What happened to Narrowboat Cressy?

According to my web stats, someone just searched grannybuttons.com via ask.com, asking:

What happened to the narrowboat Cressy?

The answer is in the book Tom Rolt & the Cressy Years by Ian Mackersey, which you should find a link to in my 'canal books' list on this page. Basically, Cressy rotted on the bottom, and when Rolt's marriage to Angela broke up in 1951, he took the boat to Wyatt's boatyard at Stone, on the Trent & Mersey (now the home of the Canal Cruising Company but, I think, still run by the Wyatt family) .

Rolt had a lady lined up as a buyer, but in an early example of a bad survey result the boat was condemned as dangerous and unworthy of restoration. The sale fell through, and Rolt simply abandoned the boat. It lingered at the boatyard, rotting further, for a couple of years, and then the Wyatts broke it up. They apparently burned much of it, although some of the painted work - e.g. roses & castles - was given away to people unknown, and might still be preserved somewhere. Rolt kept the removable such as Buckby cans and I understand they are still at the family home.

With hindsight, and knowing the seminal influence of this boat, we wish it had been preserved, just as the Mary Rose is at Portsmouth, and the Vasa in Gothenburg. But at the time it was just a rotten-floored hulk, and the canals were still thought of by so many as a lost cause. One of the Wyatt sons said later that he almost broke his ankle when his foot went right through a rotten base plank as he was dismantling it.

Comments

[Martin Allinson]

Thank you, Linda, for your eply, which I have just seen 13 months agter you posted it, when I happened to come back to this 'thread'.

I will follow up your reference.

martin@martin.in.th

[Linda]

Article written by Tony Hirst on the voyages of the 'Phosphorus' in Waterways Journal Vol 9 produced by The Boat Museum Society at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port

[Peter Roberts]

What happened to Cressy? Her engine was used on the Talyllyn Railway, I beleive to drive a small platform type truck.
I enquired about its prescent location but evidently it was so worn out that Tom Rolt gave permission for it to go for scrapp.
I am fairly certain her Buckby Can still exists.

[Martin Allinson]

Thank you for following up on 'Phosphorus' for me. I am sorry to hear she came to a sad end, but wood in water doesn't last forever, I guess.

After your message, I sent off for a copy of "Tom Rolt and the Cressy Years" and, lo and behold, on page 75 it says that Robert Aickman had purchased her hull around 1947 and had her conversion to a houseboat started, but sold her to a Mrs Dorward.

[Martin Allinson]

In 1962-65 my late wife and I owned narrow boat "Phosphorous". She was one of the few who had gone through the Wash from the Nene to the Ouse and then to the Cam. Our mooring was opposite the open-air swimming pool,and approached from a car park behind the New Spring pub, above Victoria Bridge, in Cambridge.

We moved away to a hill-farm in Merionethshire and I completely lost touch with the canal scene. But this morning (up near the Mekong!!) I came on the reference to "Cressey" and remembered reading L.T.C. Rolt's "Narrow Boat" as a boy during WWII. (I think it was a Readers' Union selection) and how it sparked my interest and resulted in a lot of towpath bicycling along the neglected canals of Lancashire. And how that led to living on "Phosphorous". Can anyone tell me any more about "Phosphorous", please?

[Andrew Denny]

Wow! Thanks, Charlie! That's the sort of news that is well--propagated by a blog. I'll see if I can get down. My appetite is whetted!

[charlie]

What happened to Cressey? CCT(Cotswold Canals Trust) members have the opportunity to ask Sonia Rolt in person as she's our guest speaker at our Eastern End Group meeting at the Trout, Lechlade in our 15th September meeting. If anyone still has memorabilia from the boat, it's most likely to be her as she was Tom Rolt's 2nd wife.