Narrowboat houseboat conversions on the Basingstoke Canal, 1961

Debbie Figuereido has been browsing the marvellous British Pathe newsreel library.  And she tells me she fell in love with one particular clip from 1961.

Called 'New Barges For Old', it shows old boats being converted into floating homes on the Basingstoke Canal at West Byfleet:

Do the boats still exist?, Debbie asks.  Well, the narrator says the boats are about 25 years old (i.e. built in the 1930s), and reckons they have another 25 years life ahead of them.

What's impressive is how how hospitable they are, as comfortable in their 50-year-old way as we'd expect liveaboard boats to be now.  And with some sparkling 1960s interiors that make me feel, yes, maybe the interior designers of the time had greater taste than we now grant them.

The narrator firmly points out that the boats aren't 'barges', but 'narrow [pause] boats'. 

Yet I get the impression that the main interior scenes of one of the finished boats is wider.  Am I imagining it? Were they the same boats as the ones shown at the start?  Or were the boat tops simply built with much less 'tumblehome' so that they just feel more spacious?

One of the boats shows a sign over the 'front door' with what looks like the name 'Alan Turner' (or perhaps 'Turing'!).  Am I imagining that too?

Meanwhile, inveterate rivet counters (hello Sarah!) will probably not get past the first ten seconds of this film clip, as they try to identify the butty on the right.  Its name looks like something short ending in '...llie', such as 'Millie' or 'Nellie', but I'm probably imagining that too. 

Comments

[Wolf]

I know this post is a few years old now but I wanted to reply to Tamsin: I also lived on Triton in the early 80s. As best I can work out, it was somewhere between 1981 and 1985. We moved when I was six or thereabouts. I have very fond memories of living there. I only fell into the canal once. (My parents let me have a fishing net and there were ducks on the canal, what did they expect was going to happen?!)

[Tamsin Partridge]

Hi, I used to live on a boat named 'Triton' which was a 72' wooden hull narrow boat from Birmingham back in the 80's here at Scotland Bridge. Sadly had to leave it as we were renting as young adults and couldn't afford the renovation costs to upgrade the hull when it was surveyed by a council inspector before the locks were repaired. I would really love to know what has happened to this historical boat, was it saved and moved or has it ended up like a lot of the others and left for scrap in the canal? Hopefully someone can remember what happened, it would have been moved early on as it was the only boat on the other side of the canal and was right next to the bridge after lock 1.

[Mad]

The owner of the abandoned ex houseboat at the Wey junction, had 6 months free mooring on the Basingstoke whilst he emptied the disgusting, contents of the boat onto the woodland bank at Scotland Bridge,where it remains, declared that he was going to put the engine back in the boat (it never had one), fill it with concrete to stop it leaking (it has a rotten elm bottom),and take it to East London. He then, in the early hours of one Sunday morning, broke the padlocks off lock one on the Basingstoke and set off on his journey, you see how far he got.
The mooring fees for other mugs during this time amounted to £1,500.00. There is more than one person mad at this.The relevant Authorities had 6 months to deal with him before he abandoned the boat.

[Ray Oakhill]

I wondered where that sunken boat came from at Woodham Junction, because it was never previously on the Wey Navigation. Now it's been abandoned on the Wey, presumably the National Trust have to take on the responsibility of removing it; unless they take on the expense of tracing the owner and taking him/her to court. Bet the owner doen't have any money anyway, judging by the state of the wreck. I can see my licence fee increasing next year on account of irresponsible leeches like this! Blimey, I'm getting to sound more like Maffi - must stop reading his blog!

[julia]

Hello buttons and all.
I live on one of the boats pictured in the film clip, I too love this clip, and I know one of guys in it, he worked on my boat in dry dock about 20 years ago, and helped his dad build the wooden superstructures.
My boat is of rivetted iron with a wooden superstructure, and was built in 1891.Some of the original houseboats here were wooden, and they are all except one which is tubbed inside a steel hull, gone or sunk (one sunk between lock one and two), but there are 4 steel/iron ones left and still home to myself and my neighbours (not counting the construction that sank a couple of weeks ago).All have been put inside new steel hulls, but these hulls do not have the 100 year lifespan that the original hulls had, my boat had to be replated again last year.
If I can find out how to do it, I will send a picture of the interior of my boat. They do look bigger inside because the steel hulls are over 7' width inside, and the superstructure is built overhanging the hull, giving plenty of elbow room, and a wide windowsill on top of the gunnels which runs the whole length of the boat both sides.
There is no tumblehome as the roofs are flat.

[Andrew Denny]

Roger, thanks for the info on where the boats now are.

Yes, the video's been available for some time now, but I don't write about what's new, I write about what's interesting, and what's overlooked.

[Max Sinclair]

It's good to see the trick of sawing a floating narrow boat in half recorded. I saw this at Les Allens of Oldbury. From a bottom join they marked a vertical line and then Bob and John sawed down each side together. As they neared the bottom plank the centre rose up until the two halves floated apart about six inches above the water, and their feet were dry.

[Dan]

Loving the Boxer dog! More proof to show the Mrs that we could liveaboard with our 2!

" you could even have a ballroom!" haha!!

[Roger]

This video is quite old (pardon the pun), it was up on the Pathe News last year.

There's at least just a couple of these boats left (well actually more if one counts the sunken remains of one in the Woodham flight.) One of them was taken off the Basingstoke last autumn and dumped on the Wey navigation where it has now sunk.