IWA Waterways - Autumn 2021 - Issue 273

Issue 273 • Autumn 2021

waterways www.waterways.org.uk

HERITAGE

Report Collaborative and

creative ways to preserve waterways history

COMMUNITY MOORINGS

How co-ops are gaining traction across the network

BACK TO SCHOOL

The university researchers rethinking sustainable boating

PLUS

Walk to this year's IWA Festival of Water site at PerdisWell 001 Cover AH SH.indd 14

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Autumn 2021 Contents Issue 273 • Autumn 2021

waterways www.waterways.org.uk

HERITAGE

Report Collaborative and

creative ways to preserve waterways history

COMMUNITY MOORINGS

How co-ops are gaining traction across the network

5. Welcome

Column of the National Chair

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6. News

The latest from within IWA and beyond

12. Campaigns Update BACK TO SCHOOL

The university researchers rethinking sustainable boating

16. Just how many waterways do we have?

PLUS

Walk to this year's IWA Festival of Water site at PerdisWell 001 Cover AH SH.indd 14

COVER PICTURE: Diglis Locks, Worcester & Birmingham Canal.

Including a focus on sustainable boating research at the University of Strathclyde

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Exploring the creation and complications of IWA’s Waterways Directory

19. Fly the co-op

Community mooring initiatives across the network

22. Eyes on the Prize

Exploring the history of IWA’s Alfred Ritchie Challenge Cockerel

23. Our Heritage Heroes WATERWAYS EDITOR: Amelia Hamson Tel: 01283 742962 E-mail: a.hamson@wwonline.co.uk FEATURES EDITOR: Sarah Henshaw E-mail: s.henshaw@wwonline.co.uk ART EDITOR: Claire Davis ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER: Laura Smith Tel: 01283 742956 E-mail: l.smith@wwonline.co.uk ADVERTISING DESIGN: Jo Ward ADVERTISING PRODUCTION: Samantha Furniss E-mail: s.furniss@wwonline.co.uk REPROGRAPHICS: Waterways World Ltd, 151 Station Street, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, DE14 1BG. Printed in England by Warners (Midlands) PLC, Bourne, Lincs Articles may be reproduced provided permission is obtained and acknowledgement made.

ISSN 0969-0654 A non-profit distributing company limited by guarantee (612245), Registered as a Charity (No. 212342) Founded: 1946, Incorporated 1958 REGISTERED OFFICE: Island House, Moor Road, Chesham, HP5 1WA Tel: 01494 783453 E-mail: iwa@waterways.org.uk Web site: www.waterways.org.uk Chief Executive – Phil Hornsey Company Secretary – Genevieve Wilson National Chair – Paul Rodgers For press inquiries please contact: pressoffice@waterways.org.uk All IWA national and branch committee volunteers can be contacted by email: firstname.lastname@waterways.org.uk Nothing printed in Waterways may be construed as policy or an official announcement unless stated, otherwise IWA accepts no liability for any matter in the magazine. Although every care is taken with advertising matters no responsibility whatsoever can be accepted for any matter advertised. Where a photo credit includes a note such as CC-BY-SA, the image is made available under that Creative Commons licence; full details at www.creativecommons.org

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Previewing Part Two of IWA’s Heritage Report

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28. Walk with IWA

Stroll from the heart of Worcester to the IWA Festival of Water site at Perdiswell

31. Postcard from the oxford canal

Paul Rodgers shares his standout moments from a recent cruise

32. Love Your Waterways

Honorary consultant engineer, Roy Sutton, looks back on a varied career SEVEN REASONS WHY YOUR MEMBERSHIP CONTRIBUTION IS VITAL

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1. IWA Canal Clean-ups led by our branches keep many waterways clear of debris 2. Restoration is kept high priority through funding for the Waterway Recovery Group 3. Over 10,000 days of volunteering each year will be supported with the right training, tools and materials 4. IWA can campaign to defend the waterways from unwelcome development 5. We can pass on traditional skills and workbased experience for volunteering young people 6. We can lobby the Government and work with other organisations to repair, improve and protect our waterways heritage

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7. Your voice is counted when IWA speaks up for all those who enjoy the country’s canals and rivers IWA ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATE £36 More details are available from IWA Head Office.

Join IWA at waterways.org.uk

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Autumn 2021 19/07/2021 15:21

Welcome

A

s I write this, we are on the cusp of a total relaxation of the Covid regulations that have impacted our day-today lives for over a year.

This is hopeful news for the waterways sector that has been compromised by the pandemic, and for everyone who enjoys our canals and rivers.

I was fortunate to get away in April for a week-long boat trip along the south Oxford and Grand Union canals with my wife, Amanda. I am forever in awe of the many wonders of the waterways as they wind through rural and urban landscapes.

At the same time, I am reminded of how vulnerable a lot of the historic bridges and buildings that make our waterways unique truly are. It was a great holiday, but I also had some valuable conversations along the way. We stopped off at the legendary Tooley’s Boatyard and I had a great catchup with the team there. Tooley’s is featured in part two of our Heritage Report, which looks at examples of waterways history that have been lost or saved. Following that I met up with my local MP – Victoria Prentis. You can read more about the trip on page 31.

In May I had a positive face-to-face meeting at Alrewas with Michael Fabricant MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Waterways. This was followed by a successful APPGW meeting on living afloat where parliamentarians were urged to support residential boaters.

We are seeing lots of critical work taking place to raise awareness of climate change and the importance of being more sustainable. Our waterways have their part to play, and we have expert volunteers leading the charge on greener boating and making waves across the sector – pioneering research into alternative propulsion methods, influencing decision makers and changing hearts and minds.

Our volunteers will be at the Crick Boat Show on 20th-22nd August representing

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IWA as part of the greener boating sessions. If you’re at the event, please do make sure you pop along to our stand to say hello. IWA Festival of Water takes place the following bank holiday weekend in August along the Worcester & Birmingham Canal at Perdiswell Park. This will be the first time so many of our volunteers and supporters will be together in one place for nearly two years, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing everyone.

In the last issue of Waterways, we put a call out for new trustees to join our board. We had four vacancies and 12 exceptional applications, including two candidates standing for reappointment.

I was delighted that there were so many strong candidates, and the selection panel certainly had an unenviable task in proposing who would fill the vacancies. I would like to thank members of the panel, Liz Payne, Mike Sumner, Ray Alexander, Helen Gardner, Paul Strudwick and Dave Chapman, who proposed that Hannah Sterritt and Rebecca Hughes be appointed as new trustees, and that Sir Robert Atkins and John Butler be reappointed to the role. Their skills and experience will be invaluable to the governance of the Association. Members will be asked to approve the appointments at the AGM in September, and further information on the candidates will be shared on our website as soon as possible.

Stepping down this year are Nicki Schiessel-Harvey, Roger Stocker and Helen Whitehouse. On behalf of the Association, I would like to share my heartfelt thanks for their commitment and contribution to the board.

Volunteers’ week took place in June, and we thanked our volunteers and shared some of their stories on social media.

With the easing of restrictions, we have seen the return of more work parties across the country. Whether clearing invasive Himalayan balsam, repainting

lock gates or picking up litter, this work is vital and showcases contributions our volunteers make to improve the waterways environment. But there is much that continues behind the scenes to campaign for waterways at a local and national level.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Association, whether in leadership and governance roles, or on the ground, and I would like to take the opportunity to say a big thank you again for everything that our volunteers do. In this issue you can see how our expert volunteers influence all areas of our charity’s work.

Alongside this issue, you will find our highlights report for 2020, which illustrates the impact the Association has had and the resilience of our volunteers in a challenging year. I hope you will be energised and inspired by this and perhaps consider taking on a role yourself. Whether you support IWA as a member, donor or a volunteer, thank you.

Paul Rodgers, IWA National Chair

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Waterways News

Floating Reed Beds installed on the Hanwell Flight

Bringing Waterways Back to Life – Support for the Sector

Volunteers helped to plant floating reed beds for the side ponds of Lock 97 on the Grand Union Canal as part of the Hanwell Locks Partnership task party in June. The Partnership is a joint IWA West London and Canal & River Trust initiative for the care, conservation and restoration of the Hanwell Flight and Norwood Locks.

The new floating ecosystem in the side ponds of Lock 97 follows on from a successful installation of similar floating beds at Lock 96 side ponds in 2020. Natural coir material has been planted with a variety native wetland and marginal vegetation to provide a transitionary habitat important for the newts residing within the ponds. They also provide a great spawning habitat for fish and support a range of insect life such as dragonflies and damselflies.

At the task party the interlocking units were bolted together by IWA volunteers on the lock side before being planted with a variety of sedges, rushes and reeds. Finally, the beds were manoeuvred into the two side pond basins. A cable system will be used to tether the floating ecosystem to the rear wall of the side ponds; this is designed to accommodate variations in water level and future operational use of the side ponds by the volunteer lock-keepers at Hanwell.

The Partnership has regular volunteer task parties on the Hanwell Flight and is an open group that welcomes help from anyone interested in caring for one of the gems of the London canal network. For details of future volunteer activities, visit the IWA West London Branch webpage waterways.org.uk/ westlondon or email ray.gill@waterways.org.uk.

The Annual Waterway Restoration Conference 2021, hosted jointly with Canal & River Trust, is due to take place online on Saturday 16th October. The focus will be on how heritage can be protected and restored, while being green. The event is targeted at restoration groups, but anyone can join. You can register your interest by emailing jenny.morris@waterways.org.uk.

We have also been running a series of webinars throughout the year on topics to support restoration groups, which are available to watch on our YouTube channel at waterways.org.uk/ restorationvideos.

Annual Waterway Restoration Conference 2021

IWA Hosts New National Restoration Networking Event In April, IWA hosted the first-ever National Restoration Networking event with support from volunteers from across the sector.

The session titled ‘Beyond the Heritage: New Opportunities’ was attended by over 40 people, representing 19 different waterway restoration groups. Presentations focused on the positive next steps groups can take post-Covid-19, including looking at new funding opportunities and creating eco-highways. This was supported by snapshot case studies from the Derby & Sandiacre Canal, Chesterfield Canal and the North Walsham & Dilham Canal.

Other organisations were then given the opportunity to update attendees on their individual projects.

The aim of these events is to recapture the spirit of Northern Canal Association meetings, and allow groups to share information and discuss issues and ideas to help progress canal restoration works across the country.

The next session is for Northern Canals Restoration Projects, and is planned for Sunday 12th September. It is open to lead volunteers from each group and it is hoped that this session will be a face-to-face event. If you would like more details, please contact jenny.morris@waterways.org.uk.

Alternative Awards for an exceptional year

IWA volunteers created the floating reed beds installed in the side ponds of Lock 97 of the GU in June.

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Last year our national award recipients were announced at our virtual AGM and featured in the Winter 2020 issue of Waterways and online. However, due to the pandemic, we have been unable to celebrate our award winners as we normally would. We have had the opportunity to distribute some of the awards throughout the year and are aiming to give out the outstanding trophies at IWA Festival of Water at Perdiswell Park in Worcester over the August bank holiday weekend.

Considering the unusual events of the last 18 months and to enable our worthy award winners to enjoy their trophies for a full year, we will not be taking nominations for our national awards in 2021. We are, however, looking at one-off ways to formally recognise individuals and groups that made special contributions to IWA’s operations during the pandemic and will share details of this in due course.

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 14:42

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Waterways News

IWA Festival of Water 2021 Our volunteer organising team is busy finalising the programme of entertainment and attractions at IWA Festival of Water, taking place in Perdiswell Park alongside the Worcester & Birmingham Canal this summer bank holiday weekend (28th–30th August).

New for this year, an ‘IWA at 75’ marquee will host a series of presentations on topics such as living afloat and greener boating, and performances by Alarum Productions.

In addition, the Find it Do it Worcester arena will showcase local youth and sports activities.

A full programme of live music and dance will take place, with local folk groups taking centre stage. There will be craft stalls, food outlets, a real ale bar, plus other attractions.

Details will be added to the website as they are confirmed. Entry to the festival and car parking are free. Book a mooring or campsite pitch for just £35 for the whole weekend, including evening entertainment.

More information, including how to book your mooring or pitch, is available online at waterways.org.uk/festivalofwater.

Aickman's Seven Wonders stand the test of time In the Spring 2021 issue of Waterways we asked whether you thought IWA co-founder Robert Aickman’s Seven Wonders of the Waterways should be updated. The original locations chosen in 1955 were: • Pontcysyllte Aqueduct • Bingley Five Rise • Caen Hill Lock Flight • Barton Swing Aqueduct • Burnley Embankment • Anderton Boat Lift • Standedge Tunnel Despite new feats of engineering changing the landscape of our waterways and hundreds of miles of canals restored in the past 66 years, half of the 400 survey respondents considered that Aickman’s Seven Wonders had stood the test of time.

Of those that did suggest new Wonders for the list, by far the most popular proposition was the impressive Falkirk Wheel in Scotland, the world’s first rotating boat-lift, opened by Her Majesty The Queen in 2002. It was built with funding from a huge Millennium Lottery grant to replace a flight of 11 locks linking the Forth & Clyde Canal to the Union Canal at Port Downie.

Other suggestions with multiple submissions included Sapperton Tunnel on the Thames & Severn Canal, and the ‘Great Wall of Todmorden’ alongside the Rochdale Canal.

There have been several variations to Aickman’s list, suggested since the 1950s, which have substituted one or two structures, but it seems the original Seven Wonders still hold water.

Phil Sharpe

Gemma Bolton

The world’s first rotating boat-lift, the Falkirk Wheel, was the most popular suggestion for the Wonders of the Waterways list.

Live music will feature at this year’s IWA Festival of Water in Worcester.

IWA Annual General Meeting IWA’s Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday 25th September 2021 at 11.30am.

As we go to print on this issue of Waterways, the format of the AGM is still under review due to the continuing uncertainty around Covid-19.

Further details of the AGM, including

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the agenda and papers, will be posted on the website and emailed to members. If you don’t have access to the internet, or we do not have your email address, please write to us at Membership, The Inland Waterways Association, Island House, Moor Road, Chesham HP5 1WA, and include your

membership number or first name, last name and postcode asking for details of the AGM, and we will make sure you don’t miss out on the updates. You can also email us at membership@ waterways.org.uk.

Go to waterways.org.uk/agm to see the latest AGM information.

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 14:42

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Alison Smedley

Waterways News

Chester Achieves First Heritage Inland Port Status in the UK The Heritage Harbours scheme has recognised Chester Port as its first inland Heritage Port. This scheme highlights long-established but often forgotten ports that played an important role in the maritime and industrial history of the country. IWA has been working at a local and national level to safeguard inland ports as part of its wider campaign to protect waterways heritage.

IWA Chester & Merseyside Branch submitted a 21page application alongside partners Chester Civic Trust and Cheshire West & Chester Council to recognise the Roman port as a heritage asset. Criteria laid down in the heritage harbour designation process included: • an outline of its unique historical development • a catalogue of its surviving features • an evaluation of its environmental and historic features.

The Heritage Harbours scheme is organised by Maritime Heritage Trust, National Historic Ships and European Maritime Heritage to recognise the great value in sensitively developing the historic buildings, waste land, mooring, and maintenance facilities in the ports. Other inland sites currently under consideration include Stourport and Warwick Bar.

Chester Port was the busiest in North West England from Roman times until the 18th century and the growth of Liverpool’s docks.

Right: Northgate Locks were highlighted among the many heritage assets of Chester Port in the application to the Heritage Harbours scheme.

Training for the Restoration Sector Volunteers across the restoration sector have taken part in a range of new training activities, from online mental health awareness courses through to practical ‘lifting and slinging beneath the hook’ courses. Over 100 volunteers in total have received some form of training in the last six months – all funded through the National Lottery Heritage Fund Resilient Heritage Fund grant to support our ‘Restoring Confidence’ project.

The project has spent the last 18 months developing specific elements of our Restoration Hub such as upskilling key volunteers and staff, and offering specific heritage training to volunteers, as well as providing guidance and training on strategic issues such as diversity, the environment and governance.

Eleven volunteers are also now undertaking our Waterway Recovery Group Leadership Development Programme, which is part funded by a Historic England National Capacity Building Grant.

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Youth Engagement Month Our Restoration Youth Engagement Month this August, organised with the Canal & River Trust, aims to bring new opportunities for young people to gain life-changing experiences by participating in waterways restoration projects to help bring around 500 miles of waterways back into use.

Throughout the month we will be launching our five-minute litter pick micro-volunteering campaign. This will encourage young people to stop and clear litter from their local stretch of waterway and to then share the experience on social media.

A weekly taster event will be hosted in different locations across a network of canal restorations for young people, aimed at attracting communities. This will include families with primary school-aged children and teenagers who may be interested in longer-term opportunities to develop their skills.

Alongside this we will be working with restoration groups to launch our Youth Engagement Toolkit, which gives restoration groups all the resources to successfully and safely engage with young people. Also planned is a Youth Engagement training workshop through the Young Trustee Movement.

While the engagement month only runs throughout August, IWA’s Restoration Hub is working towards creating a Youth Panel for the sector. This will help develop a range of activities to encourage young people to engage with their local environment, recognise the importance of industrial heritage and gain skills, empowering them to get involved and make a difference.

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 14:42

Waterways News

Back out digging this August

WRG volunteers are heading out on their first Canal Camps since 2019 this summer.

Five Canal Camps, organised by our Waterway Recovery Group, are taking place in July and August. These Camps have been set up to be as Covid-safe as possible, while enabling vital work in the restoration sector to continue, and are part of a phased return to activity from the end of July. Canal Camps will look a little bit different this year (but hopefully as muddy and fun as always). We are working to four key principles: increased personal space; good hygiene facilities; good ventilation of shared indoor spaces; and improved welfare facilities on site.

These principles will be backed up with risk assessments, including Camp-specific Covid criteria. Our leadership teams are also undergoing additional training to ensure we can deliver an enjoyable experience and that all volunteers observe safeguarding measures.

We initially have five week-long Canal Camps planned on four sites. Each Camp will be limited to 12 volunteers.

On the Derby & Sandiacre Canal Camp (31st July-7th August) volunteers will return to Borrowash Bottom Lock to continue work started in 2019 to repair the wing walls, rebuild sections of the lock wall, reinstate coping stones and carry out landscaping.

The Camp on the Montgomery Canal will support work to rebuild School House Bridge.

Volunteers on the Derby & Sandiacre Canal Camp will be rebuilding walls on Borrowash Bottom Lock.

The River Waveney Canal Camps (31st July-7th August and 7th-14th August) will spend two weeks working alongside the River Waveney Trust to restore Geldeston Lock in Suffolk. The two-week project aims to take down about 20m of lock wall to complete the restoration of the whole wall on the south side. The brickwork has been severely compromised by erosion over the years due to high tide levels, as well as plants and trees having grown in and through the wall. Plenty of work for our bricklayers!

We then have two further Canal Camps on the Shrewsbury & Newport Canal (7th-14th August) and Montgomery Canal (14th-21st August). Shrewsbury & Newport Canal Camp will be repairing two culverts on a new site for WRG at Berwick Wharf, owned by the National Trust. The Montgomery Canal Camp will be working to support a new project – the rebuilding of School House Bridge – by creating the site compound, clearing hedge cuttings from the line of the canal and helping install a soakway for future connection to the canalside cottage.

We hope to release more Canal Camp dates for September and October, so keep checking the website for information at waterways.org.uk/wrg.

Stopping the spread of invasives Two of our northerly Branches were out on the towpaths in June, protecting the waterways from the spread of Himalayan balsam.

This year, IWA North Staffordshire & South Cheshire Branch resumed its campaign against this invasive plant. Volunteers took part in two work parties in the Churnet Valley – on the Leek Arm of the Caldon Canal around Longsdon and on the Uttoxeter Canal around Bridge 70 at Crumpwood. Swathes of the plant were removed by hard-working volunteers, who were joined by volunteers from Canal & River Trust and Caldon & Uttoxeter Canals Trust.

IWA Lancashire & Cumbria Branch held a joint Himalayan balsam clearance work party at Haslam Park with Lancaster Canal Trust and Friends of Haslam Park. Ten volunteers pulled up the plant from along the towpath and near the feeder to the Lancaster Canal. This group has been clearing the plant from the area for several years and has helped to contain its spread.

Himalayan balsam is a non-native, invasive plant that can be found along the banks of the UK’s waterways. It grows quickly and crowds out native wildflowers. Growing up to 3m in height, it has no root stock and once it dies back in winter the ground becomes susceptible to erosion. The work parties involve pulling the plants up before they go to seed as removing the plants annually eventually stops them growing in that area.

TOP RIGHT: A volunteer from IWA North Staffordshire & South Cheshire Branch tackling Himalayan balsam on the Leek Arm of the Caldon Canal.

RIGHT: The IWA Lancashire & Cumbria Branch team ready to begin their work party.

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Freight on the Aire & Calder and support for residential boaters are among some of the issues we’ve been campaigning on with your help. Here’s how we’ve been doing on these and other affairs…

Hammersmith Bridge reopens Hammersmith Bridge, which was closed for nearly a year, has now reopened to all boats, pedestrians and cyclists.

In May, IWA joined the Company of Watermen & Lightermen of the River Thames in calling for unrestricted navigation under Hammersmith Bridge to be allowed at the earliest possible date, in a letter to the transport minister, Baroness Vere.

When the bridge was condemned as dangerous and closed in August 2020, no boats were allowed to pass under this iconic structure on the tidal Thames. A traffic-light-controlled system for booked passages for vessels that met strict criteria was introduced, although transit was still severely restricted. This had significant impact on passenger boats and other commercial operators. It also

restricted privately owned boats from travelling down the river into London, or completing the Thames Ring.

Delays in carrying out engineering checks added to the slow progress in reopening the bridge to traffic over and under it. The closure caused considerable hardship, inconvenience and cost to commercial operators. These businesses had already been badly impacted by the Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions over the last year, and at least one company failed as a direct result of the bridge closure.

The closure caused this year’s Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race to be relocated to the River Ouse at Ely, the first time it hasn’t taken place on the Thames since World War II. The letter, which was also co-signed by RYA, British Marine and the Commercial

Boat Operators Association among others, asked the minister to consider some practical measures to allow navigation to resume under the bridge as soon as possible. For example, once the bridge has been made safe, allowing boats to use the river while repairs are being carried out, in the same way that traffic was able to continue during the construction of the Blackfriars Station extension over the Thames.

In responding to the joint letter, Baroness Vere was hopeful that, subject to a Hammersmith & Fulham Council inspection report due at the end of June, the bridge could be open to all river traffic by early July 2021.

The Department for Transport announced that it is willing to pay a third of the cost of getting the bridge reopened, with Transport for London and Hammersmith & Fulham Council also being expected to pay a third each.

The closure highlights the importance of long-term funding for repairs and maintenance of historic bridges and other heritage infrastructure.

The bridge reopened to cyclists, pedestrians and all boat traffic in midJuly. However, traffic signals are still in operation and will prevent river passage if sensors on the bridge detect a problem.

Narrowboats pass underneath Hammersmith Bridge.

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Tim Lewis

CAMPAIGNING WITH YOU

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 15:21

North East waterways freight traffic in jeopardy

Jonathan Mosse

IWA West Riding Branch, along with IWA Navigation Committee and the Inland Waterways Freight Group, has been raising concerns about the disruption to freight traffic on the waterways of the North East since the beginning of the year.

Commercial traffic had returned to the Aire & Calder last autumn with a weekly run from Hull to Knostrop, which had the potential to replace 17 lorry journeys for every barge fully loaded with aggregate. Following a breach and the closure of the canal

on 20th December, this traffic is now in serious jeopardy, not helped by the length of time that the repairs are taking. Oil traffic to Rotherham is in abeyance and the ongoing delay also endangers the development of the Port of Leeds.

The provisional mid-August date for reopening means that the canal will have been closed to navigation for eight months. Dredging needs to be carried out to allow these barges to carry at full capacity, which is necessary for them to operate economically.

Farndale H on its inaugural run on the Aire & Calder in October 2020.

A breach put this route under threat just two months later.

Canal & River Trust has a statutory duty to make the Aire & Calder Navigation principally available for the carriage of freight, but at the same time has to juggle its finite resources.

As well as asking CRT for assurances that everything possible is being done to allow this waterway to reopen as soon as possible, we are calling on Government to make more money available for essential works such as dredging. More freight on the waterways would also help towards the Government’s zero carbon agenda.

CRT estimates that the breach will cost around £3m to repair. This is just one of several major breaches and culvert collapses over recent years. With more regular extreme weather and climate change, things are not going to get any easier for CRT and other navigation authorities with responsibilities for waterway infrastructure that’s over 200 years old.

We will continue to lobby Government for sufficient funding, so that navigation authorities can maintain and protect this vital network that contributes so much to the economy, health and wellbeing of the country.

Parliamentarians asked to support residential boaters The latest meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Waterways, held as a video meeting on 8th June, allowed parliamentarians to hear about the challenges and opportunities of living afloat. Speakers from the Residential Boat Owners’ Association, National Bargee Travellers Association and Canal & River Trust gave presentations that highlighted areas where the Government could provide more support for those living on the waterways.

Michael Fabricant MP, chair of the group, led the meeting, which was attended

by MPs and peers, officials from Defra and representatives of many waterway organisations and navigation authorities.

Also attending were representatives from a number of new and established community mooring cooperatives.

The presentations and the lively discussion that followed identified a series of issues where more support from Government and other public bodies would be beneficial, including:

Autumn 2021 012 Campaigns Update AH SS.indd 13

n Making sure that health, social services or other local authority services are available and accessible to liveaboard communities n Better coordination between navigation authorities and planning authorities to allow a more constructive and positive response when residential mooring developments are being considered n Support and facilitation for setting up more boater-managed community or cooperative-style moorings n Better support for reducing the impact of anti-social behaviour in inner-city locations n Support for navigation authorities in making waterway infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather n Help for boaters to adapt to lowcarbon technology to support Government net-zero carbon targets

n Ensuring no adverse impacts on boaters’ legitimate way of life through the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill 2021 n Putting arrangements in place to rectify the missed opportunity in the 2021 Census to collect data about how many people are living on boats, which in turn will help to improve access to public services.

Michael Fabricant MP concluded the meeting by confirming that the APPGW would write to the Defra minister responsible for waterways, Rebecca Pow MP, to ask her to convene a meeting to discuss these issues with representatives from relevant organisations and government departments.

As well as providing the Secretariat for the APPGW, IWA also lobbies Government directly and will continue to press relevant Government departments and local authorities to make progress in these areas.

IWA Waterways |

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20/07/2021 14:45

Spotlight on...

SUSTAINABLE BOATING RESEARCH

The Kelvin hydrodynamics laboratory, where the model replica of the Suez Canal was created.

The University of Strathclyde is challenging how we approach greening Scotland’s canals in both the short and long term. Waterways talks to Dr Momchil Terziev and Dr Tahsin Tezdogan about their project and how IWA is giving them a helping hand First, tell us about the background to your project 'Decarbonising inland waterways transportation in the uk' Dr Tahsin Tezdogan (TT): We are both naval architects in the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean & Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, and worked on shallow water hydrodynamics and inland waterways transportation while doing our PhD studies. We did some experiments to understand how much energy boats consume while travelling on canals and rivers and realised we could use this research to make the inland waterways sustainable for future generations. We’ve put together a proposal for a large, comprehensive project, which we are about to submit to the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council. If it is accepted, it will bring together a number of collaborators, one of which is IWA. Dr Momchil Terziev (MT): There are four academic institutions involved in the project, making up a large consortium that draws on lots of different expertise.

Researchers from the University of Strathclyde, University of the Highlands & Islands, Newcastle University and Liverpool John Moores University are working across areas including electronics, marine engineering, freshwater biology and civil engineering in order to make it a success.

What are the aims of the project?

MT: We essentially have three aims. Firstly, we want to identify how dredging can be used to reduce carbon emissions.

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Secondly, we want to look at the future of propulsion technology, such as electricity or green fuels like hydrogen. And finally, we want to take complicated data about how boats move through the water and synthesise it in a very simple way so people can use that information to improve the performance of their vessels and make them more economical to run.

Have you done any preparatory experiments?

TT: We started with data collected by Scottish Canals and are ready to do more comprehensive numerical and experimental studies. One thing that we’ve already done was create a scale model of the Suez Canal and a container ship in the university’s Kelvin hydrodynamics lab to calculate the resistance of the vessel in the water. This helped us understand how much energy or fuel it would need to consume to maintain its speed. We also looked at ways to reduce resistance, which would in turn reduce emissions. We concluded that finding the optimal geometry for the canal bed is very important, and this can be applied to the UK’s inland waterways too.

Is that why you're looking at dredging?

TT: Yes, if we improve the way dredging is carried out and shape the canal bed in a more intentional way, we can reduce CO2 emissions for all types of inland waterways boats. We’re also looking at how dredging can be useful and how the sediment can be used in the economy again because at the moment it’s a very expensive process to dispose of the waste material.

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 14:46

Campaigning With You

Dr Momchil Terziev and Dr Tahsin Tezdogan visited canals across Scotland to see how their Suez Canal research could applied to the UK’s network of narrow inland waterways.

How are you approaching propulsion and the different technologies that could be used?

MT: Our team that’s looking at the propulsion side of things has split the problem into short-, medium- and long-term areas. In the next ten years, for example, you can’t expect that the 80,000 or so boats currently on the waterways will have been scrapped or converted with really expensive new engines. So they are looking at things like bio-fuels, which can immediately reduce CO2 emissions by a very large margin, to use in the short to medium term and allow boats to be phased out naturally as they reach the end of their lives. In the long term, we need to have strategies and technologies in place so that new generations of boats are already green.

One thing we’re asking is whether electric propulsion is right for boats or is there something better? Boats using batteries will need lots of power points for charging and these will be quite expensive to install. This makes sense on the road network because of the number of cars, but this doesn’t necessarily apply – or we’re not sure yet – to the inland waterways. There are alternatives such as hydrogen but that raises other questions about sourcing the fuel.

TT: There may be scope for some hybrid technologies as well, combining solar power and hydrogen, for example. It needs to be researched thoroughly before we reach any conclusions, and we’re hoping to run tests together with IWA and other partners.

Your third aim is about using data to help improve vessel performance. How do you see that working?

MT: We know that if you drive your car in a certain way you can actually improve your fuel consumption, and it’s the same thing for boats. We aim to produce a smartphone app that people can have with them on their boat that communicates simple adjustments, like speed, in real time using data collected about water depth, for example. Similar to the way Google Maps tells you about speed limits and traffic on the roads. We will also tie this in with things like erosion so that boats can avoid damaging the canal’s infrastructure, and possibly even the behavioural patterns of boaters. We’re really looking at this in a holistic way so that we can improve many areas at the same time. If we could achieve a 10% to 15% improvement in vessel performance through the use of an app, that would be a pretty good outcome.

How has IWA been involved in your project?

TT: We came across the IWA Vision for Sustainable Propulsion online, which is a very comprehensive report about future technologies and reducing emissions on the inland waterways.

Momchil and I contacted IWA’s Sustainable Propulsion subcommittee and set up a couple of meetings with them.

Autumn 2021 014 Campaign focus_Sustainable boating AH MT SS.indd 15

(L-r) Dr Khaled Elsherbiny from the Arab Academy for Science Technology & Maritime Transport, and Dr Momchil Terziev and Dr Tahsin Tezdogan from the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean & Marine Engineering at the University of Strathclyde.

MT: IWA gave us a lot of advice and feedback on the initial stages of our project and helped us to refine our ideas. They introduced us to some key partners, including Scottish Canals and Canal & River Trust, arranged some talks to spread the word about our work, and advised us on funding.

TT: We also delivered a speech to the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on Recreational Boating & Marine Tourism with IWA’s assistance. The group was very receptive to our ideas and said they would support the project.

What feedback have you received so far from boating communities?

MT: I spoke to Scottish Waterways for All and there were a few boating members there, and I’ve since received emails from other boat-owners. The community is very conscious about being as low-carbon as possible. The problem is, and we see this with our partner organisations as well, that they want to create a carbon-neutral boat now as the technology exists but it’s either too expensive or too difficult to implement. We’ve had zero opposition to our ideas, and so far received nothing but support and enthusiasm, which has been a great thing to witness.

TT: The other feedback we’ve received has been around dredging – it’s important but very expensive. Boaters also like the idea of the app and want to test it on their vessels.

How are you involving boaters in the project?

TT: Towards the end of the project we’re hoping to organise engagement days as it’s really important to have support from the general public. We will conduct some awareness campaigns by creating a website and producing informative videos to reach non-technical audiences to explain what we are doing and how they can contribute to cutting emissions. We discussed with some of our partners about doing outreach activities, such as visits to schools and local canals, to raise awareness of climate change and showcase related STEM career options.

What do you personally hope to get out of this project?

TT: Ultimately our aim is to increase awareness in this area for researchers, Government and the public. So far research on sustainable transport and zero-carbon emissions for boats has focussed on ocean-going vessels. I don’t want to say the inland waterways have been overlooked but it’s an area that hasn’t received enough attention. At the end of the project we will produce recommendations for the Government on how canal and river transport can contribute to it’s greenhouse gas emission targets. If they can take some of these onboard it would be the ideal outcome for us.

IWA Waterways |

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20/07/2021 14:46

Just how many waterways do we have?

As a major update to IWA’s Waterways Directory is released, its author John Pomfret talks about its background and the complications of making a complete list of inland waterways and their navigation authorities

I

WA has regular contact with the Canal & River Trust and the Environment Agency but our Navigation Committee was concerned that, in IWA’s role of advocating the conservation, use, maintenance and development of the inland waterways of the British Isles, we should not forget navigations run by other authorities. So, in 2014, it set an objective to increase IWA contact with other inland navigation authorities and to assist branches in this regard. But who are these authorities? A list was required, broken down by IWA branch area, and I volunteered to do this. Little did I realise what I had taken on!

Making a list of inland navigations and navigation authorities sounded a simple enough task. We all know what we mean by an inland waterway and a navigation authority – don’t we? Apparently not.

First of all, what is an inland waterway?

For canals specifically built for navigation it’s pretty obvious but that’s not quite the case for rivers. There is evidence that a number of rivers in their natural state

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were used occasionally in mediaeval times and earlier, when water levels allowed, to move heavy cargoes, for example stone for cathedral construction projects. However, such transport was often subject to long delays and many hazards and was not navigation as we know it today. I felt that such waterways should not be included unless later development led to regular navigation use.

Tidal question What about tidal inland waterways?

Historically, while narrowboats and Leeds & Liverpool Canal boats spent little time on tidal waters, many types of inland craft (Tyne keels and wherries, Yorkshire keels and sloops, Broads wherries, Thames sailing barges, Severn Trows, Mersey Flats, smaller puffers and many barges on south-coast waterways) did operate regularly onto tidal inland waterways.

Indeed, some major hubs for inland barge operations were on tidal waterways (Hull, for instance) and some clearly inland routes included a significant proportion of tidal waterways. For example, over

A popular inland cruising area. Most of the currently navigable Broads waterways are tidal.

40% of the inland route from London to Portsmouth via the Thames, Wey, Wey & Arun and Portsmouth & Arundel navigations was on tidal waters.

Some tidal waterways are also crucial links in the connected waterways system used by recreational inland craft. So leaving these out would exclude a major part of our inland waterways heritage, as well as ignoring major freight routes and those used by recreational inland cruising vessels. But including them left me with the problems of how to determine the seaward limit of each route and which isolated tidal waterways to include. My approach was based on evidence of use by barges operating on internal (non-seagoing) traffics or similar recreational use but it did mean looking at each of the 200 or so tidal waterway entries individually.

Creating a database I started off listing existing navigable waterways but then I had to decide what to do about those currently under restoration – as the projects progressed I would have to keep adding new entries.

So why not include all waterways – navigable, under restoration and derelict – and thus make it really comprehensive?

It seemed an interesting thing to do that appealed to my waterway-anorak mind.

I also added distances, which I thought might be useful to branches. This has given us a clearer idea of just how many miles of inland waterway there are in Great Britain – something we can use to press the Government for better funding.

Once I had a list of inland waterways split into branch areas selected on the basis of criteria described in detail in the Explanatory Notes to the Directory, I just needed to add the navigation authority in each case – whatever that meant!

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 15:20

The tidal River Hull is historically a major centre for barges working on Yorkshire waterways. Over 40% of the route from Hull to Leeds is tidal.

Navigation authorities Here the problem was the other way round. Tidal navigations were mostly fairly straightforward, as if there was an authority looking after a navigation it was generally a statutory harbour authority with powers derived from one of two Acts of Parliament. Some are also ‘competent’ harbour authorities, which is actually nothing to do with their competence or incompetence but relates to their duties regarding pilotage. It is interesting to note that both CRT and EA are harbour authorities and competent harbour authorities for certain inland waterways.

It was with non-tidal navigations that the main difficulties about navigation authorities arose. In some cases existence of an Act giving a body statutory powers and duties of some sort relating to navigation conservancy or regulation of navigation on the waterway in question meant I could definitely call a body a navigation authority. In other cases, presence of bye-laws controlling navigation gave me the name of the body making the bye-laws. But all local authorities have bye-law-making powers even if they are not navigation authorities, so bodies regulating navigation via byelaws were identified separately.

Some restoration groups also claimed to be navigation authorities based on ownership or some degree of control over the waterway. Clearly landowners can control entry to, and activity on, their land (including land covered by water) by licensing, so I counted bodies controlling access by boats on this basis as navigation authorities.

So in the end what I produced was not a simple list of navigation authorities, as originally envisaged, but a list of bodies with an interest in each waterway. I then categorised them in the Directory according to the type of interest (navigation authority, harbour authority, owner of navigation works, owner of the waterway etc). Finally, where I could find the answer, I indicated whether a right of navigation exists today.

The first edition of the Directory was released in 2016. This was my best attempt but I knew that among the IWA Autumn 2021 016 waterways directory AH SS JP.indd 17

membership would be many who knew far more about their local waterways than I had managed to assemble from my own knowledge and from reference books, so an invitation was included to members to submit corrections and additions. Many members contributed (to whom, many thanks), allowing release of an improved version in 2017. A reduced version was also included on the back of Imray’s UK Waterways Map in 2016.

2021 updates An updated version of the Directory has just been released. In addition to very many minor corrections and additions, the significant updates in the May 2021 version include: • addition of a new tab in the spreadsheet comprising over 1,500 rows of data listing local authorities responsible for every section of waterway (navigable and unnavigable), broken down by IWA branch as in the main listing, which I hope will provide a valuable resource for IWA branches, restoration societies and others (this is the first step towards including details of waterways designated as conservation areas – see below); • in the light of IWA’s increased involvement in Scotland following the demise of SIWA and with the assistance of IWA’s Scottish representatives, improvement of the coverage of Scotland to the same standard as for inland waterways in England and Wales; • improved coverage of former routes of river navigations, particularly the River Don and River Lee (the rivers Aire, Calder and Mersey were already covered); • inclusion of the more significant branches of the Grand Union Canal in the London area; • expansion of the Explanatory Notes to clarify criteria for inclusion of waterways, explain the local authorities worksheet and address various issues raised by members.

Although there has been no change in the criteria for inclusion of waterways or interested bodies since the beginning

Loch Ness on the Caledonian Canal at Urquhart Castle. Identifying which of Scotland’s many lochs are actually used for commercial or recreational inland navigation (rather than solely by small boats for angling) proved to be a challenge.

of the Directory, the latest update has resulted in an increase in the total mileage figures, with just over 7,000 miles of inland waterway ever brought into use now identified (the previous version identified 6,500 miles) and over 5,000 miles of currently navigable inland waterways (previously I had identified about 4,700 miles).

Using the Directory The Directory is available as an Excel spreadsheet and a PDF version to IWA members and others upon request and provision of an email address. This allows updates to be provided when available, in an attempt to ensure that anyone using the Directory has the latest version. If you are interested, please request the Directory via waterways. org.uk/directory. I hope IWA branches in particular find it a useful resource regarding waterway bodies and local authorities in areas where they wish to take action to respond to threats to navigation, access, future restoration or our inland waterway heritage.

Whatever use you wish to make of the Directory, please do read the Explanatory Notes first; these set out the rationale for inclusion and categorisation of waterways and definitions of terms used in much more detail than this article can. And if you find any errors or omissions, please continue to let me know (email john.pomfret@waterways. org.uk). I have had masses of useful feedback from members who know the waterways in their own areas intimately.

I don’t expect to add many new waterways now but waterway bodies and local authorities are constantly being reorganised (more than I realised!) and I will always be playing catch-up to ensure it’s up-to-date.

The intention is also to add details of local authority conservation areas, to assist the IWA campaign to increase coverage of such designations to protect waterways heritage, and I propose that the next update should take place once the conservation areas have been included in the Directory, probably in about a year from now.

IWA Waterways |

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20/07/2021 14:48

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Crick Boat Show IWA autumn21 fp ad.indd 18

19/07/2021 16:30

Co-operative moorings

FLY THE CO-OP Why community moorings are gaining traction across the length and breadth of our inland waterways

C

o-operative moorings, community moorings... Call them what you will but one thing is certain – they’ve become something of a buzzword on our waterways in recent years. In London especially, where the growing number of people living aboard is putting evergreater pressure on mooring space, they’re being hailed as one of the few success stories to date in tackling the problem. So much so that IWA’s Vision for London document in 2019 identified the creation of more community moorings as key to future policy in the capital.

What are they?

Co-operative moorings are owned and run by the boaters living there. They are usually small in scale (most contain no more than ten boats) and often in disused basins or derelict canalside sites.

Paul Strudwick, IWA’s London Region chair, says: “The idea of the community moorings is to use places – basins, off-side stretches – that are currently waiting for development. They’re often locations that can’t have long-term or permanent moorings, or any work that could reduce future options for developers.”

In the same way that charity shops are sometimes given short-term leases for empty units before a permanent business moves in, so a group of boaters might set up a co-operative to look after the land for the duration of the lease and operate the moorings, continues Paul. It’s not a new idea, but in the past, especially in London, efforts to set them up haven’t always got off the ground.

“We’re hoping that with IWA support, new co-ops will have more success.”

And indeed they are. The Surge Co-op is a case in point. Al Cree is one of its founder members. His quest for somewhere permanent and reasonably priced to live afloat in London was complicated further by the size of his craft – it’s a beast, at 127ft x 17ft, of a Belgian freight barge. When development around his former mooring forced him to move off in 2016, he started looking at other offerings on the tidal section of the River Lea.

Surging ahead In the end he found a “friendly factory owner” on the Channelsea River, who allowed Al to moor outside and have access from their yard. When other boaters kept asking if they could moor there too, four of them set up Surge, a non-profit organisation with the primary focus of reanimating Bow Creek with affordable, co-operatively run moorings.

He explains: “It’s not Canal & River Trust land, so we can set up moorings with minimal capital cost. We’re using a standard co-operative housing model where everyone will pay to cover the initial loans/expenditure and generate a constant income for upkeep and creative workshops/community outreach.”

There’s also a focus on ecological engagement, with regular river clean-ups and replanting already underway.

Ultimately the mooring will include all the main services, including visitor mooring, plus access for rowers and other watersports. Another key point, says Al, is that all the vessels will be valued beforehand, and that won’t include the mooring, so no one will be able to profit from the sale of their boat in its current location. “That’s one of the key problems in London – people selling their boat and cashing in on where it’s moored. It prices people out of the waterways.”

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Above left: Surge Co-op members working on rules and policy to create affordable moorings.

Above: Pressure on mooring spaces has increased dramatically in London in recent years.

Right: IWA launched its Vision for London in 2019, with a commitment to supporting new community mooring initiatives.

Ambitious plans At Surge’s current site, members are hoping to eventually accommodate eight larger boats, but the group’s ultimate vision is up to 200 moorings along the whole of this tidal river. “There are over 40 known, disused wharves, so historically there would have been hundreds of barges here. There’s so much opportunity and it would be a real shame if we lost this waterways heritage,” says Al. Not far away is Cody Dock, another thriving creative and community hub on the River Lea in Newham, East London. Gasworks Dock Partnership, a registered charity and social enterprise, has been operating two tidal live/work moorings beside the dock since 2011 and plans are now underway to restore and reactivate the brick-lined dock itself to create a further seven moorings within it. The charity says the new moorings “will form an integral part of [its] sustainable business model and provide an exciting way of continuing the strong community focus that has been at the heart of Cody Dock’s restoration”.

Around the network But community moorings are by no means confined to the capital. Wolverhampton Urban Moorings on the Wyrley & Essington Canal are a great example of how boaters can help themselves elsewhere on the system too. The group was previously based at Minerva Works, Digbeth, where it used its volunteer experience with CRT to create the Friends of Warwick Bar canal adoption scheme, regenerating a run down and underused section of canal.

When this site was sold, the group secured a longterm lease for a community mooring at a disused wharf in Wolverhampton. In 2016 they set to work transforming it into a community centre and garden for boaters and local land-dwellers alike, with a focus on sustainability and the arts. But the over-riding aim, says the group, is “to create mooring sites that boaters actually want, integrating ecology, history, art and volunteering”.

IWA Waterways |

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20/07/2021 14:54

GREAT SCOT

Across the border, we hear how Community Moorings Scotland is making waves on the lowland canals

Community Moorings Scotland has taken charge of a 175-yard frontage on the Union Canal, near Linlithgow.

INSET: CMS’s pilot site adjoins a market garden, which sells produce locally.

What is Community Moorings Scotland?

We’re a Scottish charity, known as CMS for short, which aims to create amazing, vibrant places on the canals of Scotland to ensure a secure future for the communities living on and beside them. Specifically, we’re creating venues for boats and people along the lowland canals which connect Glasgow and Edinburgh.

What inspired the project?

In Scotland, Scottish Canals has an almost total monopoly on moorings with next to no private marinas or linear moorings available. Narrowboater Iain Withers saw an opportunity to provide a different offering and bought a four-acre plot of land with a 175-yard frontage on the Union Canal, near Linlithgow. The land has subsequently been used as a market garden, known as Narrowboat Farm, supplying vegetables locally, but it’s also the pilot site for community moorings.

How is the community moorings project progressing?

It’s been a long road – for over five years now we’ve been trying to get the project off the ground with Scottish Canals. It was their chair who first suggested they would support the project in 2015. Since then they’ve continued to back the concept and have put in place everything required to get us up and running, with generous terms. But it’s just been so slow! However, we can’t fault their support of the project otherwise, and we are really close to the finish line now with a contract and trading agreement in place. We just have some final pieces of paperwork to complete (mooring and access agreements etc) and then we’ll be up and running. In the end, if this project does everything it can do, in 50 years we won’t remember whether it took five months or five years to start.

Currently we have nine dynamic trustees driving the project ahead, as well as looking at the development of other sites. It has been a learning experience for all concerned and, with the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that this initial site at Narrowboat Farm is, in legal terms, an extremely difficult one to establish. We’re keen to share our experiences with other interested parties and, as such, hope to put together a ‘toolkit’ charting the steps along the way.

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Have you received much support from IWA? While IWA has had no direct involvement with negotiations, it has provided a quote for the insurance at this and future sites. Compared with other quotes, the IWA insurance one is approximately a third of the cost and better tailored to our specific needs. For this reason alone, CMS has been a corporate member of IWA.

What do you hope to achieve with CMS? Two main things: the first is to make a quiet canal busier. By creating venues along the canal which attract more active boats, the future and heritage of the waterway will be more secure. Put simply, quiet canals silt up and close; busy canals thrive. We want to do our bit to make it a busy canal.

Secondly, we want to create venues that link local land-based communities with the canals to give people more reasons to visit their waterway, as well as opportunities for training. Once we prove the concept with Narrowboat Farm, we’d like to create more venues along the canals which attract local communities. Not necessarily farms – other landbased ventures may include co-working spaces, craft villages, outdoor activities, who knows?

The opportunities are out there once we get a sustainable model together.

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 14:54

Co-operative moorings

'IT'S A WIN-WIN'

In Scotland, Scottish Canals has an almost total monopoly on moorings.

CMS explains why co-ops are in everyone’s interests Boater benefits Community-owned moorings are an opportunity to be proactive about an important part of our future on the canals and not rely on navigation authorities to provide everything we want from the boating ‘product’. They’re the chance to design moorings from a boater’s perspective: perhaps a rural garden mooring or a safe, private city location? We can go back to square one with the design of our moorings and ensure they suit our needs and wants.

We also get the opportunity to innovate moorings to create value for local communities, for example by growing food, providing venues for holiday and charity boats, and by giving tourists another reason to visit an area.

And community moorings offer the chance to use our skills and run things the way we would want them run. This gives us the opportunity to cut out the ‘middleman’ and get things done when we need them done. It gives us the chance to truly feel that sense of community that boating life offers by working collaboratively.

Something for the community All the benefits that canals bring to local communities are improved when the waterways are busy with boats. Without active boats, the canals begin to silt up, get covered in weed and risk becoming unused, unloved ‘ditches’.

Active canals, by contrast, attract tourists and other visitors, who bring important income to local communities. And more people are inclined to use the canals and towpaths when they are busy.

Canals are an important part of our heritage and their raison d’être is as a transport network for boats. Without active boats, they are no longer ‘alive’ and simply become museum pieces rather than a constant reminder of an important part of our heritage.

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Houseboats also provide a rare opportunity for affordable homeownership. Considerably cheaper than houses and flats, houseboats provide a challenging yet rewarding way of life for some.

Finally, canals provide a great location for recreation. Active canals help secure the future of the waterways and towpaths for use by canoeists, runners, walkers, photographers, boaters and many other groups.

What's in it for the navigation authority?

The Community Moorings initiative reflects (Scottish) Government priorities e.g. the Land Reform Bill, the Community Empowerment Bill, their progressive agenda – and as Scottish

Canals are government-funded, it is in their ethos to support it.

Community moorings will promote vibrancy on the canals, increasing boat numbers and movements thus stimulating secondary income for navigation authorities e.g. leases, cafés, trips, tourism and generally boost demand for products and services on the canals.

Community moorings also offer the chance for navigation authorities to support the boating community at a time when many are not satisfied with them. In recent years boaters have been up in arms at the way that boating seems to have slipped down the priority list, so projects like these offer navigation authorities a way to help us help ourselves.

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From the Archive

EYES ON THE PRIZE Hands down the handsomest award in IWA’s trophy cabinet is the Alfred Ritchie Challenge Cockerel. And its history is as colourful as the prize itself...

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erhaps the most recognisable element of canal culture is the traditional art form known as ‘roses and castles’.

This distinctive decoration was most prominently used on the fixed panels inside the back cabins of working boats, but was also applied to portable items like water cans, hand bowls and dippers.

It continues to be synonymous with the waterways’ cargocarrying past, and to this day IWA honours the tradition with an appropriately eye-catching award for the most well-turned-out working boat at its annual Festival of Water.

Above: The block of wood that forms the main painted part of the trophy is an old working boat cabin block.

Right: Joe and Rose Skinner picked up the prize at the 1965 National Rally at Blackburn, on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.

Friendship first The Alfred Ritchie Challenge Cockerel was inaugurated at the 1963 National Rally in London, although there were no entrants that year. The trophy isn’t listed in the 1964 National Rally awards but the following year, in 1965, it finally found a home in the very deserving hands of Joe and Rose Skinner for their boat Friendship, the last mule-drawn narrowboat on the Oxford cut. The oak-hulled, elm-bottomed craft had been owned by them since 1924.

In fact, Friendship was too long to get to the rally itself, which was held in Blackburn that year, but there was a subsidiary gathering of 14 full-length narrowboats at Lydiate, which counted as part of the event.

Fittingly, Friendship had been towed to Lydiate from Hawkesbury Junction (the Skinners’ home mooring) by one Colonel Alfred Ritchie, who gave his name to this award. Ritchie was a working boat enthusiast and director of Willow Wren Canal Transport Services, who himself owned a converted ex-Fellows Morton & Clayton craft called Lupin. Along with his wife, Mollie, he cruised extensively seeking new commercial traffics, and the couple also took a keen interest in the welfare of the boat-people and their children, assisting with the organisation of Christmas parties, for example.

Canalware champions The Ritchies lived in the canal village of Stoke Bruerne on the Grand Union until 1967, not far from the then-recently established Waterways Museum there. They were great collectors of traditionally painted narrowboat ware and a number of the museum’s prized exhibits came from the Ritchies’ collection.

Indeed, so knowledgeable were they on the subject that it’s very possible one of them may have painted the artwork on the trophy.

The couple also provided facilities for others to learn the techniques of narrowboat decoration. According to a short

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profile of the colonel in a 1965 issue of Canal and River Monthly Review, were it not for the couple’s interest, and others like them, “this gorgeous style of painting might well have died out”. The publication added: “It is one of England’s few surviving arts, and it is vital that it should continue to develop and flourish, in an age when true values tend to become concealed in the moneygrabbing rat race of modern commerce.”

“Were it not for the couple’s interest, and others like them, this gorgeous style of painting might well have died out” Longevity These days ‘working boats’ come in many different guises, and a recent recipient of the award was from the Environment Agency’s modern fleet. But the colonel’s legacy lives on – that his award will be up for grabs at this year’s Festival of Water on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal is testament to the continued interest in folk art from our waterways.

What became of the man himself, little is known. After 1967, and having moved away from Stoke Bruerne, the couple became much less active within IWA. Thanks to the remarkable painted trophy they left behind, however, their name is unlikely to be forgotten anytime soon. And rightly so. As the 1965 feature on Colonel Ritchie continued: “It is such efforts of a number of devoted enthusiasts that have...brought an added life and interest to our waterways.”

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 15:00

Heritage Report

OUR HERITAGE

HEROES

Part Two of IWA’s Heritage Report is published this autumn and shines a spotlight on collaborative and creative efforts to preserve our waterways’ unique history.

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ooking after our canal and river heritage has been at the heart of IWA’s remit from day one. To that end, the association published a detailed report in 2020 reiterating how unique and valuable a thing it is, how we define it, and highlighting some of the threats facing it today.

And there was more. We wanted to emphasise how our inland waterways heritage is not confined to museums, but functional, living history, sustaining livelihoods and providing immense pleasure to the many people who work and play on our canals and rivers to this day.

This year we’re launching our second paper on the subject. IWA’s Heritage Report Part Two shifts the focus from the macro to more specific examples. Case studies, grouped around key themes, offer tantalising glimpses of what can be achieved, with tips on best practice and lessons learned. Together, they form an invaluable resource and we hope they will inspire navigation authorities, councils, planning authorities, developers and builders to work together with heritage organisations and local communities to find innovative ways to protect waterways heritage, in all its forms.

Download the full report at waterways.org.uk/heritage.

Cruising past living history: the Red House Glass Cone at Wordsley by the Stourbridge 16 Locks.

BRIAN EVANS

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Kev Maslin

The sympathetically restored Round House.

Birmingham Round House: When partnership pays off A major theme of the report is ‘partnership’ – by which we mean collaborating with other organisations to offer better opportunities to protect heritage, including easier access to funding and innovative ideas. One inspiring example we looked at was Birmingham Round House, which was built in 1874 and is situated next to the canal in the centre of Birmingham. It was designed as stables and stores, serving as the base for the city’s lamplighters and the horses of the Public Works Department.

In 1976, the building was given Grade II* listing due to its historical importance. It was used by the City of Birmingham Engineers Department until the 1980s when it became redundant, and the site was subdivided and sold. By the early 2000s, it had begun to fall into disrepair.

In 2013, a pioneering partnership between the Canal & River Trust and the National Trust was formed to bring the Round House back to life through a mix of sensitive heritage restoration and enterprise. Thanks to £2.5m from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and £196,000 from Historic England, the restoration work celebrates the building’s history while connecting it with the waterways and local communities.

As much as possible of the original fabric and significance of the building has been conserved, with the minimum of intervention. The entire building from roof to cobbles is being restored, so it can continue to tell the history of Birmingham and its canals.

Stoke-on-Trent: Make Conservation Areas count

Roy Heatley

IWA has always supported proactive engagement with planning authorities. While the current UK system aims to protect heritage, there is a gap in the law which sometimes affects waterside buildings: although permission is needed to alter or demolish a listed building, there is no duty to ensure it doesn’t fall down through neglect.

Bottle kilns by the canal in Stoke-on-Trent.

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Local authorities have a number of powers to actively prevent deterioration and loss of heritage assets. Conservation Areas are often the most useful tool.

The Caldon and Trent & Mersey canals have been Conservation Areas in Stoke since the 1990s. In 2010, the then Lord Mayor (himself a boater) invited a number of councillors and officers on a cruise through the city to better understand local waterways. It led to the creation of a City Canals Partnership, which agreed that a review of local Conservation Areas was needed.

Over a few months a group (including officers from the city council’s planning department and IWA representatives) walked and cycled the waterways of the city, then met up for discussions after each section. The review concluded that the Burslem Branch Canal should be included in the Trent & Mersey Canal Conservation Area, as well as all former wharves.

A Canal Management Strategy was also developed, which again involved site visits, this time looking at ways the planning process could steer development in the canal corridor.

All of this pushed the canals well up the agenda in the city and the canal corridor picked up investment of over £1m for signage, towpath improvements and better facilities, informed by a Canal Opportunities Study. The local IWA branch was again involved with developing this, alongside external consultants.

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 15:03

Chris Barry

Heritage Report

The Peterborough Arms in Dauntsey.

The Peterborough Arms: How community projects can benefit canals Community projects can build links between our waterways and the people who live near them, bringing heritage alive for local people. They can offer opportunities for local businesses, supporting the economy, and add to a sense of place and identity.

For proof of this look no further than the Peterborough Arms in Dauntsey, on the Wilts & Berks Canal. Originally a canalside farmhouse and stables, the building became a pub in 1920, just a few years after the adjacent canal was closed.

When the pub stopped trading in 2013 its owner, a commercial brewer, sought permission to turn it into a residential property.

Villagers were unhappy as the pub was very much the centre of the community. As a result, with the support of the parish council, the building was registered as an Asset of Community Value, giving locals six months to find £225,000 to purchase it.

The Wilts & Berks Canal Trust had an interest in protecting the use of the building, given its proximity to the canal. As such, it decided to back the initiative. Being an established charity meant that it had a committed group of volunteers and trustees who could offer their time and skills to support the fundraising activities.

Within six months over 300 people had provided loans to WBCT, enabling it to reach the £225,000 target and buy the pub in 2014. It took some time longer to raise another £75,000 for refurbishment. During that period the building served as a community hub, and also provided WBCT with office and meeting spaces. Meanwhile, around 40 volunteers worked for over two years to refurbish the building inside and out, using traditional lime mortar to repoint the old walls.

The pub opened in 2018 and has been a great success. It is, once again, a thriving community hub and part of the heritage of the Wilts & Berks Canal, which will be restored to run beside it again in future.

Tooley's Boatyard: Teaching heritage skills to this day Having opened in 1778, Tooley’s in Banbury, on the Oxford Canal, is believed to be the oldest continually working boatyard on the canal network. It’s where Tom Rolt had his boat Cressy fitted out before setting off on the voyage immortalised in Narrow Boat, the book that inspired the canal restoration movement and the founding of IWA. Today it is tightly hemmed in by modern commercial development, but protected from destruction by Scheduled Ancient Monument status.

Recently a charitable trust was formed to seek funding to open up the site to more visitors. It has negotiated a 150-year lease from the local authority and the Canal & River Trust, commissioned a 500-page viability report and obtained a £30,000 grant from Historic England for much-needed repairs to the old forge.

The trust also hopes to open up the towpath alongside the dry dock to the general public. This will enable it to tell the stories of Rolt and Cressy, of the Oxford Canal, and of the Tooley family to passers-by.

Longer term there are plans to replace the existing dry dock building (put up 20 years ago but unfit for purpose even then) with a two-storey visitor centre linked to neighbouring Banbury Museum.

The iconic boatyard is a living heritage asset, continuing the 240-year traditions of narrowboat maintenance and building. It runs traditional forge courses and boat-handling, with plans to expand to wooden boat-building skills in the future.

right: Built before the canal was even completed to Oxford, the yard has operated since the 1780s, most famously in the 20th century by George and Herbert Tooley (pictured). below: A young apprentice picks up heritage skills at Tooley’s boatyard.

Amy Tillson

Tooley’s today.

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Walk with IWA Discover new ways to enjoy the waterways with our self-guided walks. Follow the step-by-step instructions in this guide or online using your smartphone, and find out about history and heritage features along the way. More walks are available at waterways.org.uk/walks. We are still adding to this area and would love to hear from anyone who has a waterway walk to contribute. Please get in touch with us at walks@waterways.org.uk.

The view from Worcester Bridge.

The walk starts on the banks of the River Severn.

WORCESTER TO PERDISWELL Stroll along the River Severn from the heart of Worcester to the IWA Festival of Water site at Perdiswell on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal 1 Worcester Bridge and River Severn Start your walk at Worcester Bridge from where there are fine views of the river running south through Worcester past the cathedral and north towards the bridge for the original Hereford & Worcester Railway and beyond it the Sabrina Footbridge, a cable stay structure dating from 1992. Worcester Bridge was originally built by John Gwynne in 1781 and reconstructed in 1930 – the parapet displays some interesting plaques.

The size of the barges forming the last significant trade on the river (an oil supply from Sharpness to Stourport operating between 1930 and the early ’70s) was limited by these arches.

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To the Cathedral

Continue along the river where you will pass well-converted warehouses with fine views towards Worcester Cathedral. The Watergate gives access to the cathedral grounds. The stonework shows high water marks from many years of flooding from 1672 to the highest level in March 1947. From here it is possible to visit Worcester Cathedral, built between 1084 and 1504 and incorporating every architectural style from Norman to Gothic.

towards Diglis Hotel, once the home of the landscape artist Benjamin Williams Leader, then continue towards the locks.

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Diglis Locks

Cross the bridge below the bottom lock and walk up the two 18ft-wide Diglis Barge Locks, which allowed large river craft into the basins and subsequently gave access to smaller boats onto the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. There is a well-used dry-dock alongside the top lock and opposite is an attractive range of dock buildings.

3 Houses along the river path

5 Diversion to the oil terminus basin

As you pass the row of attractive riverside terrace houses, note the flood levels. Head

Continue along the river where you’ll cross the entrance to the ‘oil basin’, now Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 15:05

Walk with IWA

Diglis Basins – well worth exploring.

Artwork commemorating the Civil War at Sidbury Gate.

a major museum of the Civil War and is also a good opportunity for refreshments during opening hours. If historic buildings are of interest, it is but a short walk into the town to Greyfriars’ House on Friar Street, a 15th-century property now under the care of the National Trust. From there, take Union Street and Carden Street to find your way back to the towpath. deserted but which once handled timber, as well as the oil trade coming from Sharpness Docks. A little beyond here are Diglis river locks; the weir can be seen on the other side of the island, with the new fish-pass, which can be visited from the opposite bank. Beyond the locks is the latest crossing of the Severn built in 2010 – a stylish cable stay footbridge that links to Wick on the St John’s side of the river.

Diglis Basins 6 Turn back and head to Diglis Basins.

It is worth spending time exploring this area and its wide variety of river and canal boats, interesting dock buildings and opportunities for refreshments. When the canal opened in 1815, Pickford’s provided the road transport connection for goods in their horse-drawn wagons. Henry Webb & Co, a chemical manure works, operated here using barge and narrowboat transport. The redevelopment of the basins carried out from 2005 included transforming the main basin into a marina. It is here that Spry, probably the last Severn Trow, was rescued from a watery end and restored to take up to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum’s Blists Hill Victorian Town, where it can still be seen.

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8 Sidbury Gate – Site of The Battle of Worcester

Outskirts of Worcester 10 Continuing along the canal and past

The next bridge takes us back to the precanal history of Worcester. A plaque on the parapet wall marks the Sidbury Gate of the City and the site of the last battle of the Civil War fought on 3rd September 1651. An artwork with pikes and helmets on the bridge indicates the spot to those passing by boat.

Blockhouse Lock (the last for a while), you’ll encounter urban surroundings with terraced housing giving way to commercial and industrial property.

Between bridges 5 (George Street) and 6 (Cromwell Street) there are views of Worcester Shrub Hill railway station, a fine building designed by Edward Wilson in 1865 and part listed.

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The Commandery

Alongside Sidbury Lock, the first narrow one on the Worcester & Birmingham, is the Commandery. The history of the building goes back to the 13th century but it is best known as the headquarters of Charles Stuart (later Charles II) in 1651 prior to the Battle of Worcester. It is now

11 Lowesmoor Basin Leave the towpath at Bridge 9 (Rainbow Hill) for an impressive view of the railway viaduct, and continue down Westbury Street from where you can see Lowesmoor Basin, an important terminus for the canal company prior to the construction of

Royal Porcelain Works

Head along the Worcester & Birmingham Canal and you’ll see the Royal Porcelain Works on the opposite side, originally a more extensive site remembered by the name on the flats. The last cargo to use this canal up to 1961 was ‘chocolate crumb’ heading for the Cadbury factory at Bournville.

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The Commandery – now a museum but once the site of Charles Stuart’s Civil War headquarters.

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Planning your walk This heritage walk takes you from the centre of Worcester along a short length of the River Severn, through Diglis Basins and along the Worcester & Birmingham Canal as far as Perdiswell Leisure Centre.

For those driving, it is recommended to park at the Leisure Centre, Bilford Road WR3 8DX, from where there is a good bus service to the centre of Worcester. The walk back to the Leisure Centre is approximately 3½ miles.

The walk can be extended into a circular route of approximately 6 miles. Once you reach Perdiswell Leisure Centre, turn right down Bilford Road and left along Droitwich Road. At the end of this road, walk through Gheluvelt Park toward the River Severn. Take the path along the river past Pitchcroft to join the main walk’s starting point at Worcester Bridge.

If you are travelling by train, leave Worcester Shrub Hill station and walk down Cromwell Street to join the towpath at the canal footbridge. Follow the circular route, starting at point 10.

Find the online version of this walk at waterways.org.uk/ worcesterwalk.

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Diglis Basins, and rejoin the canal. Most of the original wharves have been filled in but this site is still active with a hire-boat base and moorings.

12 Gregory's Mill locks

The railway viaduct at Lowesmoor as viewed from Westbury Street.

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Past Lowesmoor Basin the area is noted for its 19th-century terraced housing and green open spaces. On the off-side, an area of reeds is home to a variety of wildfowl. At Gregory’s Mill locks the surroundings become more rural as the canal rises above Barbourne Brook.

The locks show typical Worcester & Birmingham Canal paddle gear designed at a time when each canal company was independent and produced all its own lock equipment at local workshops.

Hopefully you will see a boat passing and

demonstrating use of the paddles as they have been operated for the last 200 years.

13 Bilford The two locks at Bilford take you away from the city into pleasant rural surrounds.

A winding hole between the locks indicates this was once a busy section for boats.

14 Perdiswell Perdiswell Park extends along the off-side of the canal and was the site of a World War II aerodrome. If you continue along the towpath until Ivy Bridge (16), you can see the remains of a sentry box. Returning to Bilford Road Bridge, cross the canal for access to the park, the site of the IWA Festival of Water on 28th-30th August, and the Leisure Centre car park.

Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 15:05

Oxford Canal

Idyllic scenery needs our protection as much as our heritage structures do, says Paul.

Postcard from the

Oxford Canal In April, IWA National Chair, Paul Rodgers, spent a week boating from Braunston along the Grand Union Canal and down the Oxford Canal with his wife, Amanda. He shares his standout moments and musings from the trip

The view that will be transformed when HS2 is built.

I

n my busy life, I grab every opportunity I can to take a short break on the water. When Tim Coghlan offered me the use of Braunston Marina’s narrowboat Victoria following filming for BBC’s Countryfile in March, I jumped at the chance.

In IWA’s 75th year, it was humbling to see reminders of the Association’s origins as we boated for the first time through familiar Oxfordshire towns and countryside not far from home. We passed under the Tom Rolt bridge and visited the place which marks the precursor to IWA’s story, Tooley’s Boatyard. It’s where Tom Rolt had his boat Cressy fitted out before setting off on the journey that inspired the book Narrow Boat and the founding of IWA. The owners of Tooley’s are opening up areas of the boatyard to visitors as a way of safeguarding its future, and it was fantastic to meet the team. I also met up with my local MP, Victoria Prentis, who is very supportive of the waterways.

By far the highlight of the trip was boating along the stretch of waterway that epitomises my canal-building hero, James Brindley. I saw two of my wonders of the waterways in a day: the Wormleighton Wandering and the Topless Tunnel.

Winding our way along the Oxford Canal we passed several historic boats. This stretch is also rich with heritage structures. We saw low bridges, lift-bridges, skew bridges and several crumbling bridges. We also boated through a diamond lock and past Aynho Weir. These are all examples of unique waterways heritage that needs our protection.

Bridge 100 is one that requires some serious attention and underpins the importance of the efforts we’re making in working alongside Canal & River Trust in its grant review with Defra, which will take place over the next five years. Will Bridge 100 be standing then – who knows? But we do know that there is a backlog of maintenance projects that need funding.

It’s not just the heritage structures that we need to look out for. We took in the quiet scenery that will be forever changed where the HS2 viaduct will cross the Oxford Canal on the tranquil summit section at Bridge 128 near Wormleighton. IWA has campaigned to mitigate the impact of the high-speed rail project for over a decade. We influenced major changes in areas such as Fradley Junction, but we remain particularly concerned about the noise impact here. As well as campaigning to minimise the negative impacts of HS2 on the waterways, we are also lobbying for the project to regenerate areas of the waterways through improvement works where possible.

The waterways that we love are under threat from insensitive development, underfunding and lack of protection. Seeing some of these issues along a relatively short but popular section of the connected waterways, you can start to imagine the scale of the job to campaign for the regeneration of 5,000 miles of navigable waterways in Britain, and the 500 waterways that are under active restoration.

Your contributions are vital in helping to make sure canals and rivers like this remain open to all and retain the heritage and character that make them so special. Thank you.

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Bridge 100 on the Oxford Canal is just one of many heritage structures in need of urgent attention.

More ways to help

■ Enjoy the waterways to the fullest and, if you can, visit some of the quieter spots and take part in our Silver Propeller Challenge ■ Share your time, skills or expertise – there are many ways you can volunteer with us ■ Make a donation or pledge further support – much of our work is made possible thanks to additional donations and legacies Find out more at waterways.org.uk.

A trip to Tooley's Boatyard in Banbury was among the highlights of the trip.

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SOUVENIRS OF AN

ENGINEER Following his retirement, IWA’s long-standing honorary consultant engineer Roy Sutton looks back on a varied career troubleshooting our waterways’ infrastructure

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y earliest inland waterways memory was visiting my grandmother, who lived next to Buxton Road Wharf on the Macclesfield Canal. As a young child I used to walk that towpath for miles. My grandmother knew Harry Moseley, a British Waterways section inspector who had a BW narrowboat. He used to pootle along with it doing general maintenance – the ideal job! My grandmother persuaded him to take me out, so my first ever waterways experience was a day spent on a working boat. I was about nine or ten years old at the time and it made a real impression.

I became secretary of the Cambridge University Canal Club, which was closely affiliated with Cambridge IWA. We organised an annual cruise, although unfortunately I was only able to make one of those trips myself. We also worked on the Droitwich Dig in ’73, both Fenatics, Great Barford Lock and the Ely Rally.

IWA AND Overseas postings I became a signed-up IWA member on leaving university, and moved to Reading to work with a famous consultant engineer called Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners. I joined their ‘Hydro’ department and, over the course of the next couple of years, worked on a variety of projects including a large dam, canal structures and an irrigation scheme.

I then went on site for two years to a power station near Dartford. I occasionally attended IWA meetings and regularly walked my local waterways (including walking from Reading to Bristol along the Kennet &

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Roy on the Chichester Canal.

Avon). I joined London WRG digs on the Stratford (Blitz), Basingstoke (Lock 24), Stroudwater and Thames & Severn.

Further involvement was stopped by a series of overseas postings. The first was to Oman, to lay out 1,500 houses and their services. I then moved to Abu Dhabi for two years as deputy resident engineer commissioning a new hospital. In Kenya I supervised 80km of earthworks for a road, followed by a year maintaining Ministry of Defence properties in the Falklands; a huge remit.

I was drifting from country to country and I thought getting back to the UK and becoming more specialised would give me a better potential. So I did a oneyear MSc in computing at Cranfield, near Bedford, and from there progressed to a career writing (mostly) structural analysis software.

KESCRG and Linacre Bridge At around this time I joined the Kent & East Sussex Canal Restoration Group, which by then had been running for four or five years, mostly working on the Basingstoke Canal. However, my first major restoration project was Linacre Bridge on the Droitwich Barge Canal in the late ’80s. This was a Brindley structure with a 28ft span – unusually wide for a canal bridge. The reason for that was to get the height, because trows used to come through with their sails up on this section of canal. They would drop them for the bridge but the boom would run underneath, rattling along on the brickwork, before the sail was raised again on the other side. In doing this the brickwork arch was damaged to the extent that there was just 4½in of it left.

We put in a standard concrete saddle and then vast amounts of brickwork repair. It looked very good – it still looks very good. If we hadn’t done it, I seriously think the bridge would have collapsed, which would have been a tragedy.

I continued digging as a KESCRG ‘regular’ until 18 months ago. We did a huge amount of work, especially at Aston Locks on the Montgomery, Droitwich and on the Cotswold Canals.

IWA appointment In 1989 the late Tony Harrison and I were appointed honorary consultant engineers for IWA. I welcomed the opportunity because we got to see so Autumn 2021 20/07/2021 15:09

Love Your Waterways

Elsewhere, my reports and structural analysis probably saved Bailey Bridge and Boscow Road Bridge on the Manchester Bolton and Bury Canal from demolition.

Stratford St Mary Lock on the River Stour was concrete-built in the 1930s and abandoned in the 1950s. Its reopening extended the navigable section of the river by a further 1¾ miles. I provided a report before restoration commenced, but had no idea they were closely following my advice. It came as a complete surprise when my name was mentioned at the opening ceremony.

“At my suggestion the balance beams were cranked, which saved a 2m length on every lock over 12 locks”

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct remains the number one feat of canal engineering, says Roy.

many interesting things. I’ve always been fascinated by canal engineering, of which the most sublime example in our country has to be the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. The Bridgewater was also an amazing feat in its day, as well as Telford’s New Main Line.

Overseas, the Suez and Panama canals impress me. My great-grandfather worked on the construction of the Panama Canal. He was indentured from Waterford; given free passage in return for three years’ work. Thinking he was going to the United States, he was actually taken to Panama where he worked on the French attempt, under Ferdinand de Lesseps, which suffered massive fatality rates from yellow fever and other tropical diseases.

Highlights I’ve been much involved recently with the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier on the River Parrett.

However, the role of honorary consultant engineer has taken me all over the network.

On the Ribble Link I joined a team reviewing the design. At my suggestion the balance beams were cranked, which saved a 2m length on every lock over 12 locks.

The first boats through Stratford St Mary Lock on the River Stour, which Roy worked on.

Autumn 2021 032 LYW roy sutton SH2 SS RS AH.indd 33

Some of the happiest days of my life were spent on the Driffield Navigation.

I was tasked with rectifying the mistake of a major consultant, who had just completed a dredging study and got the quantities out by a factor of 10!

I spent three wonderful days being punted along the waterway with a rod and staff measuring the actual dimensions of the channel as opposed to the consultant’s, who had been told there was 1m depth of silt and had multiplied this by the width and length of the navigation without checking the true situation.

Being awarded the Cyril Styring Trophy in 2009 was another true highlight.

I continue to be involved with IWA as secretary of the Kent & East Sussex Branch and secretary of the South East Region. But ill health means I’m stepping back from engineering consultancy. As I get older, I’m also losing contact with modern practice. If I had continued, I would have run the risk of making mistakes. Now is a good time to retire, too, because workload is light, with projects stalled following the pandemic lockdowns.

I’ll certainly miss the work and people.

Honorary Consultant Engineers IWA’s Honorary Consultant Engineers offer their services to IWA committees and any other organisations requiring engineering advice on waterway matters. Their help is provided free of charge (but reasonable travel and subsistence expenses are expected to be reimbursed).

The engineers can identify the scope of an issue to be examined and obtain a suitable source of detailed engineering advice. They also undertake limited investigations and design to support minor engineering works that are often carried out by voluntary bodies.

Since Roy’s retirement, there remain two honorary consultant engineers: John Heather (who can be contacted on john.heather@waterways.org.uk) and Howard Worth (howard.worth@waterways.org.uk).

Roy (right) with fellow honorary consultant engineers Howard Worth and John Heather.

IWA Waterways |

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