding Blisworth tunnel ‘Hassell states that Mr Barnes of Banbury who was engaged as surveyor and who superintended and completed the tunnel was ‘strong minded but very illiterate’. He made all his calculations by ‘the strength of his memory’ and was at a loss to explain any of this to anyone else. Also ‘from being lowly educated he had no means of conveying to paper his designs, yet would cast up the most intricate accounts in his head without difficulty;.
Today 200 years later the tunnel is busier than ever. Not bad for a ‘lowly educated man’. More Pictures next time.
‘A Tender Parting at The Grand Junction Canal’. c1801-1810.
I really love this early hand coloured print primarily I think for its early use of the comic strip concept of the ‘circled blurb’ of the utterances of the characters depicted in the boat and the rest above each of the figures. Bought at auction recently it shows a London merchant being entreated by his wife and daughter to avoid the dangers of travel to Uxbridge on the new fangled canal. As the building of the canal had got as far as Uxbridge by 1801 and parties of London society were enjoying the novelty of trips by barge from the capital out into the countryside, I think that the print must date from the first few years of the new century.
He Says-
She says-
The daughter blubs-
The boatman says-
This print prompted me to sort out some early views of the new canal which I will show in my next blog
Daphne French is the trainer and Mary Andrew and Susan Blood the trainees.
