London Region Heritage Officer Report

Views are also being sought on a proposal to make access to short-stay visitor moorings fairer by a more active management of the sites, limiting the amount of time individual boats can use them in a year and increasing the overstay charge if they stay longer than permitted. To reduce the risk of blocking the channel and to make navigation safer, the consultation also proposes preventing triple mooring and mooring against a wide-beam on the busiest central London waterways. Link to the survey: https://canalrivertrust.welcomesyourfeedback.net/s/London. This closes at the end of March. Please take the opportunity to make your views known.

The recording of this webinar will be made available, together with details of all forthcoming IWA webinars and recordings of previous ones, on www.waterways.org.uk/tv. Meanwhile future dates are Monday 28th March, Monday 25th April, Monday 23rd May and Monday 27th June. All London Region members will be circulated with details.

Libby Bradshaw libby.bradshaw@ursa.me.uk 07956 655037

In the Autumn issue, I described my ongoing project “The Lost Wharves of the River Thames in London”. I have few significant details to update, except that my presentation at our November social evening was delivered to a receptive audience. I have completed the exercise of identifying the precise location of about 600 wharves on the North Bank and have begun a similar exercise with those wharves on the South Bank.

A Thames Night Voyage in the 1930s

I have seized upon a mini-project after reading A.G. Linney’s 1930’s book “Lure and Lore of London’s River”. In Chapter XXVII, he describes a 38 mile night voyage on the River Thames, starting at 11pm aboard a Thames tug towing 6 lighters. The journey commences at the mouth of the Grand Union Canal at Brentford and finishes, a little after dawn, at Northfleet Creek. Although this project has a more historical slant, as opposed to one of a Heritage flavour, I was particularly taken with the Author’s somewhat poetic prose as he described the sixty or so landmarks identified in the darkness during his journey. Battersea PS before development Editor’s note

Derek has provided a fascinating account with superb illustrations of this book’s trip. Due to space considerations I am holding this over to the next edition. Something to look forward to.