Granny Buttons

Minorities on the canals

Aidan, who has been a great help to me (and many others) with BCN locks, has sent me a picture of a chap he met at Old Turn over Easter.   

Dave has read Granny Buttons before.  And was interest in my comments in the past about ethnic minorities on the canal, since Dave himself has an Afro-Caribbean background. 

Last year he decided to buy a live aboard and is happily moored at Ocker Hill with his girlfriend.   Aidan said he'd be happy to see his photo here, so welcome to Granny's world, Dave! 

Phoenix relaunches the narrowboat

Grant & Livingston have made a strange and brave attempt at reinventing the narrowboat. Called Phoenix 58 (the number refers to the length in feet), this striking new boat tries to break with tradition while still being perfectly suited to the peculiar narrow canals of England.

They gave it a public showing on the Thames at Marlow last week, and it surely turned many heads.  Grant & Livingston is probably more an engineering company than a boatbuilder and perhaps better known for its tanks, pressure vessels and bespoke fabrication.  So underneath the unusual design is some interesting engineering.

At an estimated £225,000 retail (typically twice the price of most luxury floating cottages) this boat isn't going into mass production. It's clearly more of a design & manufacturing exercise.   

The most eyecatching detail is in the stern, which borrows from conventional marine design. Phoenix 58 (it's 58 feet long) looks like a fugitive from a seaside marina, one that's been stretched on a torture rack), and it's significant that they chose to launch the boat on the Thames - 'white boat' territory - and that immediately afterwards it retreated back down the tidal Thames to Canvey Island without touching any narrow canals. 

It's obviously not aimed at conventional canal boaters; I'd imagine it's an attempt to attract tupperware lovers to canal boating. And the first website to write about this boat was not a boating site but Luxist, a blog that blindly catalogues luxury products worldwide.

These luxury boats look great in the brochure, but there's always a danger they could turn out to be a soulless, over-engineered hell as liveaboards.  I recall such a boat built eleven years ago by Stenson for the Ideal Home Exhibition, and offered as a prize in an Evening Standard competition, looking every inch the 21st Century canal boat. 

I saw Evening Standard five years later near Alvechurch, and it looked very down-at-heel and old fashioned, still with its show name and the black & white livery dirty and fading.  There's nothing so dated as last year's very latest fashion when it needs a cleanup.  Of course, Evening Standard was a random prize, not a a paid-for and treasured boat.

Phoenix 58 (thus called because it's 58 feet long) is considerably more practical and elegant, and its sparkling, glinting interior makes it great as a exhibition boat. But to be honest, to it feels a bit too much of a hard and claustrophobic Habitat showroom or House & Garden photoshoot. And the chunky external profile seems a little like it was designed by yacht-club committee; it has little of the organic, evolved beauty of the replica traditional-style narrowboats such as those from Roger Fuller or R.W. Davis.

But that's only my opinion.  Your mileage may vary; if you like the look of Phoenix 58 (I don't know about the 'Phoenix' bit, but the 58 means it's 58 feet long), you probably measure in nautical miles on a GPS readout; but if you don't, your mileage is probably measured out in furlongs with 200-year-old cast iron mileposts.

Reading between the lines, I'd guess Phoenix 58 (did I mention that's how long it is in feet?) was so named as a way for Grant & Livingston to be 'reborn' (Phoenix - reborn, geddit?) in the booming canal narrowboat market.

But the firm is owned by the Fawkes family, so perhaps it's a jokey reference to 'Fawkes the Phoenix' in Harry Potter.  In which case one can add it to a list of Potter-inspired boat names I've come across, including Quidditch, Quidditch (the other one, owned by Will Chapman), Dumbledore, Hippogriff and Hogwarts.   

As for the '58' part of the name, I've no idea.  Perhaps it's because it's got 57 varieties in its design, plus one more.

Cowley breach fixed very quickly

The canal breach at Cowley last week was fixed in remarkably quick time, reopening yesterday. 

This must have come as a huge relief for the Little Venice Canalway Cavalcade festival organisers - I suspect quite a few boats were queued up waiting to get through.  They'd still have missed the first day but at least today should have the full complement of visitors.

Davenham and Son and a bit on the side

Following up my 'Davenham and Son' post a couple of days ago, Brian Mackie has kindly sent me this link to the history of the Davenham boat:

It comprises notes and photos by Rick Ferris, a former skipper and owner of Davenham, prepared for a lecture he gave the the Northwich Heritage Society. 

It includes the history of Davenham from its construction in 1946 as a 'Brunner' (Mersey/Weaver cargo boat for ICI/Brunner Mond) at Northwich, through his purchase of it, to its sale to a 'yuppy couple'.  He gives them an acid parting shot:

Sorry, Stephen and Lisa, that you didn't make it together, and have put Davenham back on the market. I think £140k is a bit steep, when I sold it to you for £35k, and all you have done is ruin it ... This breaks my crusty old heart as it belongs in Northwich.

Ouch.  But Rick's site is a wonderful, gossipy, information-packed resource on the 'Brunners'. He even includes a Google Earth satellite shot of Davenham in Brentford, and 'the little narrowboat that could' alongside.

Granny on the BCN in 2001 - episode 4

More of the BCN 24hr in 2001.  In which Granny Buttons continues along the Wyrley & Essington Canal and down the Walsall Locks to the Walsall Canal.

Photos exist of 'dry story' narrowboat sinking

Couple rescued as narrowboat sinks - Chester Chronicle

The dry story behind the dry facts of the narrowboat sinking in Bunbury Locks, reported a couple of days ago.  Still not much, in terms of a human story, but there's a tiny bit of extra detail: 

Witness Jan Wilson, of Oakmere, who took photographs of the drama, said: "I was just driving over the bridge after lunch with a friend when I saw a boat at an unusual angle.

"The Waterways people came out with a ladder that looked a bit like a rope and put it down to the man.  The lock was blocked with people waiting to come out. Nobody could move."

All we need to do now is track down Jan Wilson and ask to see her photos.

Hen moors in unusual place

Cute story today in the Cambs Times about a moorhen that's made its home on a narrowboat counter in March.

Davenham and Son

I work hard to find links for the most innocuous posts.  I really do.  Links make interest.   

I stumbled across an amusing picture on Flickr today, where a little narrowboat sits on the Thames ebb-tide mud alongst a big - er, well a bigger boat.  And the caption "When I grow up ... I want to be just like you".  It's by Flickr member Mind the goat.

(Goat alert, author Margaret!)

A fun picture.  But that wasn't enough. I wanted a connection, a link. What's the big boat?  It's not a dutch barge, it's something quite un-dutchy.  So I downloaded the picture on its maximum resolution (800x600) and zoomed in.  The big boat's name is Davenham. 

I hunted for this name, and it turns out to be a village in Cheshire, close to Northwich and the River Weaver.  And that's a clue.   

So, link by quick link, I found that Nigel Bowker gave a lecture 3 years ago to the Sankey Canal Society, where he said that a Mersey & Weaver boat of this name 'became a houseboat in London'.

Some boats were of course lost at sea but a much sadder fate met many, such as the Gowanburn which was abandoned in the upper reaches of the Weaver navigation where it remains to this day, gradually rotting away. Not all boats suffered this fate of course. Some were sold off to new owners for new uses. The Davenham became a houseboat in London [my bold] whilst the Marsden crossed the Atlantic to Florida. The Witch has found a home with Merseyside Maritime Museum.

I could take this further, but my aim isn't to pursue a story to its end, but simply to establish another link.  But it does open up a vista of new links and new stories to explore, and that's what excites me.  The vista, the view, not the detail.

And now I wonder: what happened to the Marsden, the one that 'crossed the Atlantic to Florida'?  And what about the Gowanburn?  Rotting away in the Weaver mud is hardly a sadder fate than sinking.  

'Rotting away in mud', visible to boaters, is to me a romantic fate!  It's a ghost story, a wonderful retainer from the past.  Indeed, it's a metaphor for the English canals as a whole.  They linger, pretty much as they were a hundred years ago, but the commercial aspect rots away in the mud, and I love it for its ghostly memory. Just like the old boat pictured here in 2004, rotting away here, in the mud of a Cheshire flash, just a mile or two from Davenham.  (I'd never heard of Davenham when I took this photograph)

Hmm, I got sidetracked, and I've lost interest in Davenham (the boat) already. 

Except that Davenham got to London, and it surely didn't come by canal.  When and how did it arrive?  And how did it acquire its improbably tongue-&-groove wheelhouse?  And is the nameless baby narrowboat alongside just a tender for Davenham?  Every boat has a story.  What's the story of yours?

Good lord, I never expected it, but this post has taken more work than most.

Mardon Insurance greenlights Granny's repairs

I got the go-ahead today for the repairs to start.  Mardon Marine Insurance said it's OK for Aynho Dock Services to begin fixing Granny Buttons. Thanks, David!

Envirolet - another user writes

I've been in correspondence with Alan Tharratt, another narrowboat user with an Envirolet composting toilet aboard.  He fitted it himself, and was kind enough to share his thoughts with me:

We have had an Envirolet composting toilet for almost two years and are very happy with it.  They are certainly less hassle than any other sort of boat toilet. 

We don't live on our boat but we do use it for several weeks and lots of weekends each year.  We haven't had to empty it yet although we may need to fairly soon.

They are quite large and would be difficult to retrofit in many boats.  The fan runs all the time and can be a bit irritating sometimes. 

I bought the toilet direct from Envirolet in Canada; much cheaper than buying in this country.  I fitted it myself, very simple, just cut a hole in the roof and provide power.

The fan has two settings; it is turned down at night but it's still a bit noisy, though to be fair this is partly my fault. It should have a wind turbine thing on top of the flue outside, it's quieter with this on, for some reason. 

But I misjudged the height of a tunnel last summer and knocked the thing off into the canal.  Not got round to replacing it yet.

Cowley breach in photos

You might have heard that someone, when dredging the Grand Union Canal at Cowley last week, accidentally ploughed through an old culvert, broke it, and the canal started draining into the nearby road. 

The canal's closed at bridge 189, just south of Cowley Lock, until next Wednesday.  Paul from Tafelberg has done a fascinating series of photos of it, showing the contractors erecting one of those clever canvas dams (what are they called?) then draining the canal and locating the hole. 

Paul's divided the pictures into two days.   I think Day Two is by far the most interesting - it features the actual stanking (is that what they call it?) of the canal, by the bridge.  Paul, can you put them all on one page for us?   

In the meantime, here's my own photo of that stretch of the waterways, taken very close to where the breach occurred, but almost exactly a year ago.   The fellow following me, in his dinghy, has the only rear-view mirror I've ever seen in a rowing boat.

Liveaboards fight to stay afloat

If you wonder why I write a lot about boating issues in America, it's because they write about it a lot, in a way that has parallels to UK canal boaters. Today on the Seattle liveaboard boaters' Shilsole blog there's a post about another batch of liveaboards nearby who face eviction.   

UK liveaboards might find this story (on the local Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper) interesting:  Live-aboards fight to stay afloat: Full-time tenants don't belong at terminal, port says.

Spon Lane glassworks and the Great Exhibition

One of my favourite radio programs is In Our Time, a series for autodidacts.  Today Melvyn Bragg and guests were talking about the Great Exhibition of 1851 (download the MP3 of the program here).   They mentioned that the glass for the Crystal Palace came from Chance, the Birmingham glassmaker, whose factory was situated canalside at Spon Lane.

There's a history of the Chance glassworks here, on the fascinating and informative Revolutionary Players website, a history of Birmingham industry. As I understand it, the Chance family bought a pre-existing glass factory in 1824 and heavily expanded it to take advantage of the newly-cut Telford canal. In the mid-19th Century the Chance glassworks straddled the canal, as this picture shows. 

The section of canal on the streetmap is here, and there's a memorial of the Crystal Palace in the streetname 'Crystal Drive' on one side of the canal, and 'Palace Drive' on t'other.

Did the glass for the Crystal Palace come to London by canal?   In this Multimap combined roadmap and aerial view I notice that Crystal Drive runs right alongside the railway, but if I was sending precious glass in bulk to London, I'd trust it to go slowly and gently by narrowboat, not by the jolting early railways.

Not as exciting a post as I thought it might be when I started typing it (after a lot of browsing) half an hour ago.  But of mild interest I think. 

Little Venice Canalway Cavalcade 2006

I plan to visit the Little Venice canal festival on Sunday (although Granny sends her apologies).  Here's the official festival website.  This will be my first year with digital photography, and it'll be interesting to see if it'll be any easier for me to record it this way. Especially the traditional illuminated boat procession.

The theme this year is 'Diamonds', 2006 being the Diamond Jubilee of the founding of the Inland Waterways Association.  This theme offers great scope for canal boat decoration, for diamonds are an integral part of traditional narrowboat art.  There's an interesting mention of the role of the diamond in the excellent Jo Sonja's Online Guide to Decorative painting.

Here's the official 'what it is' of the festival.  The official title is Canalway Cavalcade, but I've never found out why they gave it this unusual locution.  Perhaps because it merges the idea of the water and the pathway in one.

This was significant in the early days of the festival: until about 1973 the towpath was actually off-limits to the general public, and would-be canal walkers could only press their noses to the gates and look on longingly, like hungry street urchins at a baker's window.