ISSN 0033 8834 VOLUME 33 Pt. 3 No. 174 November 1999 RAILWAY & CANAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY A company (No 922300) limited by guarantee and registered in England as a charity (No 256047) Local Group Secretaries London G. C. Bird, 44 Ravensmede Way, London W4 1TF North West G. Leach, 5 Tabley Close. Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 ONP North East D. B. Slater, 8 Granger Avenue, Acomb, York YO2 5LF West Midlands R. M. Shill, 100 Frederick Road, Stechford, Birimingham B33 8AE East Midlands (acting) B M Dobbie, 72 Moor Lane, Bramcote, Beeston, Nottingham NG9 3FH South West (acting) A. Richardson, 25 Boscombe Crescent, Downend, Bristol B516 6GR Co-ordinators of Special Interest Groups Tramroads P.R. Reynolds, 87 Gabalfa Road, Sketty, Swansea SA2 8ND Road Transport P. L. Scowcroft, 8 Rowan Mount, Doncaster, South Yorkshire DN2 5PJ Waterways History Research (including. Docks & Shipping) Vacant: Enquiries to J. Boughey, 14 Ripon Road, Wallasey, Merseyside L45 6TR Railway Chronology D. R. Steggles, 8 Buckerell Avenue, Exeter EX2 4RA Air Transport Group N. Wood, 'The Poplars', Barnstone Road, Langar, Nottingham NG13 9HH All copy for the March 2000 Journal should be with the Editor by 5 November 1999 and must conform to the Society's style-sheet. The Editor will supply potential contributors with a copy on receipt of a 81k" x 6" stamped and addressed envelope. Original typescripts and other 'copy', maps, diagrams and photos, of published articles will not be returned unless requested by Contributors. Whilst copyright in the Journal as a whole is vested in the Railway & Canal Historical Society, copyright in the individual articles belongs to their respective authors, and no article may be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission in writing of author and publisher. Views expressed in any article, review, or item of correspondence in the Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society are not necessarily those of the Editor or of the Society. Published by the Railway & Canal Historical Society (Registered Office: 77 Main Street, Cross Hills, via Keighley, West Yorkshire BD20 OJJ). The Society is registered as a charity (no 256047). THE RAILWAY & CANAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY Founded 1954 Incorporated 1967 PRESIDENT: Dr S L Bragg VICE-PRESIDENTS: Prof. T. C. Barker, Dr A. L. Barnett, G. J. Biddle, G. A. Boyes Rex Christiansen, J. V. Gough, W. M. Reading, K. P. Seaward CHAIRMAN: (Managing Committee): Roger Davies HON. SECRETARY: M. Searle, 3 West Court, West Street, Oxford OX8 ONP HON. TREASURER: G. H. Wild, 141 Allestreet Lane, Allestree, Derby DE22 2PG MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY: R. J. Taylor, 16 Priory Court, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 2PD HON. EDITOR: Dr J. C. Cutler, 24 Coryton Close, Dawlish, Devon EX7 9DT BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR: Dr M. Barnes, Cornbrash House, Kirtlington, Oxfordshire OX5 3HF. (To whom all items for review should be sent.) DISTRIBUTION OFFICER: Mrs M. Garton, 49 Riverdale Road, Attenborough, Beeston, Nottingham NG9 5HU (To whom notification of non-delivery or defective copies of the Journal should be sent.) JOURNAL OF THE RAILWAY & CANAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY VOLUME 33 Pt. 3 No. 174 NOVEMBER 1999 Contents .. 126 THE CLINKER LECTURE: CHARLES HADFIELD AND WATERWAYS HISTORY J Boughey. .. 126 PRIVATE MOTORING, 1870-1890 R. W. Kidner. .. 136 RAILWAYS AND INN SIGNS P L. Scowcroft .. 138 L.T.C. ROLT (1910-1974) J. Boughey .. 140 HIGH SUMMER IN THE LOWTHER HILLS M. Buck.. .. .. 150 THE RCHS PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION .. .. 152 CORRESPONDENCE .. .. 153 BOOK REVIEWS .. .. 155 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR 1998 .. .. 165 125 Obituary: Charles Philip Weaver 1908 - 1999 Philip Weaver died on 12 May 1999, four days after his 91st birthday. He was a very early member of the Society, having been persuaded to join by his friend, Charles Hadfield. He served as Treasurer of the Society for three years and contributed several articles to the Journal. Together with his son, Rodney Weaver, also a member of the Society, he wrote Steam on Canals, which was published by David and Charles in 1983. His interest in canals began early. He lived near the Grand Union Canal in the Colne valley, south of Rickmansworth and often walked along the towpath, becoming familiar with the commercial craft on the canal. Later, he went to Bath and became interested in the neglected Kennet and Avon Canal, particularly the Crofton and Claverton pumping stations. In 1951, he bought a boat, Betty, a 20 foot traditional cabin cruiser powered by a Morris petrol engine. He refitted the boat and kept it at Hatton on the Grand Union Canal near Warwick. Three years later, in 1954, he was approached to assist in the preparation of tour notes for a trip organised by the RCHS over the main line of the Birmingham Canal Navigations. This was in the very early years of the Society and it was on this trip that he met Charles Hadfield, who became a life long friend, persuaded him to join the RCHS and asked for his help in researching the canals around Birmingham. In retirement, he acted as historical and technical consultant to Malcolm Braine and Nicholas Bostock in their restoration of the steam narrowboat President. Charles Hadfield and the Writing of Waterways History: Past and Future BY JOSEPH BOUGHEY This article is based upon the Clinker Memorial Lecture, delivered in September 1998; it has a similar structure to the Lecture, but does not repeat every point made then. There has already been a semi-memorial issue of the Journal for Charles Hadfield, and I have written an extensive study of his work, so I do not attempt to return over ground covered elsewhere, although some overlap is inevitable. Instead, I explore some possible futures for waterways history, basing this partly on an examination of Charles Hadfield's involvement in its past growth and development. I should stress two features of this essay. Firstly, the views expressed herein are mine, not Charles', who rarely expressed opinions on his chosen field; and secondly, when I comment on the lacunae and limitations of waterways history research, I make no reference to the failings of any individual or, indeed, this Society. PART 1- THE PAST A beginning — what sort of historian? What sort of history did Charles Hadfield write? I might have unequivocally asked what 126 sort of historian Charles was, had it not been for an odd encounter with one of his relatives at his funeral in August 1996. After I had delivered an appreciation of Charles' work in the church, this person approached me with an assertion like this:- 'You said he was an historian, but he wasn't an historian. My daughter is an historian; she's been trained in historical method.' It was difficult to respond at the time, although academic historians who had known Charles' work later refuted this sentiment. Nevertheless, Charles privately expressed the view that he seemed to be regarded as some sort of "fact-collector" amongst some academic historians whom he had encountered. Perhaps this reflected the tendency for some professional historians to regard those who are interested in transport history as automatically outside their own ranks; part, possibly, of that boundary-setting and boundary maintenance which mars so much academic work. It might be more appropriate to describe most of us, and Charles too, as investigators of history rather than historians; indeed, if definitions are sought, it might be better to describe ourselves as transport people rather than historians. This is not a pejorative label; although there are important exceptions, one could fairly assert that many professional historians have contributed little, if anything to the field of transport history literature. Charles did begin with what was then a recently developed field of economic history, and his first waterways publications were in an academic journal, the Economic History Review, but he quickly moved towards a field in which he had a special expertise - publishing. He himself suggested a specialised and somewhat limited function for the historian: 'In our enthusiasm for what we have discovered, we often go further than we thought and appoint ourselves historians...Historians have to create the past - let us say the canal age - so that if William Jessop or William Praed of the Grand Junction Canal could be brought back to life, either would recognise the historian's effort as a reasonably accurate picture of what was in fact going on in his own time1.' Curiously, Charles did not comment on whether he counted his own work as that of this kind of 'historian', but his main contribution was to waterways literature rather than to the wider field of history-writing. Waterways literature Charles did not claim to be the founder of modern waterways literature, attributing this to L T C Rolt, whose Narrow Boat, published in 1944, may be considered the key text. Narrow Boat was not a work of history in any sense, but it inspired attention to a hitherto little-known world of historical interest. It also led directly to the formation of the Inland Waterways Association, and generated and maintained considerable interest in the exploration of inland waterways. Tom Rolt could not be described as an historian at this point2, but this and other work made him a significant literary figure in waterways publishing; Charles, while no literary figure, was to be the most prolific and influential writer of historical works. It should be stressed that in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when Charles' interest in canals was growing, there was almost no living literature of waterways. Charles amassed a large collection of books in wartime, but entirely from secondhand bookshops; very little was in print, and what could be gleaned about waterways 127 appeared to belong resolutely in archives3. After he joined the Oxford University Press in 1936, he acquired the Press's canal books, only two of which dealt with history.