VOLUME 32 Pt. 7 No.169 MARCH 1998 THE RAILWAY & CANAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY Founded 1954 Incorporated 1967 PRESIDENT: I. Moss 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 G. H. R. Gwatkin, 17 Clumber Crescent North, The Park, Nottingham NG7 lEY HON. TREASURER: Peter R. Davis, 103 North Street, Hornchurch, Essex RM11 1ST MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY: R. J. Taylor, 16 Priory Court, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 2PD

HON. EDITOR: Dr J. C. Cutler, 12 St Quentin Rise, Sheffield S17 4PR 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 32 Pt. 7 No. 169 MARCH 1998

Contents

E.C.R. HADFIELD (1909-1986)1 Boughey 490 SULLY'S COAL YARD, BRIDGWATER PM Braine 524 DEODAND AND THE RAILWAYS B. Freeborn 544 THE LAMBTON PIT WAGGONWAY MJ. T Lewis . 545 THE RCHS PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION .. .. 548 CORRESPONDENCE 549 BOOK REVIEWS 552

489 Editorial BY JOSEPH BOUGHEY

E.C.R. Hadfield (1909-1986) This is third Memorial Issue of this Journal, although the previous ones, which celebrated the lives of Maurice Greville (1979) andJeoffrey Spence (1993), occupied the entire Journal. Charles Hadfield's predecessors were distinguished and respected figures within the Society, but not, perhaps, so well known outside. It was certainly not the case that their work would be the subject of biographical studies, as has been the case with Charles Hadfield. It is difficult to contemplate many other Society members, past or present, whose work would merit detailed studies, and in that sense we have lost the most important member of the Society. Charles did not write many articles for the Journal; I have reproduced one early piece, about the Chester Canal, which he did not fully absorb into later studies. This appeared in Vol. 2 No. 3, in May 1956. He wrote a later Journal piece, about the evolution of the canal inclined plane, for the Greville Memorial issue; in this, he aimed to provide something of interest to those whose primary concern was with other forms of transport, especially railways. Paul Reynold's article, reprinted from a Tramroad Group Occasional Paper published in 1986, attempts to bridge this gap, as does that by Mike Clarke. Charles was interested both to place English canals within their world context, and Mike Clarke's article traces connections between English practice and that on the continent. Charles was also concerned - as am I - with the development of modern freight waterways, and indeed influenced their future. Dr Mark Baldwin's article demonstrates this and opens up studies in an area upon which few historical studies have appeared. Charles' official obituary has been withheld until this issue; I have re-written a newspaper obituary which did not appear, and added some personal memories which, perhaps, show the man as much as the investigator of history. There are two tributes by longstanding collaborators, in The Canals of the British Isles series and elsewhere, and Charles' own views appear, in excerpts from an interview which John Horsley Denton kindly made available to me. This interview, conducted by an outsider, shows Charles, relaxed but cautious, commenting on his experiences in publishing transport history and on William Jessop, whose contribution to engineering he did much to rehabilitate. Charles was keen that others should follow him, and I have included a very long piece in which he explains his approach to the writing of waterways history. In this, he stresses the importance of fieldwork; he did much to foster the kind of visits, instructive but entertaining, which the Society has developed from the beginning. Raymond Bowen, who along with the late Gordon Rattenbury helped Charles with the second edition of that book, sent me an amusing account of one of the RCHS field visits from the 1960s, which shows how much Charles and his contemporaries were visiting worlds which were rapidly disappearing. Charles took waterways history seriously, but there were many lighter moments, as Mr Bowen's memories reveal.

490 Obituary: Ellis Charles Raymond Hadfield (1909-1986) BY JOSEPH BOUGHEY Charles Hadfield will be remembered as the person who, almost single-handedly, established a serious basis for the study of inland waterways history. In various ways he helped to popularise a world which was practically unknown before the war. He had a varied but distinguished career in and around publishing, after he graduated with a degree in economics from Oxford in 1932. Many of his most significant achievements, however, derived from activities which he carried out in his spare time. By the 1930s most of the British canal system remained the product of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with very little modernisation since the advent of the railways. They were viewed as an obsolete form of transport, despite some surviving traffic, with their use for pleasure boating largely confined to the occasional visitor. Some books appeared after the Royal Commission of 1906-10 recommended considerable modernisation, but most historical studies assumed that canals had played a minor part before the railways revolutionised inland transport. The most influential canal book of the twentieth century, L.T.C. Rolt's Narrow Boat, was self-consciously elegiac, picturing an arcadian world of narrow boat carrying which was destined to disappear under postwar modernisation. Its publication in 1944 heightened public interest in waterways, and led to the founding of the Inland Waterways Association in 1946 by Rolt, Hadfield, Frank Eyre and Robert Aickman. Charles, who had been a Labour councillor in Paddington since 1934, welcomed postwar planning and nationalisation; the other IWA founders saw the waterways cause as a means of conserving part of the past. He soon perceived that personality differences would exacerbate their differences in approach. Until the mid-1960s the Association pursued an internally fractious and externally militant path, expelling dissenters, including Tom Rolt and Charles Hadfield, who did not rejoin until 1971. He wrote a major general history of canals, British Canals (1950), and followed this by a series of regional historical studies, between 1955 and 1973. He produced the only attempt at a history of all canals, World Canals (1986), and established a new reputation for the important, but unsung, canal engineer, William Jessop. In 1954 he helped to found the Railway and Canal Historical Society; when his friend Charles Clinker told him that a Railway Historical Society was proposed, he suggested that the Society should also include canal historians. At the time he was the only historian of canals alone, but interest in canals grew, and the Society also brought in some whose primary interest was industrial archaeology, engineering history or general transport history. Charles Hadfield succeeded Charles Clinker as President in 1961, and used the Society to encourage people - from whatever source - to get involved in transport history. In 1960, partly building on growing public interest, Charles founded the publisher David & Charles, with David St John Thomas, a much younger man among whose wide interests were the West Country and railway history. At first this part-time business aimed to publish small monographs on local and transport history, but it would grow to become one of the largest British non-fiction publishers. David & Charles' publications were unusual; it pioneered the re-publication, in facsimile, of a number of rare and important nineteenth century books, including

491 Smiles' Lives of the Engineers series, along with old railway timetables, catalogues and historic maps. It fulfiled ambitious plans to commission regional studies of industrial archaeology, and of railway and canal history. In the case of canal history, Charles Hadfield wrote the majority himself, and edited the rest, the series being completed in 1977. He also edited a number of histories of individual inland waterways, encouraging and cajoling a range of researchers whose interests would probably never have reached publication without his practical assistance. What sort of history did he produce? His standards of accuracy were crucial; his works were based on very detailed examinations of primary sources, many of which were viewed for the very first time. They were also based on fieldwork; he visited almost all the waterways in Britain, bar the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal. The research involved was immense and painstaking, and the results well crafted, if not always entertaining. He expected his books to be consulted as works of reference, with a strong factual base, and soundly analysed evidence; their accuracy has rarely been faulted. He always regretted that time did not allow his histories to be more strongly related to general transport and economic history, but, that, he felt, was a task for academics. Academic recognition was not forthcoming, despite the need for solid factual foundations, and he did not entirely succeed in convincing academic historians that there was a gulf between his kind of history and the 'history', often wishful, sentimental, poorly sourced and marginal to truth, in which many steam and railway enthusiasts indulged, especially before the 1960s. In view of this, it is a pity that his considerable sense of humour did not always pervade his writings; he was an excellent raconteur, with an uncanny ability to perceive the ironies and quirks in what could be a world of eccentrics. His contribution to the writing of history has been acknowledged, but not his contribution to the making of history. Having been expelled from the IWA, he investigated the contemporary position of the inland waterways, and made many friends among the professionals, often engineers, whose task was to run the waterways. His expulsion from the IWA was a critical factor in his appointment to the new British Waterways Board in 1963; the level of Ministry of Transport alienation was such that even a nominal membership would have disqualified him. The majority of the canals owned by the new Board were on a knife-edge. It had the impossible task of breaking even, and the least costly solution to the financial deficits was to abandon most of the smaller canals for pleasure boating. Members appointed to statutory Boards were not always proactive, but Charles immediately produced policy proposals to retain part of the network for amenity purposes, and to seek specific subsidy for the modest additional costs involved. A modified version of this policy, carefully presented to persuade a reluctant Treasury, was eventually enshrined in the Transport Act 1968. Had a campaign based on emotion and vilification been presented, it is probable that much of the historic network would not have been preserved for amenity use. Charles Hadfield's main interest by the 1960s was, however, in modern freight waterways, based on new kinds of seagoing vessels, using enlarged waterways capable of direct trade with the Continent, where waterways modernisation and development had kept pace with other modes of transport. His efforts with British Waterways were less successful, but after rejoining the IWA in 1971 he formed the Inland Shipping Group, to study and campaign for modern freight waterways. He had many interests outside inland waterways; in the field of transport, he wrote a significant account of Atmospheric Railways (1966), and wrote two papers for the new Air Transport Group in the early 1990s. Outside transport, his interests were

492 publishing, politics, religion and family. Much of his career was in publishing: he worked in a second hand book shop between 1932 and 1936, followed by two periods with the Oxford University Press, until retirement from a senior position with the Central Office of Information in 1962. He was interested in politics from school days, joining the Labour Party at Oxford; he was a councillor in Paddington from 1934 to 1945 and then, having unsuccessfully sought the Labour nomination for the Parliamentary seat of Paddington North, his involvement in politics diminished, although he co-wrote two books on local government. Religion was very important to him; he was very strongly influenced by the poet and religious writer Charles Williams, whom he knew, and he co-founded the Charles Williams Society in 1976. His own religious affiliations moved from Church of England to the Society of Friends; characteristically, having only joined the Friends in 1957, from 1963 he became editor of their national magazine. Much later he returned to the Church of England. His family was also of great importance; three of his four children became involved in the RCHS in the late 1950s, although he stressed the need for them to become independent, so that none have followed in his footsteps. No-one who knew him could be unaware of his devotion to his wife Alice Mary, who inspired and supported his work, often in practical ways. His life was very diminished after she died, following lengthy illness, in 1989. Some Personal Observations As his partial biographer, my task has been to record and explain the waterways- related events in Charles' life, but some personal observations may be appropriate. I found Charles to be a very kindly man, who was rather bemused by the idea that his biography would be of interest to anyone. He did not suffer fools gladly, but did not discourage novices who wished to learn. His teachings were not without their failings; one of the most significant figures of this century, Sigmund Freud, need not have existed for all he understood about psychology, and it was possible to mistake in him incomprehension for insensitivity. There were times when, like many of his generation, he could appear totally inscrutable. Yet his public achievements were matched by private kindness, many of which were rendered at the expense of his own time. There is perhaps no finer tribute to be remembered as one who encouraged others and helped to draw out their potential. I have met quite a number of teenagers from the 1950s, still in the Society, who have stressed that Charles and Alice Mary were always enthusiastic and encouraging. Charles' response to a query from someone serious was often to lend them his files of hard-worn notes. Charles used David & Charles to encourage a small army of all sorts of people that they could write history, and write it to very high standards of scholarship and accuracy, in a field where it is very easy to discourage and to be discouraged. Charles always insisted that others had greatly contributed to his achievements. He asserted, for instance, that it was T.S. Willan, not himself, who founded the field of inland waterways history. A dedication in his last book reads: "To Jack Simmons, great transport historian, to whom I owe more than I could ever repay." Professor Simmons had drawn Charles' attention to the neglected canal engineer, William Jessop, and in a review of English Rivers and Canals, Charles' first canal book, had suggested that Mr Hadfield should write the history of canals. His contribution to one book received no acknowledgement. The late Bertram Baxter, another of the Society's founders, submitted a charming book on the history of tramroads in 1964, but the accompanying text was not all that could be hoped for. So Charles took Baxter's materials and added a lot of his own and rewrote most of the book. Acting as a querulous biographer, I suggested to him that he either had to

493 rewrite Stone Blocks and Iron Rails or lose a David & Charles title, but he told me flatly that I was totally wrong. He wanted to see a book about tramroads appear, and "Besides, I liked Baxter." In a new foreword to Tom Rolt's Narrow Boat, the book that started the postwar waterways movement, Charles pondered the whole canal scene that had developed since 1944, and wrote that "little of it, except maybe one or two canal histories, would have happened had Narrow Boat not been written." When I read these words, I suspected that this very strong assertion was perhaps inspired by generosity towards an old friend. When I put this thesis to Charles, he wrote back trenchantly (and he could be very trenchant) that "I meant every word I wrote." Thus one giant of British waterways literature deferred to the other, and passed up a very easy opportunity to appear magnanimous. Charles told me very shortly before his death that his labours were complete, that others could and should take over where he left off. It is to be hoped that others will continue to develop the field which he opened up.

Publishing, Books and Engineers: Excerpt from an interview with Charles Hadfield, 1992

You had the opportunity through David & Charles to add to the catalogue of books Qlob/about canals. Tell me about that opportunity. A When I left the civil service - I took premature retirement - I had to earn a certain flamount of money, to fill in the gap between a civil service pension, which only becomes available when you reach 60. As I retired at 53, something pretty substantial had to fill in the gap, and one of the things that filled in the gap was David & Charles. I knew David, and we were both members of the Railway and Canal Historical Society, and he wanted to publish learned little pamphlets on railways. I wanted to publish learned little pamphlets on canals, and that is in fact how we started. It was run from our two back bedrooms, and we more or less did it ourselves. Unfortunately, there were some very serious floods in Devon, where we were based, in that year [1960], and David had the idea of doing a picture book about the floods, which was called Devon Flood Story, and went through five editions in about six weeks. That slightly changed our ideas about publishing!! Then we started to publish hardback books, much to our own horror, because we really knew very little about it, and we did it through another publisher, a friend of mine. Our first hardback was The Canal Duke, by Hugh Malet, and to our surprise it got a very good review in, I think, the Sunday Times. So we suddenly found that we had got into hardback publishing, and we were still managing the thing from our back bedrooms. At which point he built a hut in the garden, and we expanded. And it took off into quite a big firm. After four years I stopped any active participation with it - I was too busy, in fact, with other things - but

494 I did keep a tight hold on the canal side, and built up the big series of canal histories, both the one in which I was personally involved, The Canals of the British Isles, and also the individual histories of canals, and I kept this side of the business for many years. So, it wasn't really intentional. We started the firm because he knew a lot about railways and I knew quite a bit about canals. That was the reason - there was no missionary intention; the intention was to do some publishing. r But nevertheless you became a rallying flag, didn't you, for the cause, for the movement. I don't know; I never intended to be a rallying point for any movement. My intention A was to make a successful publishing firm. I'd been trained by the Oxford University Press, so I knew quite a bit about publishing. W ere you surprised by the sales? A I was very relieved by the sales, in the early days, when we were not sure whether Athe firm was going to be a success or not. And yes, later on I was surprised, and here David played a very important part, because he was a newspaperman, and he was better at the publicity side of it than I was. I was very surprised when some of his railway titles took off, and then when the canal titles started coming up (most of them), I was very surprised also. It did turn out, of course, to be a run that only lasted about 15-20 years, and then the whole taste for canal books changed. In my day, it was history, people wanted to find out about the history of canals generally, regionally, and canal by canal. Exactly the same with railways. He edited a series of the regional railways of England and Wales, doing a very similar thing, and then a mass of separate railway histories. But now of course, canal books have changed completely. Qin what way? A People are not really interested in detailed canal history now. They're interested in A what - it would be harsh to describe as fictionalised history - but certainly history with a point of view very prominent in it. In my day I tried to be as impartial as possible, having been brought up in the old tradition of the Oxford University Press of being completely impartial. So books like mine just don't sell any longer. I don't worry about that. I've had my day, and I'm a very happy man. (to are people after romance and drama these days?

A Yes, Yes. I think if you look at most canal books now being published, there's a good /Ideal of drama and fiction - no, fiction would be too strong a word - a little leaning to one side rather than the other. QAnd does that reflect the changing nature of the canal user? A No, I don't think it does. I think the canal user just goes on using the canals. I'm not Asure to what extent the canal user buys canal books, in fact. No, I thing the canal user, if he is interested in book at all, reads them in the winter, because he's out on his boat in the summer. But he reads books, surely, about boating, how to maintain his boat, this and that; he doesn't read canal history. n So in some respects the academic interest is waning, and the practical survival Ia./interest is growing.

495 A That's what I would say, and as I am on the academic side, I retire gracefully from .Athe scene. What is for me so fascinating as an outsider looking in, about the history of the canals, is how the concept of a canal was born just over 200 years ago, and then 9 't change for two centuries. It was almost as if the original prototype design was unimproved in 200 years. A The canals didn't start in England. They started in China, and in ancient Egypt, ..5,000 years ago. They've been slowly developing ever since. The Continent had a quite extensive canal system before anybody in England had really heard of them. So you mustn't start talking about canals as if they had just sprung out of the air. The underlying influence was probably French or Dutch, but after all, the Dutch were running passenger trackboat services (that is, taxi services, and buses), on the Dutch canals, in the seventeenth century, running to a timetable, and on track specially built. It all goes back a very long way, and Britain came in rather late. fABut when canals arrived in Great Britain, they were designed in such a way that in W200 years there was no chance of any improvement. A No! Sorry, I will disagree. There were two early great canal engineers - Brindley, .Aand my hero, William Jessop, about whom much less is known. Now Brindley built the very cheapest he could built, sensibly enough; but that meant that it had to be narrow, it had to be very winding, like the Oxford, which is one of the Brindley canals, and therefore, it is on his work the narrow boat is based. But he only built the narrow canals of the Midlands. Now, William Jessop was a Yorkshire engineer to begin with, and he then moved to the East Midlands. He built to the broad gauge, the canals like the Rochdale. Jessop only built one narrow canal, ever, and that was the Ellesmere, now called the Shropshire Union, the older part. All the rest of Jessop's canals were broad. He foresaw that canals would be needed which would be bigger, carry more traffic, and would last longer. And he has turned out to be right. Most of the canals still open are Jessop canals, in fact, and of course since then the canals have developed far beyond both sizes. But Jessop was more nearly right than Brindley was. You must separate the engineers, who were very important in this, and their ideas, and also the backers. The backers could produce the money to pay rather more to have a much more efficient and better canal than the Brindley ones, but we are stuck with the narrow canals. Look at the Birmingham jam, which has always prevented any enlargement of the canal system, because you can't get broad canals through Birmingham, because the buildings prevent you from doing so. But go to the East Midlands, around the Trent, and you've got the Jessop area, where you can. So James Brindley's decision to make the canals just 7 feet wide at the locks, Qdetermined the shape and size of a narrow boat for the next 200 years? A Yes. It was copied from the Duke of Bridgewater's "starvationers", as they were ..called, the little boats which worked into the tunnels at Worsley, because they had to be small to get into the mines, the narrow boat was derived from them. So, the design and shape of the typical canal boat was determined by that one Qdecision 200 years ago, and now there's no opportunity to develop them any better. A Yes. That is true, but there is of course another traditional canal boat, and that is .n,..the one based on William Jessop's ideas.14 foot wide, shorter, but double the width, and therefore carrying 60 tons, instead of the 25 to 30 of the narrow boat; therefore much more economical.

496 f\ There is a strange parallel in railways, if Isambard Kingdom Brunel's broad gauge had been adopted, rather than the narrow gauge of Stephenson, then the railways of today would be a lot more efficient, I presume. You are addressing a gentleman who is not particularly fond of Brunel! I doubt if Athey would. The curious thing about the broad gauge is that it wasn't awfully efficient. The Great Western trains were no faster than those on the London & North Western, or the Midland, but they were a great deal more expensive to maintain and, well, you know what happened to the broad gauge. It just was not a success, and in the end you judge a thing by whether it's been a success. Which of the Charles Hadfield books do you regard to be the one which perhaps is Qmost influential, even if it was accidentally influential? A book which probably nowadays not many people of heard of; Introducing ACanals, published in 1955 by Ernest Benn. I was at a cocktail party, and I met a director of Ernest Benn, and we got talking. Naturally, the subject came round to canals, and by the end of the evening he'd said, "Right, will you write us a book on the canals?" So I said: "Well, what sort of book?" He said: "I don't know anything about canals. You do. You write me the sort of book I think that we can sell." So I did my best, and into it I got three strands which are the basis, I think, of any study of any subject - the past, the present and the future. And I managed to get all three into the one book. I gave a chapter or two to history, even to exploring derelict canals. I gave a chapter to how canals actually worked at that time, how you took tolls, how you charged, how the boatmen lived, the actual practical, present-day side of canals. In the course of that I included a gazetteer on the pleasure of cruising side, first of all of where you could hire a boat, anywhere in Britain. And I wrote to hundreds of local authorities to get names and addresses of places, right down to rowing boats all over the country. I also wrote a chapter on pleasure cruising. The last chapter was on the future of canals, and in it, because that was long before the British Waterways Board, I made a fairly good shot at what was going to happen, in development, on the organisational side. So, looking back, I think this was one of a very rare breed of book when you aim at three targets and hit them all. QBut who were you writing it for? A sort of multiplication of myself. It contained the sort of things I would have liked Ato have read and known about when I was writing it. So - for myself. I'm rather proud of that book.

Passenger Boats on the Chester Canal, 1775-1806 BY CHARLES HADFIELD The Chester Canal was authorised in 1772 from Chester to the Trent & Mersey Canal at Middlewich. It was opened to Beeston in 1775, and Nantwich in 1779, and got no further. For the first thirty years of its life it was, commercially, quite successful.

497 The Duke of Bridgewater had already put passenger boats on to his canal when the canal committee decided, on June 11, 1773, to send an officer "to view the Duke of Bridgewater's Passage Boat and take Dimensions of the same, and that he deliver in an Estimate to the Committee for building one of the same sort." In December 1774, it was resolved that "a Passage Boat be built 40 ft long and 12 feet Beam and 4 foot deep including the Keel ...", and on June 9, 1775, the timetable was drawn up and the fares settled for the run between Chester (Northgate) and Beeston. "Chester to Christleton or Rowton Bridge 2d Waverton Common or Waterverton Bridge 3d Golden Nook or Crow Nest 4d Brockholes or Huxley 5d Beeston Lock or Beeston Road 6d Passengers returning in the same Boat the same day to pay one half of the above Fares, for the return voyage. Passengers in the Grand Cabin, to pay double the above rates." The cabin could be hired for half a guinea. There seem at first to have been four boats a week, operated directly by the Company. Leave Chester on Tuesday at 7am. Leave Beeston on Wed. at 6am (summer) or 7am (winter), and return at 5pm (summer) or 3pm (winter). Leave Beeston on Saturday at 6am (summer) or 7am (winter), and return at 5pm (summer) or 3pm (winter). The boat must then have returned to Chester. Leave Chester on Sunday at 8am, returning at 6pm (summer) or 4pm (winter). It was also possible to hire the whole boat for private parties. The service seems to have started well, for on August 25, a second boat was ordered to be finished "in a Genteel manner." By April 30, 1776, both boats were running. A better timetable was provided, and in addition there were excursions to Chester Races. It was ordered "that One Boat sett out from Beeston Brook each of the Race days at Ten O'Clock in the forenoon and another Boat at Eleven O'Clock, and both return from Chester to Beeston Brook half an Hour after the Races is over." When the canal was extended to Nantwich in 1779, a third boat was put on, two running between Chester and Nantwich and the third being the Beeston market boat. In this and the following year the Company made a great effort to take trade for Chester and even Liverpool by transferring goods from the Trent & Mersey Canal at Wheelock to be shipped by barge to Chester and, if necessary, thence by flat to Liverpool. They put on what seems to have been a boat for commercial travellers. It was ordered "That a Boat for carrying Merchants Goods and Passengers do sett out from Chester to Nantwich every Tuesday Morning at Seven O'Clock and that a Boat will sett out from Nantwich with Merchants Goods and Passengers to Chester every Friday morning at Seven O'Clock." The failure of their effort produced a general stagnation of business on the canal, and it is likely that the Nantwich boats ceased to run not long afterwards. They certainly did so before November 1787, when Beeston lock collapsed for the second time, and was not repaired in ten years. (The foundations were in running sand; the present lock is of iron.) The Beeston boat was probably also stopped, but it seems to have started again in October 1790, when John Hockenhull was paid 9/-a trip to haul it. It worked until August 1794, when, so hard up was the Company, it was stopped in order to be used as a maintenance boat "to repair the Locks, Bridges, and other Works to Beeston Brook."

498 By 1796, however, things had changed. The passing of the Ellesmere Canal Act in 1793 gave the Company the certainty of a connection by the Wirral line of that canal to the Mersey at what is now Ellesmere Port, and the hope of a connection with the main line. The Wirral line was opened in 1797. Enough money was raised to put the Chester Canal into navigable order again, and a new boat was ordered in May. She was to be "for passengers and light goods" and not to exceed sixteen tons. She was to be 50 feet long on deck, 45 feet at keel and 9 feet 6 inches extreme breadth; 4 feet 6 inches from bow to best cabin, with that cabin 10 feet 6 inches long, and aft of it a Bar Room 6 feet long, the rest of the boat being "for Goods and inferior passengers." It was to cost £186. A stove was ordered, presumably for the cabin. She was named the "Chester" and launched on October 29, the builders and workmen being allowed four guineas to celebrate. On November 1, John Griffith was appointed master at 12/- a week, and on December 16, "The Different Proposals for Hawling the Passage Boat being laid before this Meeting; Ordered That William Bradshaw's Proposals be agreed to vizt. 18 /-per Trip to Nantwich and back to Chester, 9/- per Trip to Beeston Brook and back to Chester. He to find Ropes and all other Materials necessary for Hawling the said Boat." The service started on January 17,1797 between Chester and Beeston Brook "until the Canal is put in order to Nantwich", and a week later it was announced that it would run return to Beeston Brook on Tuesdays and Fridays, the fare being 1/6 for the best apartment, and 1/- for the second apartment. It would also run on Saturdays with cheap 6d fares for market passengers, and on Sundays to leave Beeston Brook at 6am, and get to Chester before service time. The boat could be hired when not in use at two guineas a day. However, it was found that the expense of running the boat was "enormous". John Griffith was dismissed and another captain taken on whose wife would keep it clean. Later in the year the Ellesmere company put on a passenger boat from Chester to Ellesmere Port with bookings through to Liverpool.* This must have led to through bookings through to and from Nantwich, though passengers had to change at Chester. In May, the best cabin fare from Chester to Nantwich was announced as 2/6, and the second as 1/6, "children on the lap to pay nothing." At some time before 1806 the passage boat was taken off, and in that year it was sold. It does not appear to have been run again before the Chester Canal amalgamated with the Ellesmere in 1813. *See timetable for 1802 reproduced in British Canals [1950] by Charles Hadfield, pp. 154-5. NOTE: The information in this article is taken from the minute books of the Chester Canal in the B.T.C.'s Historical Records. The author would be glad of any supplementary information from newspapers or other sources.

499 The 1838 Gwaun-cae-Gurwen Railway: an abandoned feeder to the Swansea Canal BY PAUL REYNOLDS The village of Gwaun-cae-Gurwen lies at the head of the Amman valley in the extreme northwestern corner of the county of West Glamorgan. It is 14 miles from Swansea and 19 miles from Llanelli, and on the northern crop of the coalfield which at this point is anthracite in quality. It was the existence of coal which led to the development of the village in the first place in an area of rather inhospitable moorland and hill pasture, and it is coal which still provides most of the employment in this area. There is a large opencast site on the northern side of the village, while to the south is the modern deep- level colliery of Abernant. A single-track branch off the Central Wales line connects these two traffic sources with the rest of the British Rail network. There are spasmodic references to coal-working at Gwaun-cae-Gurwen in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but it never developed to any great extent because of the isolated nature of the area and the distance to the nearest port. As was invariably the case with inland parts of the coalfield, such as this, in the period before the construction of canals or railways, the costs of transport were so great that it was impossible to sell the output at a price which would repay an entrepreneur for his investment. Even after the opening of the Swansea Canal in 1798 had caused a major expansion of mining activity at the head of the Swansea valley and in its tributary, the Twrch valley, Gwaun-cae-Gurwen still lay too far from the canal to be able to take advantage of the new opportunities it afforded. It was only the extension of the Llanelly Railway, authorised in 1835, that opened up this remote area and made the exploitation of its mineral resources an attractive proposition. The first industrialist to realise the potential of Gwaun-cae-Gurwen now that its isolation was about to be ended was Roger Hopkins. Hopkins was a local man, born in Glamorgan (Camb. 2.5.1840), and by the time he turned his attention to Gwaun-cae- Gurwen in 1837 an experienced and successful engineer. His earliest recorded appointment was as engineer to the Monmouth Railway in 1810 1. The following year he was seconded by them to the Severn & Wye Railway2, and subsequently he established himself in the west of England. There he designed and constructed the Teignmouth bridge which, when it was opened in 1827, was claimed to be the longest in Britainl. In 1831 he surveyed the Bodmin & Wadebridge Railway which was built under his direction in 1832-34. The rails for this line came from Ebbw Vale, which is a pointer to the next stage in Hopkins' career, as manager of the Victoria Iron & Coal Company which Hopkins established in 1836 and which was based at Bath. Shortly after he set up the Monmouthshire Company, Hopkins also created the Swansea & Gwaun-cae-Gurwen Anthracite Company to lease and work the coal at Gwaun-cae-Gurwen. Like the iron company, it was based at Bath and the same man, JJ. Skinner, was secretary to both companies. The first half-yearly meeting was held at Bath on 24 April 1838 (Camb. 5.5.1838) which puts its formation in 1837. It was in 1837 that the company obtained a mineral lease at Gwaun-cae-Gurwen. Altogether 717 acres of coal and iron ore were leased from Capel Hanbury Leigh (1776-1853) of Pontypool. He had acquired the property through his marriage in 1797 to Molly Mackworth, the widow of the last survivor of this family of landowners and industrialists of Neath. There were two parcels of land, Gwaun-cae-Gurwen itself (680 acres) and the adjacent

500 Garnant

N

GWAUN-CAE-GURWEN Pantyffynon %It GWAUN-CAE- • •411 GURWEN Showing transport links to • • Swansea and Llanelli, c.1840

Swansea Canal

Llanelly Railway •• • • Hopkins! 1838 Railway • ontardawe . do., presumed extension

Llanelli

Miles: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Swansea but much smaller Tyr Nant Hyr (37 acres). The lease was for 99 years from 25 May 1837 at a rent of 7d per ton, subject to a minimum of £583 6s 8d per annum. This was the equivalent of an annual output of 20,000 tons, a fairly modest amount3. In 1838 work started on the construction of a railway from the colliery down to the Swansea Canal. It was constructed under the powers conveyed by the 8-mile clause in that company's Act of Parliament. An advertisement seeking tenders for the first - and as it was to turn out, only - section of the line appeared in The Cambrian (17.3.1838):- To Excavators and Others All Persons desirous of TENDERING for the EXCAVATION and FORMATION of the CUTTINGS and EMBANKMENTS and other WORKS required in the construction of the first mile and a quarter of the RAILWAY intended to be made by the Swansea and Gwaun-cae- Gurwen Anthracite Company, from Gwaun-cae-Gurwen to the Swansea Canal, are requested to attend on the spot at twelve o'clock on Monday and Tuesday, the 19th and 20th instant, when the Works to be performed will be pointed out, and the Specification thereof may be seen. The Company will provide such Wheelbarrows, Planks, Rails, and Waggons, as may be required for the execution of the Works. The Tenders are to be delivered to Messrs. Roger Hopkins and Sons, at the house of Mr. Samuel Morgan, adjoining Gwaun-cae-Gurwen, before eleven o'clock on Thursday morning, the 22d inst., when the parties are expected to be in attendance. J. J. SKINNER, Secretary Office, 3, Harington-place, Bath, March 10,1838. At first it might appear rather strange that Hopkins should have chosen to construct a railway feeder to the Swansea Canal when steps were already being taken to carry out the powers of the1835 Llanelly Railway Act. This Act had authorised the extension into the heart of the coalfield of what had previously been a purely local system serving Llanelli docks. Tenders were invited in August 1837 for the extension of the railway to within a mere two miles of Gwaun-cae-Gurwen at Garnant (Camb. 26.8.1837). Since Hopkins did not put his Swansea Canal link out to tender until the following March he cannot have been acting in ignorance of the plans of the Llanelly Railway. He must have known what its implications for his business were likely to be, yet even so, he still set to work on the line down to the canal. What were the reasons that led him to embark on what, with a locomotive railway in the building from a good modern dock or to a mile or two from his colliery, was an anachronistic and troublesome mode of transport? There were two inherent flaws in this system, both of which would have been absent had Hopkins decided to trade exclusively on the Llanelly Railway. In the first place a railway to the Swansea Canal would involve trans-shipment of the coal between the two modes at Pontardawe which would add to the cost of transport and cause damage to the coal and so reduce its value. Secondly a major drawback of the Swansea Canal - or any other canal - was its tendency to freeze over in a hard winter, thus bringing traffic to a standstill. This was a complaint made about the Swansea Canal so long as it remained the main form of transport in the valley. In addition, there was the further drawback in the canal link project in that connecting the new colliery to the Llanelly Railway involved less than two miles of new track whereas the line to the canal would

502 be six miles long and so cost about three times as much. The plans of the Llanelly Railway were public knowledge, and the flaws in the railway/canal proposal so obvious that an experienced engineer like Hopkins must have known exactly what he was doing in even considering a railway feeding traffic onto the canal. The one great advantage of this idea was that it gave him access to Swansea rather than to the much smaller port of Llanelli. At this time Swansea was still just about the largest coal-shipping port in south Wales (but with Newport on the point of overtaking it). In 1837 a total of 526,961 tons of coal, culm, etc., had passed through the port, about twice as much as through Llanelli and this must have led to a more buoyant market and better prices at Swansea. On the other hand the shipping facilities at Llanelli were better than Swansea. At Swansea coal was still shipped from wharves and staithes along the river whereas at Llanelli there was a public floating dock, the first in Wales, opened in 1834. Against this, however, the approaches to Llanelli were difficult, since the Burry Estuary was subject to shifting sand banks. A further point in favour of Swansea was the distance from Gwaun-cae-Gurwen, about five miles less than the distance from Llanelli to Gwaun-cae-Gurwen. Swansea was probably just too important in the coal trade for Hopkins to be able to ignore it, despite the less than ideal means he would have to resort to to get his coal there. He did not want to be bound to the smaller port of Llanelli but wanted the freedom to send his coal out through either Llanelli or Swansea. This flexibility would enable him to switch his traffic from one port to the other so as to obtain the best price on offer and avoid any delays that might occur if he were dependent on a single port. Both ports had factors in their favour, and this was brought out by the catalogue of the colliery when it was offered for sale in 1845: the existing Llanelly Railway and the canal feeder, when completed, would between them "connect the colliery with the best shipping ports in Glamorganshire and Camarthenshire"3. Since Hopkins was not having to pay for the construction of the Llanelly Railway he may have felt better able to spend money on the line to Swansea which he hoped would improve his marketing capacity. Work on the railway must have started fairly soon after the contract was let, although the identity of the successful contractor is not known. The line started at Hopkins' shaft at Gwaun-cae-Gurwen (later known as the Old Pit) and followed a generally SSW direction towards Pontardawe. The earthworks of the first 1.25 mile contract were finished but no further tenders were sought for the remainder of the line, nor is there any reason to suppose that permanent way was laid on the first stretch. Altogether about £4000 were spent on the works that were completed3. Part of what was achieved in 1838/40 still survives, including an impressive embankment and cuttings. The northernmost part of the works, however, has been removed by land reclamation and at the southern end it is no longer possible to trace the line, since the works involved in its construction were much less spectacular and have merged back into their surroundings. By 1840 Hopkins must have realised that his interests would be better served by a short line linking his colliery to the Llanelly Railway rather than by continuing with the Swansea Canal link. The canal line was not positively abandoned but it was deferred in favour of the shorter and cheaper Llanelly Railway connection. Even as late as 1844 in the sale catalogue of that year its completion was still envisaged:"... a Branch Railway has been commenced from the Colliery at a cost of £4000, which, from various facilities, may be completed at a moderate outlay; and a junction made with the Swansea Canal, at the distance of 6 miles only ..." 3. However, on 10 March 1840 the Llanelly Railway's Garnant branch had opened, terminating less than two miles from Hopkins' colliery. Llanelli might be second best to Swansea as a shipping port but the arrival of a railway straight from the dockside to a point so close to the colliery was a

503 powerful argument. In June 1840 Hopkins was awarded the contract for the short two- mile extension from Garnant for £44004 and by October he was obviously well at work, for in that month the Coal Company offered ten draft horses for sale, since "a railway now building makes them unnecessary" (Camb. 3.10.1840). The line was formally opened on 6 May 1841. The only feature of any significance, in terms of engineering, was an incline up from the valley floor at Garnant. Meanwhile, as the reference to draft horses shows, work had been going ahead on sinking and by now the colliery was producing. Coal was obviously being taken out by horse and cart to the railhead at Garnant. Sinking is said to have started in 18375 and in January 1840 the Great Vein, 5 ft 3 ins thick, was reached at 87 fathoms (Camb. 25.1.1840), which made it the deepest pit in the anthracite belt. The shaft was oval in section,16 ft by 8 ft, and bratticed to divide it into upcast and downcast. There were two engines and ventilation was by a surface furnace3,5. In addition to the shaft at Gwaun- cae-Gurwen, a second shaft was started a quarter of a mile to the east on Tyr Nant Hir. By 1844 it had been sunk to 30 yards3 and the Llanelly Railway branch was extended to it, but it never seems to have developed further. Proving the Great Vein improved the prospects of the business and in March 1840 reserved shares were being offered at a £5 premium (Camb. 7.3.1840) - perhaps as a management puff! There was also talk of Hopkins starting an ironworks: his retirement as manager of the Victoria works at Ebbw Vale was announced in May 1840. He was said to be returning to Glamorganshire, "the place of his nativity", there to erect an extensive ironworks (Camb. 2.5.1840). Although Gwaun-cae-Gurwen is not named, it must almost certainly be what was intended. Veins of iron ore were included in the lease and the 1844 sale prospectus emphasises the suitability of Gwaun-cae- Gurwen as the site for an ironworks. It must be remembered that a few years previously, in 1837, a method of using anthracite for iron-smelting had been perfected at the nearby Yniscedwyn ironworks in the Swansea valley, and this led to a proliferation of speculative ironworks on the anthracite coalfield. By 1842 coal production was up to about 30-40 tons a days but this rate fell short of the 20,000 tons p.a. needed to work out the dead rent. Perhaps it was this disappointing return that led Hopkins to sell out a couple of years later. The colliery was offered for sale by private treaty in 1844 (Camb. 25.5.1844, etc.) but cannot have found a buyer, for on 8January 1845 it was sold by auction at Swansea (3; Camb. 4.1.1845). The new owners, the Blaencaegurwen Colliery Company, undertook a number of improvements, including the sinking of a second shaft to the north of Hopkins' pit and the re-ordering of the ventilation system5, but they did no further work on the 1838 railway. With the Llanelly Railway running from the pithead to the dockside the day had passed when there was any need to construct a horse-worked railway feeding into the Swansea Canal. Postscript The foregoing differs in several respects from other accounts of Hopkins' venture at Gwaun-cae-Gurwen. A version that has found some circulation is that contained in J.H. Davies, History of Pontardawe and districts which was followed by J.D.H. Thomas in his unpublished MA thesis 'Social and economic developments in the upper Swansea valley' (MA, University of Wales, 1974). Davies gives no source for his version but it appears to derive, in part at least, from a brochure published by the then owners of the colliery in 1927, the Gwauncagurwen Colliery Co., to mark the completion of a new sinking, the Steer Pit. This brochure was probably also the source of three items in the Iron and Coal Trades Review (23.9, 2110, 28.10.1927). These articles in turn cite no authority, but the assumption must be that they derive from documents then in the possession of the company.

504 The principal points on which I differ from Davies' account are these:- 1. The start of Hopkins' undertaking. According to Davies (o.c., p. 104), Hopkins' first attempt to win the coal at Gwaun-cae-Gurwen was made in 1832. He sank a pit and started work on his railway to the Swansea Canal, but had to abandon work when he struck water in quantities too great for the pumps to overcome. He then made a second, successful attempt in 1837, again involving the construction of a railway. I am dubious about the historicity of this 1832 venture, which appears to be simply a doublet of 1837. I have not come across any contemporary evidence for work by Hopkins in 1832, whereas, as I have shown above, there are firm dates for his lease in 1837 and for the start of construction work on the railway in 1838. Further, the ICTR articles cited above contain no references to any project in 1832. The supposed 1832 attempt can perhaps be put down to a misreading of his source material on the part of Davies or to confusion on his part between Hopkins' 1837 project and some other short-lived venture involving another entrepreneur in 1832. 2. The winning of the Great Vein. Davies (o.c., p. 44) states that this was in March 1839. This is almost certainly an error. The Cambrian (25.1.1840) has an unambiguous report that "the Great Waynecaegurwen Anthracite or Stone Coal was reached last week". Davies' terminology seems to indicate that his date derives from an advertisement in The Cambrian (7.3.1840) which refers to the "recent" winning of the Great Vein (i.e. in January). This he has mistakenly attributed to 1839, and at the same time he has failed to realise the full force of the word "recent". 3. The seams being worked. Davies (o.c., p. 44) states that sinking was to the "Big or Milford vein". In fact it seems fairly certain that Hopkins only reached the Big (or Great) vein and not the Milford vein which is a totally distinct seam about 30 or 40 fathoms below the Great Vein. This is born out by the paragraph from The Cambrian (25.1.1840) cited above and by information in the advertisement in which the colliery was offered for sale (Camb. 25.4.1844, etc.). Davies' statement again seems to derive from the advertisement in The Cambrian (7.3.1840) which describes the company as having "just reached the Big or Milford Vein". This wording may have been chosen by the company because they were not quite sure then as to just which vein they had reached: in neighbouring collieries the Great Vein lay much nearer the surface (e.g. 36 yards at Hendreforgan), and they may have wondered whether, at 87 fathoms, they had missed the Great Vein altogether and struck the lower Milford vein. Sources 1. H.W. Paar, The Great Western Railway in Dean (2nd ed. Newton Abbot: 1971). 2. H.W. Paar, The Severn & Wye Railway (2nd ed. Newton Abbot: 1972). 3. 'Particulars of the Gwaun cae Gurwen anthracite and iron mines and works ...' (Sale catalogue, 8 January 1845) (University College of Swansea Library SC/3). 4. L. Popplewell, A gazetteer of the railway contractors and engineers of Wales and the borders 1830-1914 (Bournemouth: 1984). 5. J.H. Davies, History of Pontardawe and district (Llandybie: 1967). 6. 'Report of the Committee appointed to revise the several rates for the purpose of making a general county rate for Glamorganshire' (1842) (Royal Institution of South Wales, Swansea, 37-307).

505 Fondest Memories: A Brief Appreciation of Charles Hadfield BY JEAN LINDSAY Charles Hadfield wrote to me for the first time in the summer of 1964 to ask if I would write The Canals of Scotland for the series the Canals of the British Isles. The letter came out of the blue, but had been prompted by my article on the Aberdeenshire Canal which had appeared in the Journal of Transport History in May 1964, when I was living in Aberdeen. It was a marvellous opportunity, and despite the fact that I was then living in Belfast, I accepted the offer. Charles lent me the notes he'd made when he was writing British Canals, and during university vacations I did the research in Scotland. Charles scrutinised each chapter as I sent it to him. We corresponded very formally, each rather in awe of the other, until we had our first meeting in Derby (which happened to be my birth-place), at a David & Charles authors' conference held in the Midland Hotel. I was surprised to note how tall he was and how his eyes revealed his keen sense of humour. We got on very well, and the Canals of Scotland was published in 1968, by which time I was living in Bangor, Gwynedd. This was the era of university expansion and a golden age for publishing. In March 1972 I had a letter from Charles in which he said that the series of the Canals of the British Isles was almost completed and David & Charles were giving a celebratory dinner at the Café Royal on 19 May 1973. Charles said that I, as a contributor, or as Charles neatly put it, 'an essential ingredient', was invited. On the same day, Charles intended to give a luncheon. Perhaps because of the long notice, David & Charles did not give the promised dinner, but Charles invited us all, in 1973, to an evening party on the canal boat Lady Rose of Regents. Several members of the Hadfield family, including Alice Mary, took part in this jolly occasion. I met Tom Rolt there and he talked in lively manner about the differing opinions he and Charles, his lifelong friend, held on the future of British Waterways. Tom was recovering from major surgery at this time. I had hoped to write a more detailed study of the Forth & Clyde Canal for David & Charles, but this was not to be. Instead, Charles asked me, in February 1974, if I would write a book for the Inland Waterways Series on the Trent & Mersey Canal. He wrote cheerfully, 'It will be a brute, for the Minute Books, etc., are missing.Though I carried out a considerable search for them in solicitors' offices, etc., I never found a trace'. Neither did I, but I accepted the commission, partly because of the challenge and partly because I had walked the canal's towpath at Swarkestone with my father when I was a child. Charles sent me what he called his 'hopelessly higgledy-piggeldy file just as it is, and this proved very helpful. The Trent & Mersey Canal was published in 1979 and was to be one of the last canal books published by David & Charles, which diversified into other branches of publishing. Charles was disappointed by the development of the specialist firm which he had helped to establish, but he never allowed himself to become embittered by changes of fortune. Over the years Charles and I kept in touch, chiefly by letter, but I was twice invited to stay at the White Cottage, his bijou residence with its lovely garden, near Regent's Canal. There I got to know his wife, Alice Mary,and heard about their research expeditions, often hilarious affairs. I also learnt of the deep affection Charles had for South Africa, his boyhood home. Charles, however, was never one to talk nostalgically about his youth or the 'good old days', although after the death of Alice Mary in 1989, he once wrote wistfully of remembering coming home from work and seeing her standing at the gate to welcome

506 him. The death of Alice Mary was a grievous blow, and he tried very hard to ease the pain by keeping her memory alive and by promoting her writing beyond the grave. Perhaps the planned biography will reveal the full talents of this gifted man, whose pioneering books on canals laid the foundations for further investigations by scholars and enthusiasts alike. He was the pacemaker, and all transport historians owe him a deep debt of gratitude.

Charles Hadfield: a personal appreciation BY GORDON BIDDLE The first canal book I had was Eric de Mare's The Canals of England; the second was Charles Hadfield's British Canals, published in 1950, where I first came across his name. He came to know C.R. Clinker, whom I also knew, and it was at Charles Hadfield's suggestion that the canals were added when a group of us decided to form a railway history society. I became Hon. Secretary, and although Charles could not attend the inaugural meeting in September 1954, he wrote giving full support and was counted as a founder member. We met at the first council meeting in the following November, and for some years he and I collaborated in organising the society's canal visits, for which he usually suggested itineraries and provided notes. Numerous council meetings were held at his house in Newton Road, Bayswater, where he played a leading part in establishing the new society and resolving teething troubles. When I moved from Lancashire to Yorkshire in 1955, I explored the remains of the Bradford Canal and began to investigate its history from local records, culminating in a series of articles in the Journal. Charles took an immediate interest, as he had very little information on the canal, and he encouraged my research. I well remember when he and Alice Mary visited us at Bingley. They were on a boating holiday on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and we met them at their mooring at the top of the five-rise locks on a cold, damp summer's day, to take them to our house not far away. It was my wife's first introduction to a canal holiday. I went on to start research on the Leeds & Liverpool and Lancaster Canals, and a move to London in 1961 enabled me to work on the companies' records at the old British Transport Historical records office in Porchester Road, just around the corner from the Hadfield's home. Evening sessions were held every Tuesday, where Charles, some other early members of the Society, and myself were regular attenders. It was during those early years of council meetings, society outings, and evenings at Porchester Road that I came to know Charles and Alice Mary. It was also during this time that Charles asked me to collaborate with him in writing a volume on northern England in his Canals of the British Isles series. As my previous experience was limited to writing magazine articles, I regarded this as a considerable compliment. We quickly realised that it would be impossible to cover all the north of England in one volume and decided to concentrate on the north west, on which I had already done quite a lot of work. By now Charles had retired to South Cerney in Gloucestershire (his first home there), where on several occasions I enjoyed his

507 hospitality. In 1968 I went to work in Manchester and live in Clitheroe, where Charles and Alice Mary visited us and I took them over parts of the Lancaster Canal, which they hadn't seen.We also met in Manchester on occasions when Charles was researching in the central library, which he reckoned was the best public library outside London, and we looked at the city's canals. In 1970 The Canals of North West England was published in two volumes. Our intention to collaborate on a further work on Yorkshire and the north east had to be abandoned because of my growing business and family commitments, so Charles continued alone, eventually producing another two-volume book. I have always been grateful to him for introducing me to the world of publishing. His advice was always sound, and I still use some of his methods. He was ever-generous in answering queries and giving information, and although on occasions I was able to reciprocate, the general flow was in my direction. As time passed and we both intended to play less active parts in RCHS affairs, distance restricted contact to occasional notes and queries, until my daughter moved to west Oxfordshire, not very far away from South Cerney to where Charles and Alice Mary had now moved back after a further period in London. Family visits now gave me the opportunity to call on them more often. Although Alice Mary's distressing illness and eventual death greatly affected Charles, and his mobility was reduced, he carried on with characteristic fortitude, 'making the most of each day', as he put it. It was always a pleasure to take him for a pub lunch in the village. It was an even greater pleasure to ask him to join me in a contribution on canals for the Oxford Companion to British Railway History on which I was working with Jack Simmons. Charles took a special interest in its progress because in their youth both he and Alice Mary had worked for Oxford University Press. Sadly, not long afterwards I found myself writing a posthumous entry in the book on Charles himself, recording the contribution his canal books had made to the history of railways. He was a wise counsellor, generous in imparting knowledge, and a good friend.

The Klodnice Canal Inclines BY MIKE CLARKE The development of industry and transport in Britain created considerable foreign interest. For example, in the late 18th and 19th century the Prussian government sent a number of their mining engineers to England. Their reports can be found in the Prussian Archives in Berlin (121 D III 2)*. English engineers, such as Telford and Cockerill, were also invited to work on the continent, bringing with them knowledge of the most modern techniques, and then developing these whilst on the continent. Of particular interest to the industrial and transport historian is the Polish town of Gliwice, 728 feet (222 metres) above sea level on the Klodnice River in Upper Silesia, and part of Prussia in the 18th and 19th centuries. The region was rich in coal and metal ores, so Count Fryderyk Reden, financial advisor to the Prussian king, decided to construct an iron works using British technology. He would certainly have had access to the results of the visit, in 1778-1780, of Oberbergrat Waltz, von Eschen and

508 Buckling to see the industries of England, Sweden and France. It is also possible that he had met Smeaton during his own visit to England in 1789, as he wrote to ask him to recommend an English engineer who could set up the iron works. Smeaton suggested a young man, John Baildon, who was still in his early twenties. Baildon's father was employed at the Carron iron works in Scotland, though his name suggests a Yorkshire connection. Perhaps he was one of Smeaton's men who had come from Yorkshire to set up the works at Carron. The weight and bulk of iron ore, coal and iron products made them difficult to move, and the need to improve transport in Upper Silesia was already being addressed. In 1788 the Prussian transport and mining minister, von Hoym, had authorised the construction of a canal up the Klodnitz Valley from Kozle, on the Oder. Work began in 1792 on a 42 km (26 miles) long canal with 18 locks, 35 m (115 feet) long by 4 m (13 feet) wide, and the canal was opened throughout in 1806. John Baildon arrived in Gliwice in 1794 to begin construction of the first coke-fired iron works on the mainland of Europe. The works, designed by Baildon and the Prussian, John Wedding, opened in 1796, with coal for coking coming from the Queen Louisa coal mine in Zabrze, almost three miles to the east of Gliwice. Coal must first have been brought by road, but in 1806 a new canal was opened directly between the coal mine and the iron works. Coal, loaded into containers at the coal face, had been brought out of the mines by boat since 1791. It was then carried by underground tramroad to the canal where cranes transferred the containers to boats which carried them out of the mine. The boats were originally unloaded close to the mine entrance. The system was similar to that at Worsley, and a series of drawings, now in the Muzeum Gornictwa Weglowego (Coal Mining Museum) in Zabrze, vividly depict the methods used. (Drawings Nos. 1283 and 1293 show details of the coal tramways and transhippment methods, with No. 1282 giving details of the boats.) The canal to the iron works in Gliwice was an extension of this mine or Stollen canal at Zabrze, and was built to carry the small mine boats. They were originally 6.3 metres (17 feet) by 2 metres (6 feet 6 inches), but with the extension of the system to the iron works, were enlarged to 11.8 metres (32 feet) by 2.6 metres (7 feet) with draught of about 0.9 metres (2 feet 6 inches). The new canal had to overcome the variation in level of 16.5 metres (45 feet) between the mine at Zabrze and the canal at Gliwice. Two inclined planes were built, the upper with a fall of 11.5 metres (31 feet), the lower of 5 metres (14 feet). Important technical improvements to the design of these inclined planes were made during their construction. Count Reden and John Wedding had met William Reynolds and inspected the Shropshire Canal when they visited England, and we know that Smeaton had advised William Reynolds on the design of the inclined planes used on that canal, so it is no surprise that the original design for the Gliwice inclines was similar. A plan and section of the original scheme shows that the boats would have been raised out of the water on a short incline at the upper level before being lowered down the longer incline to the lower level. This is the same type of incline as is found on the Shropshire Canal and, in Germany, was also proposed for use on the Unstrutt Navigation, a tributary of the Saale. On this original plan, the inclines are called 'Rollbrucke' (trans. 'Rolling bridges'), though this term was really out-of-date and refers to earlier inclines where boats were winched up or down on rollers. The drawing of the original proposal shows a track, while a model of the system suggested for the Unstrutt, in the Technical and Transport Museum in Berlin, includes a carriage for the boat. An incline where boats have to pass over a summit is really only suitable for small boats. For boats 11.8 metres long it would have been difficult to ensure clearance for the carriage as it passed over the summit. Shortening the wheel-base could make for

509 instability or encourage distortion of the boat when it was resting on the carriage. This problem must have been in the mind of John Gilbert when he designed the underground incline on the Worsley mines canal system in 1797, and to overcome it he built locks at the top of the incline. The boats sailed into a lock, the upper gates were closed and the water drained off to allow the boat to settle onto the carriage platform. The lower gate could then be opened to allow the boat and carriage to descend. At the lower end, the boat would enter the water as with the earlier design. Perhaps Count von Reden, Baildon and Wedding had kept in touch with developments in England, or perhaps they came to their own solutions for the design of the inclines on the Klodnitz Canal. Whatever happened, the original design was altered and a system using locks at the top of the incline constructed. We are certainly fortunate that drawings of the new design, probably dating from 1810-1815, have been discovered recently. They can be found in the Coal Mining Museum in Zabrze (drwg. nos. 2713 and 2714), and show longitudinal cross-sections of the lock at the top of the plane and the chamber at the bottom. There are two scales on both drawings, giving measurements in both Prussian and English dimensions. Other archival drawings for the iron works have similar scales, suggesting that Baildon continued to work in English units, even though he soon acquired a good command of the German language. The upper lock was built of stone or brick on a foundation of wooden piles with a central dividing wall, in effect a lock for each track of the incline. This would reduce the water usage, though, as the canal also acted as the drain for the mine, this would not seem to have been too important. The upper gate is not shown in detail, but may have been of the type which folds downwards, similar to those still used on the dry docks at Worsley. The track within the lock had a slope of 1:16, and the carriage had its lower pair of wheels larger than the upper to allow the platform, on which the boat settled as the lock was emptied, to remain horizontal. On either side, the carriage had an iron bar, one end of which was fixed to the centre of the carriage and with a vertical stay at the upper end. To this was fitted the rope used for controlling movement of the carriage up and down the incline. The lock's lower gate was of the guillotine type. The track of the incline would have caused problems with making a water-tight seal, so the short section over the sill was hinged. By raising this, the gate could sit directly onto the sill, ensuring a good seal. After the water had been drained from the lock and the gate raised, this section of track had to be lowered before the carriage could start its ascent or descent. After leaving the lock, the slope of the track increased to 1:4.5 for the main descent. The track was fitted on raised transverse beams, so that the water from the lock could flow down to the lower level underneath. This would have facilitated maintenance and ensured that the track did not become covered with silt. In the bottom chamber the angle of the track decreased, though not sufficiently for the carriage to become horizontal, making it easier for the boat to be floated onto or off the carriage. There was a sill at the end of the bottom chamber, so a gate could have been fitted which would have allowed the water to be drained off for maintenance. Both upper and lower inclines were in use from 1806 until 1828, but by then there were problems with the supply of coal. The reserves close to the canal adit were not as great as anticipated, and underground fires also caused problems. A long heading was driven towards Chorzow, but the cost of hauling the coal underground to the canal made this uneconomic. Instead a new road was built from Chorzow to Gliwice for the transport of coal. A railway was also tried, using a Blenkinsop type steam locomotive. Two Prussian mining engineers, Krigar and Eckhart, had visited England in 1814 and taken details of Blenkinsop's engines in Leeds. On their return to Berlin they constructed two

510 The Bakic

SZCZECIN (Settin)

BYDGOSZCZ (Bromberg)

The Gliwice Canal 0 and other navigations Cts associated with the GERMANY River Oder WROCtAW POLAND (Breslau)

GLIWICE ZABRZE

(Gleiwitz)

CZECH REPUBLIC

KRAKOW ••••, ..•••• The Inclined Planes

511 engines, one being demonstrated there in June 1816. The first was sent to the mine at Chorzow and the other to a mine in the Saarland. The Chorzow engine was not a success and it has been suggested that it was quickly converted into a winding engine. The Saarland engine lasted much longer, not being scrapped until the 1840s, though from the correspondence it seems to have had many problems as well. Interestingly, on one occasion John Cockerill, an English engineer whose father set up engineering works in Liege, was called in to advise. The problems with these German Blenkinsop- type engines must have led to the decision to use road transport between Chorzow and Gliwice. The lower incline, just outside the iron works, was abandoned in 1828 and demolished, though boats continued to use the upper incline until 1834 when that too was closed. The canal remained, as it was part of the drainage system for the mines and also provided an important water supply for the iron works. It was eventually filled-in in 1916 after a major flood in 1908 when the volume of water draining from the mine was not properly controlled and overflowed the banks causing severe flooding to local fields and houses. The site of the canal close to the iron works was subsequently used for railway sidings and a new erection shop. The larger canal to the Oder at Kosle, from below the iron works, continued in use, and was particularly useful for exporting cast iron products. The Gliwice factory soon had a reputation for the production of high quality architectural and decorative cast iron work. The sections for the Potsdam Bridge of 1823 were carried by boat, as were those for the Wiedenhammer' Bridge in Berlin, both well known examples of their type. The boats used on the canal originally carried about 28 tons, but following improvements (to lock size 34.5 metres (95 feet) by 3.87 metres (10 feet 7 inches) and draught 1 metre (2 feet 6 inches), this was increased to 60 tons. Even greater loads could be carried by increasing the depth temporarily to 125 metres (3 feet 3 inches). At first the boats were hauled by people, known as 'burlakow', and though horse towage was used from the mid 19th century, the burlakow continued to be used into the 20th century. The first steam tug was introduced in 1897, taking five days to tow a train of five boats from Kosle to Gliwice. This was quickly improved upon, and in 1904 the steamer `Klodnitz' could pass through the canal in just ten hours. In 1828 some 413 boats used the canal and this had increased to 986 by 1850. The peak year was 1852 when 73,500 tons of coal and cast iron products were carried down to Kosle. By the 1860s railway competition had drastically affected the volume of goods transported. Eventually this decline was reversed, from 1897, when a narrow gauge railway was laid along the towpath in the Gliwice area. This provided access to the growing number of factories in the area and helped the canal to regain some traffic. However, to accommodate the increasing size of boats using the Oder, a new coal port was built at Kosle in 1919-20. It reduced traffic on the canal, though it increased that on the upper section of the Oder to cover 3 million tons annually by the 1930s. The importance of the Upper Silesian coalfield to Germany resulted in a new canal being built in the 1930s. Opened in 1940, it was called the Adolf Hitler Canal, probably as a way for its management to gain favour! Built for boats of around 600 tons, it was envisaged as the first part of the long-planned Oder-Elbe-Danube Canal. Traffic soon reached over 3 million tons annually, mainly coal which had previously used the port at Kosle. This tonnage continued until the end of communism, but today, with the decline in 'smoke-stack' industries, only 300,000 tons are carried annually. *121 D III 2 Research visits 1. Vol. 1 1778-1780 Oberbergrat Waltz, von Eschen & Buckling to England, Sweden and France.

512 2. Vol. 1 1783-1824 Eversmann to Holland and England. 3. Vol. 11814-1825 Eckhart and Krigar to ironworks, etc., in England. 4. Vol. 11925-1828 Krigar to ironworks, etc., in England. 5. Vol. 11826-1828 von Oeynhausen & von Dechen to England. Vol. 2 1829

Britain's Commercial Waterways, 1960-1980 BY MARK BALDWIN Whereas the main features and chronologies of the early days of the canals are now well known, little attention has yet been given to the present century, and even less to the post-war period. This article provides a brief coverage of some of the more important events affecting Britain's waterways in the recent past, and shows Charles Hadfield's direct involvement in many of these. The Post-War Scene The architects of the 1947 Transport Act had high hopes that it would encourage the evolution of that elusive animal, the integrated transport system. The aim was to nationalise all major forms of transport, operating them under a single body - the British Transport Commission - for the general benefit of the community. In the event, less was achieved than had been hoped, possibly partly as a result of BTC's assets being divided between five separate Executives, members of which were appointed, not by the BTC, but by the Minister of Transport. In the case of the inland waterways, there was an even more serious flaw. The nationalisation schedules provided a far from complete listing of the nation's inland waterways. Amongst major omissions were the rivers Thames, Clyde, Hull, and Medway, navigations like the Dartford & Crayford, and Chelmer & Blackwater, and canals such as the Bridgewater, Exeter Ship, and Manchester Ship. The total length of waterway nationalised was 3495 km (much of which was redundant) whereas over 1800 km of commercial waterway were omitted.1 Although almost of all the narrow canals in commercial use were nationalised at this time, there was no logical distinction between waterways omitted and those included. Despite this, the nationalised group were always taken to represent the entire industry. This artificial division was to create a systematic undervaluing of this mode of transport, which persisted at least until the 1980s, and made the evolution of sound policy impossible. The Docks & Inland Waterways Executive was doubly hampered; not only did it not control major sectors of the industry (very different from the position of the Railway Executive), but it was saddled from the start with over 1200 km of waterway totally redundant for transport purposes, and with two major Scottish waterways - the

513 Caledonian and Crinan Canals - which had been state-owned for many years, but had not shown a profit since 1919. Thus earnings from genuinely profitable waterways, such as the Aire & Calder Navigation, were swallowed up in maintaining lines of little or no transport value. Several attempts were made to assess the position, and to formulate appropriate policy. Foremost amongst these was the 'Rusholme Report' of 19542 which recognised the need to divide the nationalised waterways into groups, depending on a hard-headed analysis of their transport potential, and then to implement radically different policies for each group. The report identified 541 km which should be improved for commercial use, 1600 km to be maintained for commercial use, and 1241 km which were redundant, and advised that the Secretary of State should directly fund the 110 km of the Caledonian and Crinan Canals. Following these recommendations, improvements valued at about £5m were undertaken on the waterways of the first group. The problem of the last two groups was not, however, addressed, and the wrangling over their fate led to the appointment of a Government Committee of Inquiry, whose report, the 'Bowes Report', was published in 19583. Its recommendations were broadly similar to those of the Rusholme Report. Recognising the need for security, it recommended a minimum of 25 years' commitment to the commercial groups. It also identified two routes deserving of technical study: the enlargement to 90-tonne capacity of the Grand Union Canal to Birmingham, and the provision of an improved link from Wolverhampton to the Mersey. Waterway Traffics Although the most prevalent image of canal transport is that of the narrow-boat, with a capacity of about 25 tonnes, its contribution to post-war transport was small and dwindling. DIWE and its successors still maintained fleets of narrow craft, as did numerous private concerns. However, it was abundantly clear, if unpalatable to the traditionalist, that commercial revenue from narrow-boat operation could not meet the costs of track maintenance nor, generally, the costs of regeneration of the capital costs of the craft. None of the independent commercial waterways was restricted to 25 tonnes; on both independent and nationalised track, successful commercial operations required a payload nearer to 100 tonnes. Post-war developments produced far-reaching changes in transport patterns. Many industries which had been traditional users of waterway transport, such as milling, electricity generation, steel manufacture, and petrochemicals, migrated from inland to coastal sites. Clean air legislation eliminated much of the domestic coal market. Nearly 30 million tonnes of coal were consumed by gas-works in 1955; within 15 years this market was to vanish. However, major ports still used barge traffic to serve their hinterlands; there were still some 5,000 lighters in London by 1960, and the waterway systems inland of Liverpool, Hull, and to a lesser extent Bristol, were used by a range of motorised and unpowered craft. These formed part of import/export traffics, linking inland wharves to deep-sea ports. The Transport Act 1962 This Act dissolved the BTC, setting up instead Boards of Management directly responsible to the Minister of Transport. The socialist vision of an integrated transport policy had not been realised, and had now faded from view. The British Waterways Board (BWB) took office in January 1963, and amongst its six members was Charles Hadfield, who served until the end of 1966. He was one of the few who had any knowledge of waterways, and was thus in a strong position to influence

514 the Board's policy during its early years. As its holdings were limited to those undertakings which had been nationalised in 1948, it still laboured under the difficulties which had beset its predecessors. One of the Board's first moves was to disband its narrow-boat fleet, a logical though unpopular move. 1963 thus marks the overt abandonment of a national system of canal transport. Since then, commercial inland waterway transport has been effectively restricted to larger waterways connected to the sea or to one of the four major estuaries: Mersey, Humber, Thames, and Severn. At the same time, the Board were committed to developing pleasure cruising, particularly on the narrow canals. After a thorough review4 of the potential of all its holdings, the Board concluded that only 600 km should be retained for commercial use. Much of the Board's thinking was incorporated into the 1968 Transport Act, revolutionary in recognising that amenity use alone should be sufficient reason for maintaining a considerable part of the system. The New Age Legal recognition of the amenity value of many narrow canals was hailed as a great success by those, including the Inland Waterways Association (IWA), anxious to preserve as much of the system as possible. It did nothing, however, to foster a public view of inland shipping as a modern transport mode. It was not until environmental issues were widely discussed that freight carriage by waterways became a topic for serious consideration in Britain. After leaving the BWB in 1966, Charles Hadfield devoted much of his time to waterway research, both historical and modern. His interest in modern waterways and their potential led to his forming a small IWA Council sub-committee, which became known as the Inland Shipping Group (ISG). Amongst its members were engineers, academics and transport industry professionals. It rapidly became known in transport and Civil Service circles for its breadth of knowledge, and its ability to marshall more convincing arguments for the promotion of this mode than any other group at that time. ISG's case was that inland shipping was unfairly discriminated against in Britain by implicit and explicit policy, but that in most industrialised countries it was adjudged by the same criteria as other transport modes, and therefore received proportionally more investment than in Britain. The widespread popular resentment towards heavy lorries led to the ISG's choice of title for its first major document, published in 1974: Barges or Juggernauts?, of which nearly 5000 copies were sold. Hadfield was one of the authors. In 1974 also saw the first 'British' barge-carrying ship come into service: BACAT I. Other barge-carriers had been working to British ports since 1969, but BACAT was the first to carry smaller (unpowered) barges, specifically designed for service on the Humber group of waterways. Its introduction can be traced to a paper submitted to BWB by Hadfield when he was a member of the Board. In the following year a conference, 'Freightwaves 75: Britain's First International Conference on Waterborne Freight', was held at the World Trade Centre, London. Hadfield was on the organising committee and, although the conference was not well attended, it served as the platform to launch a new lobbying body - The National Waterways Transport Association (NWTA). Although never large, this had some influence and, because its members were almost exclusively drawn from the waterway and freight industries, it avoided the charge of amateurism which could always be levelled at ISG. In 1980, IWA published a new document, British Freight Waterways: today & tomorrow,

515 compiled by ISG, and based to a large extent on Baldwin's thesis.1 This provided substantive and well-documented arguments for bringing inland waterways within the normal processes of transport planning, showing that this mode was not treated in the same way as other modes and that, if equality of treatment were achieved, there would be benefits to the community. The Position in 1980 By 1980, many of the traditional totally inland waterway traffics had been lost, but potential still existed for the use of larger waterways for the carriage of port-related traffics, and for inland penetration by small sea-going vessels and barges from barge- carrying ships. The long battle over statistics had been won; the Departments of Environment and Transport had finally agreed to commission the collection and publication of data along the lines suggested by IWA, ISG and NWTA. When published these demonstrated the validity of the ISG claim that, broadly, inland waterways were carrying 30 times as much freight as the supposedly national statistics had hitherto shown. 5 The case for waterways had been well made and widely heard, and accorded well with popular concern for the environment. The missing ingredient was the political will to implement the recommendations made by environmental, industrial and national bodies. References 1. The primary reference for the statistical content of this article is Baldwin, Mark. The Post-1948 Development of and Prospects for, Inland Waterway Transport in Britain. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1978. 2. British Transport Commission. Canals and Inland Waterways: Report of the Board of Survey. HMSO, 1955. The report was made in 1954. 3. Committee of Inquiry into Inland Waterways. Report. Cmnd 486. HMSO, 1958. 4. British Waterways Board. The Facts about the Waterways. HMSO, 1965. 5. Burn, S., Garratt, M., and Hayter, D.M. Inland Waterway Freight Statistics. University of Liverpool, 1982.

Researching and Writing Canal History BY CHARLES HADFIELD This is a compilation of three papers, edited by Tony Warren, the RCHS Research Officer, in 1993, for circulation to members on request; Charles referred to it as "the excellent research note that you have produced from my rather scrappy originals". The three sources were notes on a talk given at the West London Industrial

516 Archeological Society's Conference on Industrial Archaeology Research in Southall on 24 October 1981, and two articles previously published in the Journal, viz an Approach to Canal Research (Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 23-26, July 1955) and Writing Railway and Canal History (Vol. 8, No. 6, pp. 91-5, November 1962). Some minor points (references to Moore's Modern Methods, for instance) may seem a little dated, but they do reflect Charles' methods; most is of current interest. This talk is about how to find research material, and then to use it. Naturally I'll do it in terms of my own subject, canals but what I say will be applicable more widely. I want to start by saying some general things, and go on to say some particular things. My first point is a warning against the dangers of short-sightedness, of conducting a piece of research not as a part, however small, of the great sweep of history, but as something in itself. To study the history of a canal or a navigable river is to study s small bit of the economic history of the country, and I suggest you never forget the background because of your interest in the thing itself. Why was the canal built? There must have been a real or fancied economic need. When it was built, did it fulfil that need, and did it by the fact of its existence create others? Who were the people who promoted it and put up the money? Why did they do so? What industrial interests had they, and what public positions did they hold? What other means of transport - roads, older river navigations, coastal shipping, even packhorses - were affected by the proposal to build a canal? What did they do about it, and what was the new transport pattern like when it had settled down? What effect did the canal have on the life and business of the towns and villages through which it passed? And so on. You will, I submit, get much more interest out of canal research if you try consciously to place what you do in the framework of the economic history of the time, and to disentangle the human motives, hopes and fears that were concerned with it. If this is so, start work on the history of the period, and then as much local economic history of the region where it is as you can get hold of. Then much of the detail you will find out, and the allusions you will come across in the records, will fall into place. Second, bear in mind that canal history is only the last phase of the history of navigable waterways in this country, for canals are only artificial rivers. The story of inland navigation goes back to the Romans, and from the Conquest onwards much use was made of the great navigable rivers like the Thames, the Severn, the Trent and the Yorkshire Ouse, and also of the waterways of the Fens. There is therefore a thousand years of waterway history to be studied, and you have before you when making a choice not only a wide variety of subjects, but a wide range of periods. My railway friends even if they include horse tramroads in their study, have a narrower scope in time, though a wider in space. Now for some particular things I would like to say - and I hope you will forgive their being so obvious. To begin with, remember that history is not only to be found in records. It lies on the ground. Therefore begin with the canal itself, whether that canal is derelict or still open for traffic. Here we canal men have an advantage over our railway brethren. It is much easier to explore a canal than a railway on the ground. Assuming one is careful to ask permission, one can go almost anywhere on any canal, and explore to one's heart's content. So, if I may suggest, when you have picked on a canal to study, begin on the ground by walking over its whole length, and using your eyes. If it has a basin in a town, then note the ages of the buildings round it, and of those along the street that joins the basin to the town;,look for the wharfinger's house; the stables where the towing horses used to be put up; the smithy where they were shod. Look for the short branch canals into industrial premises, and work out what the premises were used for when the canal was built - and soon. If it is a village, find the old wharf, usually marked

517 by a wharf house or small warehouse, and with a walled-off space for dumping coal. A little poking about with a stick will usually bring a small lump of coal to light, if there is any doubt. Walk over the line, and note where the old wharves were, always of course served by a road. Look for the means of supplying the canal with water - as essential to a canal as rails to a railway, and usually the limiting factor of traffic. Search out the main engineering features, such as aqueducts and tunnels. Above all, talk to local people. Only when you have thoroughly mastered the ground itself, I suggest, should you start on other sources of knowledge. What are These Other Sources? Let us take the main kinds of records one at a time:- First, of course, the written records of the Canal Company itself, which fall into three main groups. There are the Minute Books of the General Shareholders' Meetings, which give the main facts, and those of the Working Committees, which provide the detail. How much or how little will depend upon the conscientiousness of the Clerk at the time. Minute Books usually record decisions, and omit the things which at the time everyone knew, and therefore they need to be supplemented. In or accompanying the Minute Books will usually be the Annual Accounts, and a Statement of the Dividends. Then there are the Ledgers. These will show the details of the traffic carried - what it was, carried from where to where, in what quantities, and if you go to the trouble, they are the real basis for creating the economic history of the territory served by the canal. Lastly, there are the Letter Books, with copies of the letters written by the Canal Company, though usually without the other half of the correspondence, the letters written to it. They will give a mass of interesting information about the canal and the people who used it, and are the best source of information about its relations with other canals and other means of transport. The main store of canal archives is now in the British Transport Historical Records Section of the Public Record Office at Kew, and is available to students on the same terms as any other PRO material. Most Canal Minute Books are there, though the collection is surprisingly weak in Ledgers and Letter Books. However, many collections of records are in County Records Office - like the wonderful Thames & Severn collection at Gloucester; in local museums - like the Wilts & Berks papers at Swindon; in the hands of statutory bodies of various kinds, such as the very fine collection of Upper Medway records with the Kent River Authority at Maidstone; in public libraries - like the Salisbury & Southampton Canal collection at Southampton; or even in the solicitor's offices which were their original home. A research branch of the Law Society will, for a fee, give you the present day solicitors' firm which descends from that whose name you may have learned from a newspaper of 150 years ago. HMSO issues a printed booklet listing all County Record Libraries with their addresses and many other libraries with archive sections. It's called "Record Repositories in Great Britain". They also publish an Annual List of Accessions to such collections. As well, the National Register of Archives of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, in Quality Court off Chancery Lane WC2 (Tel: 0171 242 1198) has a huge index of MS Collections in public and private hands. Begin, therefore, once you have chosen your canal or river, by finding the Company's own records. These may be full or exiguous; they may indeed be non-existent, for some were discarded when old canals became derelict, some were pulped from solicitors' offices during one of the wars, and some have just totally disappeared. Fill in your knowledge in some of the following ways.

518 Find, and use, records of other companies with which it either co-operated or competed. You will often get a different story or a different slant on a story, and sometimes be able to fill in some missing facts. Again, if tonnage records are missing for your canal, you may be able to help from the records of a company that is connected with it, or be able to find the other half of the correspondence in your letter books. Remember that, unlike railways, nearly all carrying before the Canal Carriers Act of 1847 was done by separate concerns. Nearly all canals eventually came into competition with railways. Therefore use the railway minute books. Then get the Parliamentary history from the original and subsequent legislation of your company, and often also from that of its competitors. There are the Acts of Parliament themselves; and preceding them, the Evidence given before Committees of the House of Lords and House of Commons. You'll find the former in MS Books, but the latter (lost before 1845 in a Parliamentary fire) only as summarised in the Journals of the House of Commons. As regards canals, much materials exists in, for instance, Railway and Turnpike Road parliamentary material. For all this, go to the House of Lords Record Office - it is open free of charge for normal weekday hours, but you need to notify them in advance that you are coming, and what you want to see (Tel: 0171 319 3074). Look through all the Deposited Plans in the County Record Office for the period of your canal. You will not only find schemes you know of, but probably some you don't. The first editions of the 25" and 50" OS Plans issued about the middle of the last century are invaluable for telling you what was actually built. So are the Parish Tithe Maps of the 1840s. The British Library's Map Room has a complete set of the first edition of the 25" and 50" plans for the whole country, as well as a fine collection of other maps. Next use the files of Local Newspapers. These will probably be either in the County Record Office or in the British Library Newspaper Collection at Colindale, but they may still be in newspaper offices. Most are now only available on microfilm, because of the danger of damage to the originals. Reading local newspapers is slow work, but fascinating, not only because of what one finds about the canal one is studying, but because of all the other distracting things one comes across, such as fires and murders. Some canal and river schemes were prolific in pamphlets produced by those supporting or opposing them. There is a very fine collection of these in the Institution of Civil Engineers, and odd specimens are to be found in most libraries near the canal that originated them. The Society's Research team maintains a large collection of reference cards indexing the whereabouts of such material for both canals and railways - to use it is one of the great benefits one gets from joining the Society. Business Records that give one a picture of one's subject from the user's instead of the provider's point of view are always useful. Some will be found in the National Register of Archives. Another source is the Personal Papers of outstanding personalities in the company's history. If you can locate one or more of these, you may find good material. You can trace them through the National Register of Archives or the County Record Office of the county where the man lived.

519 Incidentally, because I was then writing on the history of waterways overseas, all my own records of canals in the British Isles were deposited in 1979 in the British Library of Political & Economic Science in the London School of Economics, 10 Portugal Street WC2 (Tel: 0171 955 7223). They include 360 folders, and also a number of indexes. They are available to outside students, not only by day but in the evening or on Saturday. A list and further information can be got from the Archivist at the LSE - there is also a descriptive note about the material in the "Journal of Transport History" 3rd Series Vol. 2 No. 2 September 1981. So much for locating material. Now for its use. What Fm going to say describes how I organise my own writing - there may be ideas in it that will help others not to get bogged down in their notes, but to publish their results. Taking Notes Notes are the basis of most research. Therefore, it is well to get a routine going at the start, and then to take all notes in the same form. I use quarto flimsy typing paper. As long as I am working on a single subject, such as one canal, I give each page the index letters of the Public Record Office or other library volume that I am using, plus my own serial number. In this way I know to what canal the notes refer and from what volume they come, and can check should any sheets be lost. Eventually I clip each group of notes together in serial order. If, however, in the course of working on one canal I come across major material dealing with another, that goes on a separate sheet, to be put in the appropriate file when I get home. In note taking the following are important rules: 1. Make sure that you have clearly identified the source of every note you take in usable form, e.g. that you have the correct Public Record Office reference, or, if a published book, the correct title, author's name and initials, and the page number. 2. Make sure of the correct date of the source, e.g. a newspaper. 3. Make sure that you distinguish clearly between when you are making a verbatim quotation and when you are summarising. Verbatims should be exact, i.e. mis-spellings, capital letters and all. You can edit them later, but what you have noted should be an accurate transcript. 4. Make sure that you can understand your own abbreviations, and that they are unambiguous. I caused myself much trouble once by noting references to the W&B Canal without realising quickly enough that there are three canals with those initials. A year or so later I could not be sure which was meant in some cases, and had to do some work again. 5. Use as many contractions as you like, but watch your handwriting. Nothing is more irritating than the note you can't read. 6. Make sure that you note everything you are likely to want. It is better to note too much while the going is good than too little. The fact you didn't note and cannot find is always the one you finally need. I use a different system when reading newspapers, where the references to different canals are all mixed up. I write the references one after the other, putting the date and the name of the newspaper in the margin of each, and not allowing any note to overrun the foolscap pages I use if I can help it. Made in this way the notes can first be read seriatim to give a general picture of the order in which things happened, and can then be cut up and allocated to their correct subject files.

520 Using Notes In my view, you should do your research right from the start as if the result were to be published in some form, whether as an article in the Society's Journal or a book. Therefore as soon as you have a few facts to string together, make them the nucleus of a draft text, even if it is only a hundred words long. Type this draft on A4 paper so that there is a very broad margin on the left, single-space, but only using half the page. This method of typing gives you plenty of white space to add additional lines. When you can't see the page for emendations, type it out again - this time it will make two pages set out as before - and so on. Put the sheets in a spring-back binder, which enables you easily to get at any page. Every entry of any importance that you make in this draft text should be given a reference number, consecutive to each page, and below the text you should type the references. Never put a statement into the draft text without putting the source below it (if you do, you're bound to forget where it comes from) and always quote this source in full, as you would in a final publication. There are great advantages in this method. It prevents you accumulating a vast file of notes that every day becomes more daunting to deal with. More, it tells you right from the beginning what you already know about the subject - it is still there before you. Again, when you get a new fact you at once have a place to put it. Or you will find that the new fact upsets your draft text because it indicates something you had not known about, and that is very salutary. The disadvantage is the steady re-typing involved, and the careful checking that goes with it. But this is not a high price to pay. Behind this draft text you will require some other documentation, the nature of which depends, of course, upon how complicated the research you are doing turns out to be. I use: (a) Two foolscap manilla folders for each main subject - in my case each canal - in which I keep my working notes. One file is for material already included in the draft text, and one for material waiting to be worked on. When the result is fully written up, one is of course empty; this is then used for new material that comes in after publication. (b) A series of loose-leaf indexes. For these I use little slips 6.25" x 3", 500 of which go in a spring-back binder. They, and the binders, can be bought from Moore's Modern Methods Ltd, 8 Fairchild Place EC2. The indexes I keep are: (i) Index of dates. Put on to this index every date of any importance that concerns not only your own canal, but those that surround it or are associated with it. The result, besides being convenient for quick reference, often throws up a sequence of events that you would not otherwise have realised. (ii) Index of Personalities. This is an alphabetical index, with all particulars I come across about the more important people connected with the canal - shareholders, with notes at regular intervals upon their shareholdings, directors with dates of taking up and laying down office, contractors, engineers, superintendents, and so on. My entries for WilliamJessop in this index came in useful not long ago. Such an index makes it much easier to trace connections elsewhere of the people in whom you are especially interested. (iii) Index of Odds and Ends. Mine includes all kinds of information that is not needed for the draft text but which might come in useful sometime - e.g. rates of wage, rules for navigating boats, details of Sunday observance, the extent of stoppages for repairs, etc.

521 (c) A pile of small slips of paper, the purpose of which is to carry references to Canal B or C, picked up in the course of studying Canal A. For instance, a delegation from Canal B visits Canal A to negotiate. A slip with the date and source of the reference in the records of Canal A is written out and put in the file of Canal B. It may turn out that Canal B's own records are less informative than those of Canal A. Writing the Final Text A time will come when you reckon that you had better publish. I will not say when you reckon the job is done, for that time never comes, and to the end of one's life one can hold back publication on the grounds that one has not yet found the laundry book of the engineer's wife, and therefore cannot say whether lack of underclothes contributed to his early death. When you do nerve yourself to stop: 1. Go quickly through your folder of notes that you ought to have incorporated in the draft text, and see if there is anything that you have missed. 2. Go through the index of dates, to check the text and see whether you have got the sequence of events right. 3. Go through your index of personalities for material to fill out your descriptions of people in the text, and to ensure that you have noticed their relevant connections with other companies and concerns. 4. Use your index of odds and ends to provide some lighter touches and a few of those little bits of information that bring a text to life and make the subject vivid and real in human terms. Having done these things, read carefully through your draft text two or three times. You are bound to find some gaps in the story, and probably some discrepancies. Very well, make a special effort to settle them. But if you can't, do not be tempted to slur them over in the hope that the reader won't notice. That is bad work. Just say that you don't know. You will also be faced with certain information that you have got from second-hand and not original sources, and which you are unable to check. Here you must weigh in your own mind the value of the source, and the likelihood of the statements being right, and then judge whether to use them unreservedly, or to use them indicating that you are doubtful of the value of the source. If in doubt, play for safety. Your draft text is now as good as you can make it. Now cut it down to the length you want it to be. There is a point at which your tears will flow, for to begin with you will be convinced that not a word can be spared. However, it is better for you to tell yourself that 50% can be deleted than for your publisher or editor to tell you, so do the cutting yourself. Use pencil, so that you do not obscure the full account, which becomes your reference book when people ask you questions. Finally, when your text is down to the right length, nerve yourself to rewrite the whole thing readably and clearly, so that it seems a good piece of writing and not just a compilation. Then send it off to the Editor of the Society's Journal or to the publisher, and good luck to you. Further Reading C. Hadfield, Sources for the History of British Canals, Journal of Transport History, Vol. 111955-6 pp. 80-9.

522 Field Work in the Taff Valley BY RAYMOND BOWEN I recall when Charles Hadfield's book on the Canals of South Wales and the Border was first published. Gordon Rattenbury and I went through it very thoroughly together and I would claim with Gordon's meticulous planning we covered, recovered and discovered every canal and tramroad mentioned. For the second edition of the South Wales canals Gordon corresponded a great deal with Charles Hadfield and would have advised him of errors and corrections. There was no doubt Hadfield and Rattenbury held each other in the highest esteem and warmest regard. On one occasion Gordon contacted me to say the RCHS wanted a tour of the Taff Valley. We went out on a 'recce' to dig out tangible industrial items of interest along the Glamorganshire Canal and Pen-y-darren Tramroad. At Quakers Yard there was a most suitable high field where all we had to do was stand to view several interesting sites in and across the valley: Pen-y-darren Tramroad, Taff Vale Railway, Rhymney and GWR Joint Lines and Glamorganishire Canal - a veritable panorama of industrial archaeology. Only a short time before we had discovered alongside the canal on the opposite hillside a batter of beehive coking ovens - a veritable gem. Gordon produced some excellent historical notes. A week after our 'recce' came the tour. All was going well - then we got to the star turn of Quakers Yard. Members grouped together on the hillside like an open air revivalist meeting! Gordon stood in front Dai capped and walking sticked. Gordon spoke: "You will see the line of the Glamorganshire Canal" - there were grunts of acknowledgement. "Now find above" - bearings were given - then utter silence from Gordon. He looked towards me - Gordon never made a mistake - I looked across the valley in bewilderment and raised my eyebrows. The silence was very silent all waiting for this gem from Gordon - nothing! The silence was shattered by Hadfield, standing there like a radio mast. He bellowed impatiently "Will someone tell me what I'm looking at? Rattenbury, what am I supposed to be looking at?" Gordon was confused and again looked at me. All I could mutter was - "It's gone!". It certainly had - in between the few days of the 'recce' and the tour the battery of bee hive ovens had been bulldozed and removed!!! We moved up the valley just beyond Aberfan, where there was a magnificent stone built beam engine house carrying the legend "WC 1840" (William Crawshay). It was virtually on the canal bank. As we stood in a semi-circle around a pile of stones that had been the engine house a few days before, Hadfield, now in to the spirit of the thing bellowed: "Rattenbury - will you please tell me what I'm looking at?" Thank goodness the other treasures selected were still in situ. I'm afraid that day dear old Charles had unwittingly created a catchphrase ..."Rattenbury - what am I looking at!". Well, they're both walking along golden tramplates now and they both know exactly what they're looking at!

523

Sully's Coal Yard, Bridgwater BY P.M. BRAINE The summer of 1995 saw the end of Sully's coal yard in Bridgwater. A display board had proclaimed 'Regeneration of Crowpill Coalyard - 45 Flats 28 Houses 4 Bungalows'; nothing unusual in that, in fact to most locals it was an improvement for a site which had for so long become an eyesore. However, this development destroyed the last relics in the country of Brunel's broad gauge which had remained in position since originally laid in 1870. As the occasion passed unnoticed both nationally and locally, this article is an attempt to record some aspects of the history of both the yard and the Sully family's shipping and coal business.

fOLE D ETER

3" 111111r 6"

5"

4" Drawn by Paul McMahon. Sections of track removed from site of Sully's

coal yard August 1995. All dimensions approx.

Sully's Crowpill coal yard lay next to the tidal basin of the dock in Bridgwater. The dock and basin (henceforth referred to as the docks) were opened by the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal Company in 1841, when the canal was extended from Huntworth to downstream of the town's bridge and quays;1 in the same year the Bristol and Exeter Railway (B&E) was opened to Bridgwater. However the docks lay on the opposite side of the river from the railway and although the 1836 B&E bill had plans for a branch across the river into the town (upstream of the road bridge) this branch was never built. It was not until 1871 that the railway was extended across the river to serve the docks area. In the meantime, the Sullys had seen the opportunity to develop their coal business by using the proposed rail connection; in 1870 a field had been laid out as a railway coal yard with mixed gauge track and, on the opening of the bridge, they began discharging coal vessels in the basin into the railway wagons in their yard. The Sullys then bought their own broad gauge wagons becoming the first to run such wagons for

524 the Somerset and Devon coal trade. The Sully coal business had developed from an earlier interest in shipping. At the end of the eighteenth century a Thomas Sully was trading from Watchet, but he had moved to Bridgwater before he died in 1824 when his French prize brigantine Brothers (the first of the vessels that comprised the fleet subsequently owned by Sully & Co) passed to his trustees George Bryant and Thomas Hellier for the benefit of his children.2 The oldest son, also Thomas Sully, at the age of twenty three began trading in 1826 with the help of the trustees. At that time some sixty vessels were bringing coal to Bridgwater for inland distribution particularly by barge up the rivers to towns such as Langport and Taunton. The Bridgwater & Taunton Canal opened in 1827. Thomas Sully, in 1827, owned his second vessel, becoming part owner with George Bryant of the sloop Venus, and within ten years he was owning or part owning seven vessels. George Bryant was one of Bridgwater's coal merchants (Bryant's association with the Sullys was to be resumed over a century later). Thomas married Margaret Bryant, and the young Sullys called their first son, born in 1831, George Bryant. G.B. Sully was to become a key member of the family business. In 1840 Thomas Sully was listed as one of two ship brokers in Bridgwater and was also shown under marine insurance.3 However, an important part of his business had become the import of coal from south Wales and Lydney for distribution by barges to places along the canal and in 1842 he was listed as a merchant as well as a ship broker. In the meantime, Thomas' younger brother James Wood Sully had assisted in the business and in June 1845 the partnership of Thomas & J.W. Sully was formed. The brothers were listed in 1848 as coal and general merchants, as well as ship and insurance brokers; also at this time they were shown as shipping agents for Cardiff, Dublin, Newport, Swansea and 'canal boats' to Taunton. A shipping and merchanting business had developed with the partners owning in 1845 some twenty one vessels including two steam paddle tugs, Perserverance and Endeavour (the latter in 1839 became the first steam vessel on the Parrett). The tugs were originally owned by four local merchants who formed the Bridgwater Steam Towing Company but in 1843 Thomas Sully had become responsible as the main trustee of this company. Over the first ten years of the brothers' partnership the number of vessels, although increasing to only twenty five, had significantly increased in registered tonnage with the purchase in 1854 of the 435 ton barque Paragon (in 1853 the average size of the Sully vessels was 57 tons). The purchase of the Paragon represented a move into the more speculative sea-going trade as opposed to regular coastal trading in coal and local materials. By 1855 the partners decided to separate the two sides of their business with Thomas' son G.B. Sully, then aged twenty four, being given responsibility for developing the general shipping and broking side; he moved into his own office, rented in the Custom House on the West Quay for I10 half yearly' from 22 March 1855. 4 Although taking his brother as a partner, Thomas Sully continued to maintain an additional shipping business which did not form part of the partnership. The brothers continued with their joint business until Thomas retired in 1860, when the original partnership became Sully & Co and the additional interests of Thomas Sully became focused on his son G.B. Sully, who although never forming a company operated independently from the firm of Sully & Co. Although the young G.B. Sully became the driving force in the family's investment in larger vessels, he was soon successfully developing the broking and agency business which was eventually to become his main activity. In 1857 the two sides of the family went into joint partnership to form the short-lived Bridgwater Shipping Co; managed by G.B. Sully this company owned, amongst others, the 1,069 ton sea-going sailing ship Glen Isla - by far the largest of the vessels ever owned by the the Sullys. This ship foundered in 1860 and the company was dissolved by 1861 with ownership of the remaining Bridgwater company's vessels passing to G.B. Sully.

525

N

TIDAL BASIN

I Goods DOCK Goods Swim Oil Cake Mill too Saw •S6(‘ Mills

Timbor CANAL Yards

Saw Mills GWR MIXED GAUGE at 1886 DryDock ••• STANDARD additions in docks area at 1903 S&DJR (Bridgwater Rly.) at 1903 Brovrery SB SLIDING BRIDGE Passenger Somm LC LEVEL CROSSING

BRIDGWATER 0 1/4 1/2 CANAL, DOCKS, RIVER & RAILWAYS mile The import of coal into the west country across the Bristol Channel was long established. The Bridgwater and Taunton canal, although originally part of grandiose schemes to link the Bristol & English channels, in the end served mainly as an improved alternative to the river for coal shipped to Taunton; the ill-fated extensions to Tiverton and Chard fell early victims to railway competition. Before the opening of the Bridgwater docks, coal was discharged from the Parrett into barges or on the quays but the huge tidal range always made this difficult. The canal was originally accessed through a tidal basin at Huntworth. When the docks opened in 1841 the Sullys owned thirteen coastal vessels with a total registered tonnage of 699. It is not known how many barges they owned. With the opening of the B&E, to Bridgwater in 1841, to Taunton a year later and to Exeter in 1844, the transfer of coal from the river to the railway for onward shipment became the alternative to barge and land carriage. There were two early schemes on the Parrett to facilitate this development, one in Bridgwater and the other at Dunball. In Bridgwater the rail branch to the docks stemmed from Bridgwater corporation's attempts to improve access to and on the river. In 1845 the corporation had obtained an act for improving the navigation of the river which included 'extending the Quays ... and for forming a Communication by Road and by Railway between the Quays and the Bristol and the Exeter Railway'.5 The 'Communication Works' railway was horse worked and ran from the corporation's wharf on the east bank of the river to the B&E passenger station. From the proposed line of this tramway, it appears that vessels could have discharged from the river directly into wagons. The corporation's act gave them powers to let their line to the B&E at the end of 1859 the B&E leased it for £310pa. Under an act in 1863 the B&E obtained powers to purchase the line and, under another act in 1866, to convert it into a locomotive railway and extend across the river by a swivel bridge to the docks. The B&E worked the line by horses until 1867 when they opened the 'branch' as a mixed gauge locomotive line (although the corporation retained the right to insist on horses if the locomotives endangered traffic on the roads). Vessels using the town quays would require the bridge to be opened at every high tide. In April 1867 the B&E had taken possession (authorised in 1866) of the bankrupt canal and docks and, in considering the proposed bridge, obtained an optioil to change the swivel concept to 'a rolling Bridge moving backwards and forwards'. ° This rolling bridge was the one built but it was not officially opened until March 1871 (it is still in use today for pedestrians but fixed and without its sideways sliding section). At Dunball an early initiative appears to have been taken privately to develop a wharf on the river and build a broad gauge tramway to the B&E main line. Anew harbour at Port Dunball' was reported as being opened in 18437 although the tramway from the wharf to the B&E does not appear to have been opened until 1844. McDermott states that the wharf and tramway were established by a 'firm of coal merchants'. Colin Maggs has written that Dunball, was developed by two directors of the B&E.8 The local landowner B.C. Greenhill presumably agreed with the development (no act has been found for the tramway). A John Ball was the occupier in 1842 of the land between the railway and the river but later the Bridgwater brick and tile manufacturer John Browne built 'lines of rails and wharves' under a lease from Greenhill.9 Browne and Richard Ball of Taunton were early directors of the B&E. When in 1867 the B&E was authorised to construct a railway from the main line to the Parrett at Dunball it bought the land from Greenhill, subject to the outstanding lease from Greenhill to John Browne. Whatever the precise origin of the Dunball wharf and tramway it appears that following the opening of the main line to Exeter a regular coal train soon began to run from Dunball to Exeter.10 Although the Sully brothers appear not to have been directly involved in developing Dunball their vessels were soon discharging coal there for the new rail trade. The B&E's mixed gauge Dunball branch was opened in

527 KEY Quayside Crane 1. Unloading shelter Raised platform Gauge crossover Yard office 6. Wagon weighbridge 7. Road entrance and Cart weighbridge Company offices Ground storage

Crowpill House

Rail entrance to yard Wagon shop? 0 1 2 3

SULLY'S YARD 1886 November 1869. Dunball was not so subject to the neap tidal restrictions imposed on shipping to Bridgwater and Sully vessels would have frequently have had to discharge at Dunball even after their own yard in Bridgwater was opened. However once Bridgwater docks were rail connected a considerable amount of trade was diverted from Dunball to Bridgwater, nevertheless the Dunball trade remained significant. The GWR considered Dunball more convenient than Bridgwater and was their preferred route for locomotive coal before the Severn tunnel opened. Whether or not the Sullys saw the Bridgwater docks' rail potential a decade or so earlier than the 1871 rail connection can only be surmised. Thomas Sully was shown in 1845 plans as occupying two small coal yard sites near the canal entrance to the dock which would have been convenient for the barge trade, and was in joint occupation (with the canal company) of the middle bay of the large warehouse then newly erected on the south side of the dock which was probably his Bridgwater office (listed as the `Float). In a 1865 plan J.W. Sully was shown as retaining the Sully joint occupation of this warehouse.11 Reverting to 1845, the Crowpill site was shown as being owned and occupied by Henry Ford; it comprised Crowpill House and associated buildings including an attached 'malt house' on the south side of the house and warehouses attached on the north side extending to the road by the tidal basin, a field behind the buildings called 'Crab Tree Close' flanking the tidal basin, and a separate yard with outbuildings facing the river but also extending to the road by the tidal basin. Henry Ford died and in 1856, J.W. Sully purchased the property; by then the malt house had been demolished to create a formal garden for the house but the extension on the north side and the yard and outbuildings were still in place.12 On the death of Ford, his successors had presumably decided to regroup their activities on the Northgate site where the Starkey, Knight and Ford brewery developed. By the 1861 censusJ.W. Sully was living at Crowpill House. It is not known whether he continued in the 1860s to use the yard by the house for coal which could have been carted from the tidal basin or the town's West Quay, it is unlikely that the river in front of the yard would have been used as no quay was shown at that point. However, by 1870 the field behind the house was converted by J.W. Sully into the railway yard from plans by his son John G. Sully. In agreement with the B&E the yard was connected to the docks branch and a mobile crane erected on the basin's quay for discharging coal from vessels into rail waggons in the yard. In effect the Sullys had obtained exclusive use of the tidal basin for their coal yard. The increase in trade from Bridgwater led Sully & Co to buy a hundred broad gauge wagons. At that time they were the only traders owning their own wagons; the rates over the B&E system were for coal in railway company wagons only and a liberal allowance was made for the use of private wagons. Also for this new trade Sully & Co bought in 1871 the first steam screw vessel to trade regularly at Bridgwater - the 100 ton iron Bulldog; built in 1866 this steamer collier was to give the company faithful service for nearly sixty years before being broken up in 1929. Apparently the introduction of the SS Bulldog caused difficulties at first with the traditional sailing vessels as the authorities followed the bigger ports in giving the steam boats priority. Sully & Co's coal yard in Bridgwater was the largest in the Bridgwater area. The site extended to three acres and was the only one capable of stockpiling sufficient quantities of coal to ensure consistent supplies regardless of the state of the tides or weather in the Bristol Channel. G.B. Sully rented separately additional wharf and yard facilities from the B&E. Sully & Co also enjoyed a privileged position as far as dock charges were concerned.13 Soon after taking over the docks the B&E found some shipping had reverted to the tidal quays as the company's dock tolls had been too high. Even after the docks branch was opened coal was still discharged by Sully & Co into their own wagons on the wharf leading to the east quay (the facilities there are well illustrated by a photo of Welsh Prince at the wharf in Rod Fitzhughs' book - p. 110). General reductions were made and in the case of Sully & Co further concessions

529 SULLY & COMPANY, GROIXTPILL YARD, BRIMITATER, *Ring Irsittiatosi.

A ISO% o••••••••••••••toNe1.... Coal,Culm&General Merchants.

.A.C1-393/•TT'S VOIR, THE PARKEND COAL, lad for Yam. UZI l MN Calm ad Rao Cal,

PROPRIETORS OF TEE 11101111111tl i° Trading regular y between Bridgwater and parddr.

Messrs. S. & COMPANY have laid down Broad and Narrow Gauge Lines over their Yard, where their Stocks are kept, connecting it directly with the Bristol and Exeter Railway. Orders will receive immediate despatch.

CARGOES SUPPLIED ON ADVANTAGEOUS TERMS.

Ur Prices, Rates of Freight, and every information,- on application. Advertisement in Morris's Directory of Somerset & Bristol 1872 following the opening of the yard the previous year and the purchase of the Bulldog, the first screw steamer to trade regularly from Bridgwater.

530 agreed. The B&E levied 5d per ton loaded into wagons and hauled to Bridgwater station but in view of the use by Sully of their own crane half this charge was rebated to them and, in recognition of the use of their own sidings, a further rebate of ld per ton was allowed. The 3d per ton dock dues on registered tonnage were not applied to Sully & Co vessels discharging in the basin for transshipment by rail (or canal boat to Taunton) when ld per actual ton of coal discharged was levied (vessels discharging coal for local use still paid the standard dues). The fact that Sully & Co owned their own coal mines would also have given them another advantage in costs over other coal importers, their colliery company rebating them 6d a ton. As an extension of their coal distribution business the Sully brothers had early looked at the possibilities of leasing or owning their own coal mines. Lydney had been one of the first ports for the shipment of coal to Bridgwater. Tramroads had been built in the Forest of Dean to facilitate this trade. The Severn & Wye Railway & Canal Co tramroad was opened from Lydbrook to Lydney as early as 1813, and in 1827 pits at Parkend had been connected to this line by Edward Protheroe. Protheroe in 1841 owned ten 'coal works' and held shares in twenty others and the firm of Trotter Thomas & Co had seven 'works'.14 It seems that in 1849 the Sully brothers took the first step in securing an interest in Forest of Dean collieries, their 'Parkend Coal Company' had been formed in partnership with J. Trotter and Thomas Nicholson to work pits in the Parkend area. Nicholson appears to have been the lessee of the Parkend and New Fancy pits, with the output from the two pits being 72,000 tons in 1848. In the shipping of coal from Lydney, Thomas Sully had clearly formed a close association with Nicholson for, as in the case with George Bryant, he named one of sons after him (Thomas Nicholson Sully was to join his father and brother in the ownership of the vessels trading under the G.B. Sully interest). The owner of the main Parkend and New Fancy collieries however had remained Edward Protheroe. Protheroe had been the dominant force in many Dean coal, iron and tramway developments and had been awarded Parkend in the1841 forest commission enquiry. Although by 1852 Protheroe was trying to sell his Parkend and New Fancy interests, by issuing a prospectus to form the Park End Colliery Company, he was still the owner of the collieries when he died in 1857; his executors then sold them to the Sully Trotter Nicholson partnership. By then the partners had bought the neighbouring collieries. The Sully's venture into coal mining was further strengthened when in 1858 they took over Nicholson's interest. After selling all his coal interests, Thomas Nicholson became a Baptist minister and it is likely that a common religious outlook had cemented the early ties with the Sullys. Shortly after Thomas Sully retired in 1860 J.W. Sully bought out Trotter's share. The mineral rights, or 'gales' comprised five areas, of which 'Parkend' and 'New Fancy' were by far the dominant. The other three gales, 'Independent Level', `Standfast and Royal Engine', and 'Catch Can', were quoted as being 'of minor importance, though desirable for the protection of the Parkend and New Fancy Gales'.15 The total extent of the gales was 1,240 acres. The mining was worked through five pits and in 1856 the Parkend pits were the largest in the Forest of Dean. Thomas Sully died at Bridgwater in 1861 when he was fifty six. The son of a mariner, and originally a mariner himself, he had created a significant trading business and had been recognised in the local Bridgwater community by becoming one of the first Justices of the Peace appointed after the Commission of 1836. His brother J.W. Sully then became the sole owner of both the Parkend and Sully companies. Based in Bridgwater J.W. Sully continued to be active in both businesses until 1876 when he handed over Sully & Co to three of his sons. He retained his interest in the Parkend Coal Co and formed in 1878 a limited company to purchase the colliery interests from himself, with Sully & Co remaining as selling agents. In the incorporated Parkend Coal Co Ltd 967 of the 1,000 £80 shares were owned byJ.W. Sully. However the pits had become unattractive when new investment was needed to sink deeper shafts and

531 improve pumping. It is clear that the colliery business had not expanded to justify further expenditure and, following the 1870s slump in the Dean iron trade, the pits were closed in March 1880 with the company going into voluntary liquidation. Sully's trade through Lydney docks would have been affected not only by the loss of their own coal mines but in 1879 the Severn Bridge had opened and the mixing of the gauges on the B&E would have enabled competitive through rail rates to be offered into the Bridgwater distribution area. In May 1881 the five collieries which had formed the Parkend business were auctioned. The buyer was a Mr Jackson but it was not until the collieries were again closed and auctioned that new owners under T.H. Deakin began the recovery that lead in 1892 to the successful formation of the Parkend Deep Navigation Co Ltd, but by then the Sullys had ceased to have any direct interest in coal mining.

N A

COLEFORD

tw tildwater Parkend and New Fancy Collieries: 1831 Auction Extent of 'Gales' Parkend A New Fancy B Stantlfast & R C Catch Can Independent Lev. E its

Railudy GREAT Woiri•RN FOR r.ST OF DEAN UN Fit AI, SEVERN & WYN and tiFVFRN 1301100i "'"""*" MIDLAND Caddis PARKEND, DEAN RAILWAYS & the SEVERN 1881 yab97

In spite of the loss of their Forest of Dean collieries the Sullys maintained their special association with Lydney, renting offices and wharfing facilities there. Favourable rates for coal shipped through the port were enjoyed. In 1868 Lydney shipped 168,404 tons which represented 31% of Forest of Dean's 'export' trade.lb However, 56% of this trade was already going by the Bulk Pill railway and a further 11% shipped from the quays at Bulk Pill. For a period Bulk Pill dock and quays competed effectively with Lydney, in particular for the Parrett trade which enabled the Bridgwater shippers to play off one port against the other. But Bullo Pill was never able to maintain an effective challenge and in the early years of the new century, to quote Harry Parr, it just laded away'.17 Shipments of coastal coal from the fiscal port of Gloucester (which included Lydney and Bulk) peaked in 1872 at 344,000 tons but then dropped significantly, not exceeding 300,000 tons again until an exceptional year in 1885. 18 Colin Green quotes Lydney shipping 265,000 tons of coal in 1897.19 Although in decline Lydney docks continued to ship coal at significant levels well into the twentieth century. Lydney first developed its wagon tips on the Upper Dock in 1854, before that coal would have been dumped from the tram wagons on the wharves and then hand loaded into the vessels.

532 The Sullys would have been one of the early shippers renting space to hold stocks prior to loading. Several rail sidings then fed small wagon tips each side of the Upper Basin (two on the north and three on the south side) and in 1872 the railway was extended on the south side to three tips on the Lower Dock and one for the tidal basin. However, the size of the lock from the tidal basin into the docks restricted the size of vessels able to use the docks' tips, for example the largest Sully & Co vessel, the 205 barque Neilly, could not pass through and would have had to load in the basin.20 Larger vessels choking the basin were consequently a problem with complaints from shippers also leading to demands for rate reductions. Thomas Sully, one of the three sons of J.W. Sully who had joined the business, was appointed manager in Lydney for Sully & Co's shipping interests and for the Parkend Coal Co; he became one of the youngest magistrates for the Gloucestershire county but died at the early age of thirty three being buried at Lydney in 1877. The other sons who had joined the business were John George and Richard Owen; it was the descendants of this side of the Sully family that continued to control the company until the demise in the 1960s. On the original T Sully side only his son G.B. Sully maintained a full time association with Bridgwater shipping (another son, confusingly also named James Wood, founded the firm of accountants J & A.W. Sully). J.G. Sully took over from his brother in Lydney until 1880 when the Parkend company was sold and he returned to Bridgwater, but Sully & Co still maintained their own resident shipping agent in Lydney. J.G. Sully then managed the Bridgwater business living at Mount Radford, Wembdon.J.W. Sully had retired to Weston but later, as a result of ill health, he moved to live with his son at Mount Radford where he died on 14 January 1886 aged seventy nine; a local obituary referring to him as a 'staunch Liberal and for some time a deacon of the Baptist church'.21 The brothers J.G. and R.O. Sully then ran the firm of Sully & Co in partnership. J.G. Sully was signing letters for the shipping registers as 'managing owner' in 1891, but increasingly it appears that the younger R.O. Sully was taking the senior role and it was he who moved into Crowpill House when his father retired. G.B. Sully continued to operate his separate ship broking and insurance agencies, becoming Lloyds agent and, as a result of Baltic timber importing, the local German Vice-Consul for the port. He also took over the tug agency for Bridgwater. For a period he diversified into timber products but did not develop this, concentrating on being associated with the general shipping of the port (he was one of the two main shipping agents for the port). In his later years he took into partnership with J. Lovell Hurman; under the name of Sully & Hurman this business continued into the 1930s until it was merged with long standing rival agents and brokers Charles Hunt & Co. G.B. Sully died in 1907. He had been very active in the public life of Bridgwater.22 A Liberal, he had been elected to the town council when only twenty five, was appointed a magistrate and was mayor for the years 1869 and 1870; for over thirty years he had been chairman of the borough's port and navigation committee serving also as a pilotage commissioner and a Somerset county councillor. In addition to his business and public life G.B. Sully took an early interest in education being chairman of the governors of two local schools and he was a leading member of the non conformist church becoming chairman of the Somerset Congregational Union. He was also a director of the Bridgwater Gas Light Co and of William Thomas & Co, brick and tile manufacturers at Wellington. On the 15 March 1894, Sully & Co was incorporated as a private limited company. In effect R.O. Sully bought out his brother becoming virtually the sole owner of the company. The valuation put on the assets was £28,700 detailed as follows:23 £4,380 for freehold land and buildings including the coal yard and Crowpill House, £15,342.6s.6d for 'moveable' plant including machinery, the wagons and horses, £8,500.3s.4d for the 'interest in the ships,

533 £477.10s.2d cash. The low value of the shares in the vessels compared with the 'moveable' assets is surprising. In return for the sale of these assets J.G. Sully received £12,400 in cash and R.O. Sully 1,630 of the 4,000 £10 shares which formed the capital of the company. Only seven other shares were issued, one each to family members and accountants. At forty nine J.G. Sully retired from the business. He had continued the free church traditions of the Sullys at one time being the organist at the Baptist church in Bridgwater, in his early retirement years in Bridgwater he also became a vice-president of the local teetotal society but for the last twenty five years of his life he lived in Clevedon where he died in 1935 aged eighty nine.24 As the new company's accountant, the youngerJ.W. Sully became a nominal director but he died in 1900. Clearly R.O. Sully was a man of some energy. As well as controlling his company he followed in the footsteps of his uncle G.B. Sully by taking an active part in the public and church life of Bridgwater;25 he was a member of the borough council for twenty years, becoming chairman of the Port and Navigation Committee and at one time chairman of the borough's education committee. A Liberal, R.O. Sully was mayor of Bridgwater in 1908, 1909 and 1913, and deputy mayor for the war years; he was a local and county magistrate and a director of the local gas company. As a leading Congregationalist R.O. Sully was for many years the treasurer of the local free church council. The older J.W. Sully lived long enough to hear of the completion of the Severn Tunnel. The first train through the tunnel was in September 1885 although it was not until a year later that the line was officially opened for goods traffic. The act for the Severn Tunnel had been obtained as early as 1872 and by March 1873 work on a trial shaft started, only two years after Sully's coal yard in Bridgwater was rail connected. Although it was to be another thirteen years before the tunnel was completed it is interesting to reflect on when the Sullys first realised the impact this would have on their shipping business. The tunnel opening accelerated the decline in coastal shipping across the Bristol Channel. Bridgwater's shipping, both in numbers of vessels and registered tonnage using the Parrett had already peaked in 1879, and by 1890 tonnage had dropped by nearly a third.z6 Imports of coal into the fiscal port of Bridgwater, which in addition to the Parrett wharves included Watchet and Minehead, also peaked in 1879 at almost 378,000 tons.27

COAL IMPORTS BY SEA FROM UK PORTS Reg. tons Year Port of Port of Total UK using the Bridgwater Barnstaple (*exc London) Parrett 1870 266 112 7671 208 1873 306* 112 7263 212 1875 264 120 7242 181 1879 378* 127 8256 244* 1880 334 121 7781 216 1883 320 135 8502 242* 1885 308 144 8338 227 1886 286 153* 8302 195 1890 260 134 8852 171 1895 214 143 9770 142 All figures '000 tons. *Peak years. Barnstaple figures include Bideford. Table shows five yearly trend for 1870-95 period with additional years shown for peaks. Note Bridgwater's decline from 1879 against UK growth in 1895.

534 To put the importance of the 1879 peak trade in perspective, if imports into London and Ireland are excluded, only one other UK port (Rochester) brought in a higher tonnage than Bridgwater. As can be seen from the table the peak in Bridgwater's registered tonnage for the Parrett coincided with the peak in coal imports. In 1879 the Sully family had dominant shares in twenty nine vessels totalling 3,870 tons; the G.B. Sully interest, although owning only eight of the vessels, still had nearly 45% of the family tonnage. In addition to the Paragon the G.B. Sully interest also owned another wooden barque, the 323 ton Winifred, and the 596 ton iron barque G.B.S. The paddle tugs, Petrel and Victor, were jointly owned by the two Sully interests (the Victor was converted to screw in 1893). Between 1860 and 1876 Sully & Co had only increased their number of vessels from twelve to thirteen but a number of the smaller sailing vessels were replaced in 1873 and the average vessel size of the still predominantly sail fleet had increased from under 64 tons in 1860to over 101 tons in 1876. In 1874 Sully & Co bought their second screw steam vessel - the 67 ton wooden Tender and she was to give nearly seventy years of service to the Sully company before being broken up in 1943. During this period, in addition to the Sully company's two screw steam vessels, G.B. Sully bought in 1871 the newly built 142 ton iron screw vessel Maggie, presumably for the rail opening of the Bridgwater docks coal trade but by the next year she was sold (at a length of over 118 ft the Maggie would have been a tight fit for discharging in the tidal basin). The Sully centenary history states that by 1880 the firm 'owned over 300 railway wagons, and twenty sailing vessels and two steam boats which traded continuously with coal to Bridgwater, Fremington and many ports in the West of England and Ireland'. To maintain this fleet a sail making and ship chandlery business was established in the coal yard at Bridgwater in association with James Nicolson & Co, under whose name the business traded. The railway connected wharf at Fremington had become the main coal discharging point for the port of Barnstaple (which included Bideford and Ilfracombe), the London & South Western Railway from Fremington competing with the GWR into the north Devon area and down to Exeter. From the Parrett another competitor for the GWR was the Somerset & Dorset Railway's wharf at Highbridge; with their own vessels the S&D posed a threat but more to the Dunball locomotive coal trade than to Sully & Co at Bridgwater. Records of the private Sully company's trading have not been traced and it is intriguing to speculate on their tonnages of coal handled. A GWR report in March 1883 quoted 99,324 tons of coal imported into Bridgwater docks for 1882.28 As can be seen from the table Sully's vessels were serving a Bristol Channel west of England coal importing market of over half a million tons in the peak year of 1879. It is likely that Sully's Crowpill yard received the largest single share of this tonnage but with the Parrett wharves at Dunball and Highbridge, the quay at Fremington and the harbour at Watchet also being significant. It would have been interesting to have had an analysis of Sully & Co's customers. Some idea of Parrett consignees however can be seen from records available of pre-tunnel tonnage discharged at Dunball. Over the seven months period, November 1882 to May 1883, 44,818 tons of coal were shipped through Dunball;2911,480 tons of this was shipped from Cardiff for J.C. Hunt who was the sole agent in the Bridgwater area for the 'Ocean Merthyr' steam coal. Most of Hunt's coal was consigned to Bridgwater station but, paradoxically, with significant tonnages consigned back to Cardiff station (did this cover 'drop' shipments of locomotive coal?). The next largest consignee was the leading Taunton coal merchant Goodland at 4,477 tons, mainly from Lydney; other significant consignees were the Somerset Trading Co in Bridgwater and other merchants and users in Chard, Yeovil, Wookey (Mendip Paper Mills to whom esparto grass was also shipped from Cardiff via Dunball), Wellington (William Thomas & Co brick and tile manufacturers where the

535 manager was T.N. Sully) and Exeter. Over 45% of the total was shipped from Cardiff with Lydney the next largest source at 35%; the other sources of significance being Newport at nearly 10%, Bullo Pill 5% and Swansea at less than 3%. Coal from Swansea and other ports in West Wales, including Saundersfoot, would generally have been anthracite, referred to as 'stone' coal and in dust form as culm. Sully & Co were advertising in 1872 as agents for 'the Parkend Coal and for Messrs James & Aubrey's CuIm and Stone Coal'. The latter had a colliery at Cwmllynfell which was on the Swansea Vale Railway (taken over by the Midland in 1874) branch to Brynamman.

BURNHAM N N•, I IIGHBRIDGE 2-.

CUMBWICH 3

PIACUR.IN

River Parrett Quays I 1 BURNHAM PIER IZ HI(iHBRIDGF CI III l'ON IRINI 3 COMBWICH Pil 1. 4 DUNBALL WI !AU S&D WHARF

!6 DOCKS (1,o„ 18911 BIZIDGWATFR 7 'DOWN QUAYS 8 HUNTWORTII BASIN or, 144 I )

After the opening of the tunnel an increasing proportion of the shipments by sea up the Parrett was lost to direct rail with the cost savings of transshipment and competitive railway through rates. However, initially it appears that the GWR recognised it was not in its interest to offer lower rates immediately as the loss of business from Bridgwater could be appreciable. That it had Sully & Co particularly in mind is obvious as the following extract from its 1883 report shows: the change should not be accelerated by any avoidable reduction of the rates of the railway, not only because it would be a loss to the company to take such course but also because such a step would give great offence to the merchants and inhabitants of Bridgwater who will suffer by the diversion of trade and will under any circumstances be sure to ask for a reduction of the rates now charged from that

536 place ... It is stated that it is as much as they (Sully) can do now to compete with the present rates by rail and should those rates be lowered on the opening of the Severn Tunnel without a corresponding reduction in the local rates from Bridgwater Messrs Sully & Co cannot hope to maintain their business. The Sullys did maintain their business but clearly changes had to be made. The decline in Parrett shipping between 1885 and 1895 was over 37%. Vessel movements at Dunball, for example, in 1905 showed a 44% drop over the movements in 1883.30 The Sully centenary records that the tunnel opening 'necessitated an altered policy, the sailing vessels were gradually sold, and the number of railway wagons increased to over 600, and truck repairing works were established at Bridgwater, and later at Lydney.' As has been seen even before the tunnel opened the total tonnage of coal imported had passed its peak. Bridgwater continued to decline and at the time of the Sully 1894 incorporation the reduction from 1879 was nearly 42%, dropping Bridgwater to ninth place in the UK league (excluding London and Ireland). Surprisingly, in spite of the railways, UK's total coastal coal imports increased by nearly 50% over this 1879- 95 period (London dramatically by nearly 94%). 31 The investment by Sully & Co in their own broad gauge rail wagons became a problem when the broad gauge was finally abolished in 1892. The B&E had announced in 1874 that they were going to lay down a third standard rail on all those portions of track not already mixed and in 1875 obtained an act to abandon the broad gauge. However in 1876 the B&E was taken over by the GWR and for several more years broad gauge continued to be used although by 1884 it was generally restricted to the through main line service to south Devon and Cornwall; an exception was the local Dunball coal train which mean that the broad gauge was retained at all stations and sidings between Dunball and Exeter.32 Sully's stock of broad gauge wagons based on Bridgwater would have continued to be used for this traffic. The extent to which the Sullys invested in wagons for their Forest of Dean traffic has not been examined (although a photograph dated around 1895 shows Sully & Co apparently still using their own wagons at Lydney after they ceased to have any interest in collieries).33 Shippers on the original Dean tramroads had to use their own wagons. When, in 1869, a railway was opened alongside the tramway from Lydney through Parkend it was broad gauge. However the mineral loop line, completed in 1872, was built as standard gauge with mixed track from Tufts Junction to the docks (a branch from the loop line then took the output of New Fancy away from the Forest of Dean railway). Also in 1872 the Severn & Wye begun the building of their realigned railway in standard gauge throughout.34 In the B&E districts the GWR eventually agreed that all remaining broad and mixed gauge be converted to standard gauge by May 1892; the mixed gauge 36 chain Dunball wharf branch and the 76 chain Bridgwater docks branch were part of this final conversion. McDermot records that in addition to the GWR's 767 goods wagons converted between January and July 1892 there were also 184 private wagons of which the largest number 75 belonged to Sully & Co (Sekon states that there were only ten firms owning broad gauge wagons).35 Sully's centenary history records that 100 wagons were sent to Swindon for conversion and rebuilt by the GWR; Sekon says that out of a total of 3,269 broad gauge wagons 792 were converted and that although most of the stock was sent to Swindon some were converted at Lostwithiel, Newton Abbot and Bridgwater (one wonders why Sully did not have their wagons converted at Bridgwater). McDermot says that the GWR were not liable for this conversion but 'assisted the owners financially'. When Sully & Co Ltd was incorporated the share in the ownership of the vessels held by J.G. and R.O. Sully passed to the company (except for the tug Petrel which remained in joint family ownership with the G.B. Sully interest). Thirteen sailing vessels and the two steamers Tender and Bulldog were taken over by the company, all were registered in Bridgwater and valued with their 'boats and apparel'. The sailing vessels ranged

537

r TEO. - -NM . MM. & C.114. tt" "g"! .124.

View from the main dock of Sully's coal yard around 1900 with Crowpill House in background, note the white cross and clear numbering on the wagons and the J. Nicholas sign. from the eighty three year old schooner Active bought in 1837 (she did not last much longer foundering in 1895) to the sixteen year old 131 ton ketch Ornate bought in 1891; also there were four vessels bought in 1873 and 1874, three of them new which included the Eliza Jane and Brothers built in Bridgwater. After incorporation the company bought the second hand iron 126 ton screw steamer Welsh Prince which brought the company's registered tonnage in 1894 to 1,676. In addition to the tug Petrel the joint interest with G.B. Sully bought a new wooden screw 43 ton steamer Princess May in 1894 but she was sold in 1897. The only other G.B. Sully interest in ship owning remaining in 1894 was in three small sailing vessels with a total tonnage of only 182 (the last vessel owned by the G.B. Sully interest was the 81 ton ketch Good Templar which after G.B. Sully's death was owned by his son FJ. Sully until 1911). In 1861 the total number of vessels registered in Bridgwater was 139 with a tonnage of 14,191, of which the Sully's share was 17% and 13% respectively; in 1910 the total was 75 with a tonnage of 4,652, Sully's share being less than 10% and 15% respectively (however out of seven steam vessels shown, the Sullys owned three). J.N. Sully (son of the Lydney Thomas Sully) joined the business in 1887 as a commercial representative and in 1899 became the manager in Lydney. He was to remain in the Forest of Dean area. In 1896 R.O. Sully's son Thomas J. Sully joined the company and in 1903 became the manager in Bridgwater. These two younger Sullys together with R.O. Sully were the three directors of the company at the time of the centenary in 1926. During the 1914-18 war the Sully company became the government representative for the control of coal distribution in Somerset. The war period would have seen an intensive use of the company's wagons and vessels. After the war it was to be a different story. Competitive conditions returned at the end of government controls in 1921. As the company centenary records the changed circumstances 'seriously affected the transport of coal by water, and today practically the whole business is Railway borne from Collieries to destination, and Bridgwater, as a port for the distribution of Coal in the West, has almost ceased to exist'. This gloomy review had of course followed a long coal strike and the general depressed state of the nation's economy. Sully's shipping however did not die, the company soldiered on throughout the twenties with the faithful steam colliers, Bulldog, Welsh Prince and Tender (built in 1886, 1871 and 1874 respectively!) but by 1930 only the Tender was left. In 1931 the company acquired the almost thirty year old stee1131 ton SS Enid, and then in August 1934 the over twenty year old stee1190 ton SS Tynesider (these were not the first Sully steel vessels as the new 255 ton SS Katherine had been bought in 1898 but it is doubtful if she could have discharged in the Bridgwater tidal basin and was sold in 1907). Tynesider was renamed, appropriately, Crowpill and so began the Parrett legend that was to last for over thirty years. Incidentally she was not the first Sully owned vessel to be given this name, a Bridgwater built ketch Crowpill had been bought in 1875 but 'hulked' in 1883. It is surprising though that the Sullys waited so long before using the name again. These little steam colliers then epitomised the coal trade on the Parrett and their black funnels with the plain upright white cross became the hallmark of the Sully company.36 The cross was also shown on their rail wagons. By 1939 trade had picked up sufficiently for a third steam collier to be added - the 122 ton SS Borderene. During the second world war coal distribution was again controlled but with the Sully company not in the dominant local position of the earlier war period. A casualty of the war was the Bordene, on the 10 January 1842 she was lost with all hands in the Bristol Channel - she was believed to have hit a mine. On the 21 May 1943 the Tender left Bridgwater dock for the last time and was laid up at Dunball (she was broken up later that year).37 But the Enid and the Crowpill still continued to trade into the post war years. In 1955 they were joined by the 129 ton SS Parret (sic) following a revival in trade, with Barry now an important loading port. The forty year old Parret was taken over from a Bridgwater company - Peace Ltd. Alfred Peace had operated a

539 regular shipping service between Bridgwater, Bristol and Cardiff since the early nineteen hundreds with his SS Devon and then from 1929 with the Parret. Peace regularly carried local wheat to Cardiff or Avonmouth and brought back flour, he occasionally carried coal.38 In 1959 both the Enid and the Parret were broken up and replaced by the 199 ton motor vessel Leaspray, the Sullys only vessel of this type. The Crowpill and the Leaspray continued the trade into Bridgwater until 1966 when the former was broken up and the latter sold. The Bridgwater Mercury for 17 May 1966 paid tribute to the Bridgwater born Captain Searle stepping ashore for the last time to be 'presented with a farewell cheque in recognition of his 37 years with the company. The presentation made by Mr M.A. Rowe, general manager and director in the way both of them preferred it to be: quietly and without fuss'.

19ll Fr SIPA ',on/es OSOM ms:' Apd.F.,40 w4,c4 190 c et0S31111, 4401,, or, e,“ ,

The SS Crowpill in the channel — a painting by Edward Paget-Tomlinson.

R.O. Sully had died aged seventy eight in 1928 leaving his son Thomas, who had already effectively taken over in charge of the company. TJ. Sully was to remain at the helm throughout the war years and into the post war period. He had become involved locally in Bridgwater life as a magistrate and was one of the port's pilotage commissioners, he replaced his father as a director of the Bridgwater gas company. In earlier days the gas works on the river had been supplied by barges but the author remembers in the 1940s the Sentinel steam lorries running from Sully's yard through the town for this trade. TJ. Sully did not retire until the 1960s and it was fitting that old Tom' Sully was to be the last of the Sullys associated with the business, the wheel of a Thomas Sully had come full circle, in particular when local coal merchants George Bryant & Son joined the Sully company in the Crowpill yard. In 1955 the yard was modernised; up until this time the yard's methods of working had hardly changed since its inception .39 The following extract, quoted verbatim from an anonymous letter to the author, gives a flavour of the old yard and the latter-day trade in the docks:

540 I worked at the docks in the mid 50s a steam crane which moved up and down on a rail track which would unload the coal boat. Usually two (vessels) in the small basin at one time, one would unload while the other waited on the other side to allow the sand dredger Steep Holm and also timber boats go into the large dock to unload. The crane operated two large buckets, men would shovel the coal, which would be more of a coal dust into the buckets. When full, the steam crane with piston chugging, would life the bucket over the wall into the yard, into waiting coal trucks, one hit with a hammer and the bucket would spin over tipping the coal dust into the rail trucks. When full one's talking about 20 tons they were moved by horse power, I mean large shire horses on to a turntable in the corner of the yard and moved into position ready for the steam train from Bridgwater Station to collect. The high cost of manual unloading vessels with a geriatric steam crane in the 1950s clearly required remedial action. The mobile crane on the quay outside the yard was replaced by an electric one fixed on a high platform inside the yard and with its long jib and mechanical grab could unload from vessels not only directly into wagons but also into road vehicles and ground storage areas. Ground conditions inside the yard had become intolerable and the company was forced to make improvements to accommodate the increasing use of the road vehicles. Extensive areas of the yard were surfaced with concrete and new coal bays built radiating in the arc of the new crane jib. The decline in the use of coal and the growth of oil prompted a brief flirtation with Esso for the farm fuel business, with tanks installed in the yard, but the company's heart was not in it (the investment made for the fuel business was later reimbursed by Esso, who presumably had withdrawn their franchise from the company).4° At Lydney coal shipments slowly declined as the Forest of Dean mines closed, most of them had shut by 1962 (Northern United remained open until 1965). Parkend Deep Navigation had closed in 1928 and New Fancy in 1944 with the mineral loop railway severed in 1951.The last remaining Dean collieries shipping through Lydney for Sully & Co were Northern United (off the Churchway branch with direct rail to Lydney not possible after 1949), Eastern United (between Cinderford and Bullo with direct rail links closed 1951) and Cannop (above Speech House Road) which when it closed in 1960 was the last pit able to ship directly by rail into Lydney docks.41 'Cannop Large' was probably the last Dean coal brought by sea to the Crowpill yard. The older wagon tips in Lydney docks had gradually been taken out of use, the two on the north side in 1927, and in 1960, following the shutting of Cannop, the main Lower Dock branch closed and Lydney's long tradition of shipping coal had ceased. In Bridgwater the siding into the Crowpill yard was closed in December 1965 and with the last vessel sold in 1966 the yard became a road only operation. The whole of the Bridgwater docks branch line closed in 1967. 1969 was a fateful year for many of Bridgwater's traditional traders, the closure of the gas works, the last of the roofing tile manufacturers in liquidation (Colthurst Symons), and the last commercial vessel to use the dock (the German coaster Ann Ohl with timber from Finland).42 InJuly 1971 Bridgwater docks officially closed. In 1972 Cawood Solid Fuels Ltd was trading out of 46 Northgate, the postal address of the Crowpill yard. Sully & Co together with Bryant had been taken over by Thrutchley a wholly owned subsidiary of Cawood Holdings Ltd. The legal entity of Sully & Co Ltd ceased trading in 1972 and was finally dissolved on 17 February 1979. Under Cawood the yard continued to be used for coal for several years with significant tonnages brought in by road for both bagged and bulk distribution but eventually, when the area became scheduled for residential development, the business was transferred to a yard in Chilton Trinity (where coal is still dispensed by Charrington). The emptied Crowpill yard with the charred skeleton of a building roof (following a fire in a former office) became a scene of dereliction. Crowpill House had long ceased to be a 'gentleman's residence' having been converted into flats but they too were finally demolished. Rail track in the yard that had not been

541 concreted over was also lost under years of accumulated coal dust or scrub and it was not until the 1995 clearance that it was realised how much of the original track had remained in place. Now that smart new housing has transformed the site an old coal yard is easily forgotten, but not so the little colliers that fed it. This review is concluded by an extract from a letter, published in the Bridgwater Mercury for 8 March 1966, from W.A. Lawrence of Combwich paying tribute to the Crowpill as she made her way down river and under her own steam to the breakers yard. It seems a fitting epilogue to the Sully story. Ever shall we remember the familiar outline of the Crowpill and the famous sound will re-echo in our ears when we remember with sincere affection the familiar plonk-plonk of her condenser pumps, the famous ring of the firemen's shovel and the sturdy twin beat of her double expansion engine. Sweet music of the sea gone into history. Acknowledgements I acknowledge with thanks the following for assistance in providing information: R.A. Cooke, Rod Fitzhugh, A.P. Harvey, Tony Haskell, A.A. Lillington, A. Lovering, Ian Manning, Brian Murless, E. Paget Tomlinson, Ian Pope, Michael Stuckey, Angus Watkins and Colin Wilkins; in addition Edward Paget-Tomlinson kindly agreed to the reproduction of his Crowpill painting and Brian Murless commented helpfully on a draft of the article. References (SRO refers to the Somerset Records Office at Taunton) 1. For the history of Bridgwater docks and canal see BJ. Murless, Bridgwater Docks and the River Parrett, Somerset County Library 1983, and Tony Haskell By Waterway to Taunton, Somerset Books, Tiverton 1994. For the river see Rod Fitzhugh Bridgwater and the River Parrett in Old Photographs, Alan Sutton, Stroud 1993. The article by C.H. Heard, 'Bridgwater - its Docks, Canal, River Navigation, and Railways', R&CHSJournal,Vol. XXVII No. 8, July 1983, provides a useful summary of the area but unfortunately does not mention Sully nor show the yard location. 2. Sully & Co Ltd Centenary 1826-1926, Sully & Co Ltd, Bridgwater 1926, gives details of early company and family history. Details of all Sully vessels and some family notes are taken from Graham Farr's unpublished analysis of Bridgwater's Shipping Registers: 'Sully & Co of Bridgwater Fleet List and Notes', 1961 (amended 1966), SRO: DD/FA /11/2 (the original shipping registers are under DD/RSH). 3. Listings refer to entries in trade directories for Bridgwater held in the Reference Library, Bridgwater and the Somerset Studies Library, Taunton. 4. SRO A /AXC 4-5. 5. 8-9 Vic. c.89. 6. The various B&E acts which led, inter alia, to the dock's rail connection were (1863) 26-27 Vic. c.160, (1866) 29-30 Vic. c.115, and (1867) 30-31 Vic. c.130. A copy of plans showing the line of the B&E 1836 bill's original Bridgwater branch is in the SRO: DD/SF 802. 7. Hunt & Co Directory1848. 8. E.T. MacDermot revised by C.R. Clinker, History of the Great Western Railway Vol.

542 2, Ian Allan, London, 1964, p.90. Colin Maggs, 'The Dunball Wharf Express, Bridgwater Mercury, 25 March 1987. 9. SRO: 1842 Puriton tithe map. Reference to Browne's line is made in J. Grierson 'Report Bridgwater Docks and Dunball Wharf', GWR, 1883, Public Record Office, RAIL 250 697. 10. MacDermot. 11. SRO: 1845 plan Q/RUp/192, 1865 plan Q/RUp/322. 12. J.W. Sully purchase of the Crowpill property shown in 1856 deeds held by C. Wilkins, The Docks, Bridgwater. 13. GWR 1883 dock report. 14. C. Hart, The Industrial History ofDean, David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1971 For Parkend history Ralph Anstis, The Story of Parkend, Douglas McLean, 1982. 15. Gloucestershire Record Office: Parkend 1881 sale prospectus, SL 96. 16. Hart. 17. H.W. Paar, The Great Western Railway in Dean, David & Charles/MacDonald 1965, p. 41 18. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers: UK Coal Imports and Exports 1868- 96. 19. C. Green, 'The Severn Trow', Archive Issue 12,12 December 1996. 20. Dock minute 7 Apri11884 (from Ian Pope files). 21. Bridgwater Mercury, 20 January 1886, J.W. Sully obituary. 22. Bridgwater Mercury, 22 May 1907, G.B. Sully obituary. 23. Companies House Cardiff, Sully & Co Ltd, 1979, dissolved company file. 24. Bridgwater Mercury, 19 June 1935, J.G. Sully obituary. 25. Bridgwater Mercury, 18 January 1928, R.O. Sully obituary. 26. SRO: 'Borough of Bridgwater Navigation Dues, Collection of Harbour Dues in Account with the Corporation of Bridgwater' (not referenced by SRO at March 1996). 27. H of C Parl. Papers. 28. GWR 1883 dock report. 29. SRO: tonnages discharged Dunba111882-83, DD/X /LYN. 30. SRO: DD/X /LYN & LGN seven months comparisons. 31. H of C Parl. Papers. 32. MacDermot. 33. Green Archive. 34. For a summary of railway developments see Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, Vol. V Forest of Dean 1996, pp. 350-4. For the Severn & Wye lines H.W. Paar, The Severn & Wye Railway, David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1973 and

543 I. Pope R. How P Karau, Severn & Wye Railway, Wild Swan, 1983. 35. G.A. Sekon, History of the Great Western Railway, Digby Long, London 1895. 36. See Rod Fitzhugh's many evocative illustrations, e.g., Enid, p. 69. 37. F.W. Lillington's Diary in possession of his son, A.A. Lillington, Bridgwater. F.W. Lillington was a 'fireman', i.e. stoker on the steam driven cable operated Bridgwater docks mud scraper. 38. Sedgemoor District Council, Blake Museum, Bridgwater: 'Bridgwater Port Outwards 1920-48' (from 1936 also shows 'Inwards'). 39. 'Broad-Gauge Tracks at Bridgwater', The Railway Magazine,1948 Sept/Oct p. 343, and 1955 Sept. p. 804, refer to original condition and improvements respectively. T.E. Somers 'Bridgwater Docks', Steam Days, Redgauntlet Publications, April 1995 p. 242 shows the layout from the air with the quayside steam crane and wagons in the yard in 1929. 40. Companies House. 41. Barker & Lovering coal loading at Lydney, letter from A. Lovering, Penarth. Summaries of rail closures R.A. Cooke, Track Layout Diagrams of the GWR and BR (WR) Section 37 Forest of Dean, R.A. Cooke, 1996, pp. iii-iv. 42. Bridgwater Mercury, 3 August 1971.

Deodand and the Railways BY BRIAN FREEBORN A deodand in English Law was a personal chattel (an animal or thing) which on account of its having caused the death of a human being was forfeited to the King for pious uses.1 The law distinguished between a thing in motion and a thing standing still. If a horse or other animal killed a person of any age, or if a cart run over and killed them, it was

544 forfeited as a deodand. On the other hand if the person fell from a cart then the deodand was only claimed if the person was of full age. If a man was climbing up a wheel of a cart and fell and died only the wheel was claimed as deodand, and only if it was moving would the whole card be claimed. The finding of a jury was necessary to constitute a deodand. In later times these forfeitures became so unintelligible in their purpose, so capricious and unjust in their operation that they became very unpopular and juries and judges found deodands of trifling value. A fatal railway accident at Howden in August 1840 was caused by an iron casting on a goods vehicle falling on the line and derailing the passenger coaches. A deodand of £50 was awarded against the Hull and Selby Railway Company.2 Three months later a more serious accident at the junction of the Leeds and Selby Railway and the York and North Midland Railway occurred, when a stationary train was run into by the following luggage train, resulted in a £500 deodand being required.3 These values show that juries were not taking railway accidents lightly and could have caused severe loss of profits. They were abolished on September 1st 1846 (9 and 10 Vict c.62) but had they remained in operation they would have caused great inconvenience to the new railways which in their early days were incurring frequent loss of life. An act to compensate families for persons killed in accidents was introduced in 1846 (9 and 10 Vict c.93). If anyone has any further information on deodands and their effect, I would be pleased to receive it. Local newspapers report such cases, though as can be seen from the date of abolition, they were not often used in railway accidents. References 1. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Ninth Edition, 1877. 2. York Courant, August 15,1840. 3. York Courant, November 21,1840.

The Lambton D Pit Wooden Waggonway BY MIT. LEWIS By great good fortune, when Sunderland City Council was undertaking ground investigation work on the site of Lambton Cokeworks near Fencehouses (NZ 319511) in August 1995, Chris Goldsmith, a local railway historian, was watching. To his astonishment he saw the blade of a bulldozer sliding neatly along the top of a pair of wooden rails; other interested parties were informed; work was stopped; and next year a full-blown and painstaking excavation was carried out by the City of Newcastle Archaeological Unit under the guidance of Ian Ayris, to whom I am indebted for

545 information and the photograph. The whole site was then backfilled pending a decision on how, if at all, the remains might be conserved and displayed. Lambton D Pit was sunk in about 1789-91 and remained in intermittent production, alternating with periods when the shaft was used only for pumping, for over forty years. It was served by the Lambton Waggonway whose main line to the Wear (built in probably 1770) ran close by. The tracks uncovered - no less than ten of them - were branch sidings that fanned out to the colliery buildings, or in a few cases past them. These buildings, as far as they could be investigated, were the boiler houses for the winding or pumping engines. When the pit was in production, coal was loaded on to waggons here; when it was only pumping, coal was brought in and dumped on brick platforms by the boiler houses. The sidings found are probably not all of the same date, and doubtless few if any are original; indeed, given the relatively short life of wooden track, it is likely that most if not all of the surviving timbers are of early nineteenth rather than late eighteenth century date.

Part of the Lambton Waggonway.

546 About 150m of wooden track survives more or less complete and in astonishingly good condition, while at least as much again has rotted or been lifted and is evidenced only by sporadic sleeper impressions. The sleepers are of oak, often very crude and crooked and laid at varying intervals (40-85cm), and show no sign of wear from horses' hooves. Most of the rails, of oak or fir, are also roughly shaped, though less so. Pegged to the sleepers, they average about 12cm wide by 8.5cm deep and vary in length from 125 to 3.30m. All the tracks are single ways: that is, they do not have the two-tier rails of the double way. The gauge is about 1.30m or 4ft 3in (documentary records give the Lambton gauge as 4ft 2in). There are many signs of repair and re-use of timbers. At two places there are check rails laid, as nowadays, inside the running rail, and in one case heavily buttressed on the inside against sideways pressure from the flange. Out of an original total of probably seven sets of points, two survive largely intact as do parts of another that has been disconnected. Surprisingly, there are no moving parts, the point rails themselves being fixed open for both directions. Either, presumably, loose tapered blocks were inserted to close one or other of the flangeways, or (as implied by the absence of wear on the sleepers) the horse walked on one side of the track or the other and the consequent sideways pull guided the waggon in the desired direction. Even more oddly, where the diverging rails crossed, only one is provided with a flangeway. The wheel flanges of a waggon following the other track were left to bump over the uninterrupted rail, leaving obvious traces of wear. Hitherto only two examples of wooden waggonways have been properly recorded, a very short stretch at Bedlam Furnace at Ironbridge and a rather longer one, poorly preserved but including another apparently fixed set of points, at Bersham Ironworks near Wrexham. The Lambton find is of a different order of magnitude altogether, and is enormously impressive both as a complex and in detail. It offers welcome confirmation of permanent way construction, otherwise known only from contemporary documents and pictures; and it sheds new light on the standard of workmanship. Very likely the main lines were more sophisticated than these crude sidings, but the simplicity of the pointwork is quite unexpected. Lambton also shows that such things can survive against the odds, and indicates the kind of site to keep a watchful eye on in the future.

547 From the RCHS Photographic Collection, No. 5. Print RAC69 /32A

Another unidentified station photograph from the R.A. Cook Collection. The county is Yorkshire, and there are identified locations before and after this view on the negative strip, these being Oakenshaw (MR) and Featherstone (L&Y). If anyone feels they can identify the location, please contact: Stephen Duffell, Hillcroft, Ford, Shrewsbury SY5 9LZ, or telephone 01743 851154 (weekends), or 01625 514828 (office hours). RAC140 (reproduced in July 1997 Journal) This print shows the remaining building on the site of the original Royston and Notton station in the West Riding of Yorkshire, which lay just to the north of Royston Junction. It was taken from a road overbridge at this point, looking SE (grid reference SE366132). Royston and Notton station was opened by the Midland Railway, and lay on the Masboro to Leeds line, closing on 1/7/1900 when the second Royston and Notton station opened about one mile to the south. The two tracks in the foreground diverged at Royston Junction from the main line and were the MR West Riding lines to Dewsbury and Thornhill Midland Junction, opened 3/7/1905 to Crigglestone and throughout 1/7/1909. These lines were closed and lifted in 1968. The middle two tracks (with fresh ballast) were the passenger lines with the slow lines by the old building, the junction between these tracks showing on the right of the print. Today there are only two tracks at this site, only one of which is used and this sees a train once a week at the most to Redfearn glass. The shadowy mountain in the background is the spoil tip of Monkton Main Colliery, which was situated on the eastern side of the MR line. Its size suggests a date of around 1950. At the extreme right hand side of the print is the viaduct of the MS&L

548 Barnsley local line to Ryhill and Crofton and the West Riding and Grimsby Joint line (Great Central & Great Northern), which crossed the MR line just south of Royston Junction. In the trees in a deep cutting to the rear of the station building lies the Barnsley Canal (Aire & Calder Navigation). At this point the canal was slightly wider to allow coal barges to be loaded by shoots from the Ryhill Main Colliery, which lay about one mile NE. The coal was brought by a steam worked narrow gauge tramway to the shoots and standard gauge transfer sidings. In the 1950s major work was carried out on the MR line that involved culverting the canal where it crossed under the railway at the site of Royston Junction, and this could account for the newly ballasted track on the Leeds lines. My thanks to Gordon Green and John Edginton for their help in providing identification and information with this subject.

Correspondence Request for Information The photograph appears to be of a portable engine manufactured in the USA about 1900. Some were designed with fireboxes to burn straw, cane, wood chippings, etc., which might explain its location. The large flywheel suggests that it operated something fast like a buzz saw. R.W. KIDNER In response to David Pedley's query in the November Journal, I would suggest that the photograph is of a portable steam engine. It is probably of British manufacture but is not a traction engine as the wheels are not powered. It could be towed around, by horse or anything else, to where a power source was needed and such things were quite common both in agriculture and industry here and in the colonies. It is almost certainly not an ex-railway locomotive. MICHAEL MESSENGER

Moving the Goods I was gratified to read Mr Higgins' letter in the November 1997 Journal; it is interesting to see one's labours produce a response, and I do hope that there will be further discussion of the issues raised in my article. Perhaps I may continue that discussion myself by dealing with two issues raised indirectly by Mr Higgins. First, should those who are historians discuss present-day policies, as Mr Higgins, by implication, advocates? Many historians have felt that they should pursue history for its own sake and regard any involvement in policy as a separate pursuit. However, some of our greatest historians in this century have made no distinction between history and contemporary political involvement. I suspect that the work of two waterways historians, Charles Hadfield and Tom Rolt, was enhanced by their interest and involvement in policy. Whilst I know less about railway history, I doubt if it will be possible to write about the long period of public ownership without considering some views of public or private ownership, or of the governments which

549 introduced and demolished public ownership. My own interest in carrying on inland waterways has developed since I joined the Inland Shipping Group, which is committed to the 'sensibly modernised waterways, has already investigated overseas practices, and has produced the kind of reports (not quite 'feasibility studies') whose absence Mr Higgins bemoans. I certainly favour the construction of large new waterways as part of more environmentally appropriate transport policies. However, I do not think that such waterways would bear much resemblance to the historic smaller waterways, and (if this is the implication) it does not help the cause of modern freight waterways to do other than depict the decline of the smaller waterways as an inevitable process of creeping obsolescence. Mr Higgins raises a second point, that of the place of conspiracy in transport history; he refers to 'the deliberately dis-integrated transport system'. I have recently read Winfried Wolf's Car Mania, in which he suggests that public transit systems in both United States and Germany were run down in order to build and support the automobile industry and the kind of consumer society which accompanied it. On a smaller scale, David Henshaw's The Great Railway Conspiracy accuses the British government of implementing the Beeching cuts in order to foster road-building interests and the road haulage lobby. It is easy to dismiss such contentions in the name of factual historical accuracy, but the doubt remains, that perhaps they may be right. I do not think that there was a conspiracy to run down freight carrying on Britain's inland waterways, although the leadership of the Inland Waterways Association undoubtedly thought that there was one. However, I do think that it is appropriate to consider the possibility of conspiracy, and to speculate about alternative ways in which past events might have developed. The investigator of history may well be able to uncover conspiracies and to develop alternative interpretations. I would be delighted if somebody were to take my very limited piece and subject that to an alternative analysis - so long as it is based on evidence. Is this the beginning of a debate? JOSEPH BOUGHEY

Book Review I was rather surprised to see that Dennis Hadley felt able to review Jean Stone's "Voices from the waterways" so uncritically. (November 1997 Journal, page 441). It seemed to me when I read this book that although the author/compiler was undoubtedly a good writer, the book suffered greatly from an apparent lack of knowledge of the waterways on her part. It seems that she is better known as a writer, lecturer and consultant in connection with historic gardens, and this could well have accounted for her apparent lack of relevant specialist knowledge and hence the inaccuracies that occurred. When reviewing the book for a waterways magazine, I felt obliged to mention these lapses, although I accepted that, in some cases, they obviously emanated from her interviewees. Even so, if a book is to have any historical validity it is incumbent upon the interviewer to note the error, and perhaps query it in the course of the interview, so giving the interviewee an opportunity to correct it. Nowhere in Jean Stone's book was there any indication that this had been done. I would sum this book up by saying that it is strong on atmosphere but weak on facts. It seems obvious that anyone reviewing a book for an historical society should be particularly concerned about factual accuracy, and I feel that Dennis Hadley rather let members down in that respect. On one point, however, I would definitely agree with him. As he says, a more compact paperback edition might possibly achieve better sales. Certainly, at £16.99 it seemed rather expensive, and I have not been tempted to

550 buy it - and, in case members are wondering, I did not get a free review copy either! STANLEY A. HOLLAND

Railways in Towns The mention in Journal No. 156, page 157, of Duddeston viaduct should surely refer to the GWR's intention to gain access to Curzon Street: the whole angle of alignment is incompatible with access to New Street. RICHARD MAUND

What Constitutes a Railway? In the penultimate paragraph of his letter in Journal No. 156, page 198, Graham Bird offers an alternative definition of "a railway". His clause (a) seems to me to include maglev systems (the erstwhile Birmingham International station to airport line, for example) and VAL or other rubber tyred systems (Lille metro or the Gatwick south to north terminal link). Those Paris metro lines with rubber tyred trains are, I think, capable of carrying "pure" steel-wheeled trains and therefore within the definition of "railway". I wonder, however, whether he intended the other examples I have given to fall within his definition - and whether others would agree that they should qualify as "railways"? In his final paragraph he confirms that he seeks to exclude funfair lines (rightly, in my view), but his clause (b) also excludes rather more elaborate small-gauge lines, either because they may be considered marginal against the test of providing "transport" or because their layout is a balloon loop rather than end to end - what, then, would we call "miniature railways"? RICHARD MAUND

The New River Memorial at Great Amwell Although I have not seen the monument, I can supply the details missing from John Scivyer's letter. A photograph in A.E. Richardson, Robert Mylne, Architect and Engineer (London 1955), pl. 36, shows that the back side, invisible to Mr Scivyer, bears an English translation of the Latin on the front. The English version also appears in Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (1862 edition) Vol. i, 132. The two versions (with necessary corrections to the Latin as recorded by Mr Scivyer) are as follows: M[emoriae] S[acrum] Sacred to the Memory of Hugonis Mydelton baronetti Sir Hugh Mydelton Baronet Qui aquas hasce feliciter Whose Successful Care Adspirante favore Regio Assisted by the patronage of his King in urbem perducendas curavit Conveyed this Stream to London Opus immortale An Immortal Work Homines enim ad deos since man cannot more nearly Nulla re propius accedunt imitate the Deity Quam salutem dando than in bestowing health The photograph also shows that the fifth line on the downstream face reads "this important aquaduct [sid."J.W. Gough, Sir Hugh Myddelton , Entrepreneur and Engineer (Oxford 1964), 85 and 143, makes it clear that the memorial and all its inscriptions was the work of Mylne in 1800. MIT. LEWIS

551 Hinckley - Stoke Golding A recent bequest by a friend included a number of newspaper cuttings, including one which enables me to add a small postscript to John Gough's piece on this strange white elephant of a railway (Journal, XXVIII No. 1 (March 1984) p.14). Dated 10 May 1927 and taken I think from The Daily Mail, this report states that the LM&SR had agreed to lease the right of way to the Midland motor car manufacturers, who intended to concrete it over and use it for testing new cars at full speed over its entire length. "The banks on either side", the report concludes, "form a natural 'grand- stand' and it is hoped that motor clubs may use the track for their speed contests". As John Gough makes no reference to this imaginative plan, it seems likely it did not materialise. It is perhaps surprising that no part of the many miles of abandoned railway in Britain has ever found use for road testing or motor car racing, though a relatively small mileage has been converted at the taxpayers' expense to form normal public roads. ALAN A. JACKSON

Book Reviews FESTINIOG RAILWAY - A VIEW FROM THE PAST, Peter Johnson, 112pp, 240 x 175mm, 178 photographs, map, boards, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2512 6, £14.99. As the title suggests, this book is concerned with the early years of the Festiniog Railway and its progress until 1946. It consists largely of a collection of historic photographs of trains, locomotives, stations and scenes along the line. Chapter 1 presents us with a brief history of the railway from its earliest days until 1946, illustrated by well-captioned old photographs, mainly around Boston Lodge and Minfford. Chapter 2, 'A trip up the line, consists almost entirely of photographs of scenes along the railway, many of them no longer visible because of tree growth. Those around Tanygrisiau, where the entire scene has since been changed by the reservoir, are particularly interesting, as also is one showing Moelwyn Tunnel Cottage (built in 1881) and the north tunnel entrance in 1887. Chapter 3, on locomotives, contains a substantial text and a fine assortment of old photographs, as does the following chapter on carriages and wagons. Short sections on the Spooner family, the photographers, Duff ws, the Welsh Highland Railway and a comprehensive bibliography complete the book. For anyone interested in the Welsh narrow-gauge railways, and in particular the Festiniog (spelt with one T as in the Act) this book is certainly worth having. The photographs are well reproduced on good quality paper; even the very old ones are remarkably clear. Many of the captions contain interesting information. JOHN MARSHALL

THE EDEN VALLEY RAILWAY, Robert Western, 112pp, numerous photos and diagrams, soft covers, The Oakwood Press, 1997, ISBN 0 85361 486 5, £8.95. Justification for the most dramatic Pennine crossings with its 1,370 foot summit at Stainmore, fragile Bouch viaducts and gigantic snowdrifts is usually given as a need to link the north-east coalfields with the iron ore and associated furnaces of Cumbria. In fact, the vital link between the South Durham & Lancashire Union Railway and the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith, the subject of this book, was promoted because one

552 Admiral Elliot and others deplored the Lancaster & Carlisle Railway bypassing their Westmorland county town of Appleby. The line was to rectify this with a railway connecting Appleby with the L&C at Penrith and with the embryonic SD&LUR at Kirkby Stephen. Engineering was easier than its eastern neighbour. Opening in 1862 the line made a few later modifications, to allow through running on to the CK&PR and another for a short lived service to Cumbria from the late Settle & Carlisle Railway at Appleby. The two-way traffic of iron and coal never came up to expectations so the Eden Valley Railway traffic was mainly passenger and some freight. That is not to say that nothing of note ever happened on the line and the story is well told and well illustrated. JOHN DENTON

THE NELSON AND YNYSYBWL BRANCHES OF THE TAFF VALE RAILWAY, Colin Chapman, 144pp, 97 photographs, 23 maps, 10 line diagrams, soft covers, Oakwood Press, 1997, ISBN 0 85361 512 8, £10.95. This is a clear and detailed study of its subject. The Taff Vale Railway, the author tells us, had 30% of its mileage as thinly-trafficked branches: here are two of them. The ten chapters take us through the early history, the maturity, the decline and end of these two lines, complex in layout, different in history. The traffics, local and through, the reasons for building, the use of "railmotors", the competition from road traffic, the long decline, are all well described. The varied illustrations include the rival tram and trolley bus - but some of railway locations are repetitive: perhaps there are too many for a total of about ten miles of route. The maps and sketches are good, although one (p50) misses out a section of line. A sketch of the layout at Pontypridd - the main line station which served the branches and whose rebuilding is treated in detail - would have been helpful. On the whole this history, researched from primary sources, is exemplary both for itself and as a microcosm of British branch lines. IAN MOSS

SOUTHERN BRANCH LINES (Second Edition) CJ. Gammen, 192pp, 280 x 220mm, 316 b&w illustrations and maps, ticket and poster reproductions, boards, Oxford Publishing Co., Sparkford, Somerset, 1997, ISBN 0 86093 537 X, £24.99. Very brief county by county descriptions of lesser lines are followed by sometimes excellent photographs, generally two to a page, printed on gloss paper. Most illustrations date from BR days, but some are very much earlier. Many, but not all, are dated. Coverage is uneven, with a bias towards the more picturesque and now closed branches, so that a casual reader would little suspect the extent to which the Southern was electrified. Some rural branches kept up appearances almost to the end, but others show the result of years of neglect. The number of illustrations has almost doubled since the author's 1976 book on this topic, and there are new photographs compared with the first edition under the present title that appeared ten years later. There is an index of lines, which includes dates of closure to passengers. The book appears to be aimed at the nostalgia market, but many of the illustrations are sufficiently detailed to interest the railway historian and serious modeller. DENNIS HADLEY

THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS STEAM LOCOMOTIVE - FLYING SCOTSMAN.

553 Compiled by David Clifford, 96pp, 235 x 170mm, lavishly illustrated, card covers, 1997, ISBN 1 900 46702 X, Finial Publications, in collaboration with the Flying Scotsman Association, £9.99 or on special offer from the publisher at 36 Park Road, Swanage BH19 2AD, at £8.75 including postage. The claim in the title may be extravagant, but it is true: what other locomotive has been the length and breadth of Britain, crossed Canada and the United States and spent a year in Australia? Now approaching its eightieth birthday, this evergreen example of steam locomotive engineering has an operational history which would never have been dreamed about, even by Nigel Gresley, when he planned his first Pacific. 'Flying Scotsman' is a complete and comprehensive narrative and photographic history of the engine, illustrating it in all its mechanical and cosmetic variations and describing its achievements and setbacks, its speed records and nonstop runs. Personal accounts of their stewardship are given by the engine's three owners since it left BR service in 1963 - Alan Pegler, Sir Williams McAlpine, and Dr Tony Marchington. The photographs are a joy, showing the engine in conditions from the slightly grimy workaday to the gleaming finish when prepared for an exhibition; generally with one tender, but sometimes with two and even, on one occasion, suspended from a crane with no tender at all. The majority of photographs are new, several collections have been researched to discover photos to be seen for the first time. The list of acknowledgements is an indication of the wide coverage of source material. Altogether to be commended, a valuable contribution to locomotive history. GEOFFREY HUGHES

J.G. ROBINSON A LIFETIME'S WORK, David Jackson, 234pp, 215 x 150mm, profusely illustrated, hard covers, Oakwood Press, 1996, ISBN 085361 497 0, £18.95. There were perhaps fifty or so chief locomotive engineers of the railways of Britain before individualism gave way to anonymity. A small number of these have been the subject of biographies, but few have been accorded the depth of treatment given to John George Robinson in David Jackson's recent book. Moreover, good coverage is given to the erstwhile Great Central Railway, which is presented in its true position among the leading pre-grouping systems. Robinson came from a railway family, his father having been born in Northumberland, and who, in his youth, enjoyed riding on Thomas Hedley's 'Puffing Billy'. However, he spent most of his working life on the Great Western, where he was followed by his sons, James and John, who had the benefit of a Swindon apprenticeship. In 1884 John obtained the position of assistant to Henry Appleby, himself an ex-GWR man, who was locomotive superintendent of the Waterford & Limerick Railway in Ireland. Appleby's declining health led to Robinson assuming full responsibility until, in June 1900, he was appointed to the important position of locomotive engineer of the Great Central, a post he was to hold until the grouping of 1923. This move required courageous decisions, both on the part of the Board of the Great Central and of Robinson himself, in view of his then limited experience. The GCR were in difficulties at the time, suffering from the effects of a substantial expansion of their system, yet with a locomotive fleet inadequate for the main tasks required of it. There was no hesitation on the part of the Board to appoint Robinson and it is clear that he had a powerful mentor in Samuel Johnion, locomotive superintendent of the Midland Railway, who had formed a high opinion of Robinson's potential abilities. During his 23 years at Gorton, Robinson produced a series of locomotive designs which

554 were characterised by their solid construction and elegant outline, matched by coaches and wagons which in some features were in advance of their time. He was an innovator, especially in the field of superheating and left to the LNER a sturdy fleet of locomotives, further examples of which were later to be built for use in other parts of the system. His 2-8-0 goods engine was adopted for service in France in the Great War and large numbers were built then and immediately afterwards. Highlights in the author's commentary include a comparison between Robinson's designs and similar ones by Churchward for the Great Western, in which the case is argued for Robinson's preferences in frame design and level of superheat. A strenuous effort is made to establish the thinking behind Robinson's only apparent departure from an orderly design sequence, that of his 4-6-0s. David Jackson has written the entire Robinson story, his family life, neatly interwoven with his career, and Oakwood have done a good job in producing a well designed and illustrated hardback. In contrast to so many of today's railway picture books, this is one which is like railway books used to be, full of material and comment, adequately enlivened by illustration. In particular, the colour photograph of JGR in his later life, featured on the back of the jacket, is superb. GEOFFREY HUGHES

THE POWER OF THE PATRIOTS, J.S. Whiteley and G.W. Morrison, 128pp, 280 x 220mm, 255 b&w illustrations, boards, Oxford Publishing Co., Sparkford, Somerset, 1997, ISBN 0 86093 232 X, £19.99. An attractive addition to an established series of photo albums. The text is no more than a page of introduction plus a list of locomotives with building and withdrawal dates, but the longer captions are quite informative. Most photographs are dated. This class, based on the Royal Scot chassis and a rebuilt Claughton boiler, enjoyed only a few years in the limelight before many of their rosters were taken over by Stanier locomotives. Later, 18 were fitted with the Stanier 2A boiler and became the equivalent of rebuilt Scots, with which they shared main line duties. Unrebuilt examples soldiered on, most covering more than a million and a quarter miles during a thirty year lifetime. The evolution of the class is shown, followed by two illustrations of each of the 52 locomotives. Subsequent sections depict Patriots in action in particular areas and on shed. Many of the photographs, especially those that depict an engine at different periods, will be useful to modellers. DENNIS HADLEY

ANDERTON FOR ORDERS, Tom Foxon, 152pp, 8 full page drawings, 2 maps, soft covers, M&M Baldwin, 24 High Street, Cleobury Mortimer, DY14 8BY, 1997, ISBN 0 947712 33X, £7.50, post paid, £8.45. This is a reprint of one of the best first hand accounts of the life of a working boatman on the narrow canals. There are few dates in the book but there is history in every sentence. Foxon first worked for the boatman cum canal enthusiast John Knill in 1950, mainly carrying between the Mersey and the Midlands using single motors and, later, pairs. After a few years of this experience, he crewed for some of the traditional boaters including the legendary George and Sonia Smith and gained experience of the Grand Union and Warwickshire coalfield routes. There is much remembered detail about boats, voyages and cargoes. The glories of the book are the writing and the range of subjects covered. The writing, for example, leaves the reader with a clear appreciation of the special character for the working boatmen of the Shropshire Union main line, with an understanding of what it

555 was really like to have to work the Wolverhampton flight short handed in any weather at the beginning or the end of nearly every journey and of the stimulus of varied challenges overcome which kept people working on the cut when logic would have drawn them away. The range of subjects covered is too wide to set out in a review. It certainly includes perceptive portraits of many of the characters Foxon encountered and worked alongside, detailed descriptions of working practices no longer used and colourful cameos of the wider life and aspirations of a young man in the post war period. Its a cliche, but its not to be missed. This reprint has the same text as the first edition, including a useful glossary. An index has been added. MARTIN BARNES

LOST LINES: NORTH EASTERN, Nigel Welbourn, 128pp, approx. 230 photographs, 27 maps, soft covers, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2522 3, £12.99. This book completes a series covering the six original regions of British Railways. Nineteen of the twenty three chapters are devoted to individual lines or areas, the other four are general -two of them well written precis of the railway history and geography of the area, useful complements to the David & Charles Regional Histories. Each of the chapters dealing with "lost" lines has a useful sketch map, a pleasantly readable commentary on the history and present state of its subject (the author seems to have visited them all) and a variety of illustrations. The photographs are on the whole well selected though some are a bit small; there is a happy scattering of posters, time tables and large scale Ordnance Survey maps - in short an admirable survey of the subject. IAN MOSS

RATTY A HISTORY OF THE RAVENGLASS AND ESKDALE RAILWAY (Second Edition), W. McGowan Gradon, 50 + vi pp, 235 x 175mm, 48 photographs + 3 diagrams, soft cover, Plateway Press, East Harling, Norfolk, 1997, ISBN 1 871980 30 5, £7.95. The text is reprinted from the 1947 edition, complete with confusion about early petrol locomotives and acknowledgement for illustrations no longer present. A few corrections appear as brief footnotes. There is no appendix dealing with post war changes in management or innovations in locomotive design and train control. Three short chapters summarise the history of the line up to 1939, including freight as well as passenger traffic, which operated on three different gauges. Then follow descriptions of steam and petrol locomotives and rolling stock in use between 1915 and 1939. A couple of paragraphs deal with wartime and the immediate post war situation. A map of the line would have been helpful for readers not familiar with the area. The lack of a bibliography means that there is no mention of Greenly's Official Guide of 1923, despite the frontispiece, station layout diagrams and many locomotive details having been taken from that publication. The substantial history by WJ.K. Davies (1968, revised 1981) warrants not even a footnote. A completely new set of illustrations has been provided. Some of these photographs are fascinating, but many have already appeared elsewhere. Although the booklet is attractively produced, a direct reprint seems inappropriate. DENNIS HADLEY

THE RAILWAYS OF KEYNSHAM, Russell Leitch,160pp, 80 illustrations including 7 maps & drawings, card covers, RCTS, 1997, ISBN 090 1115 827, obtainable from Hon. Assistant Publications Officer, Dept. R, Hazelhurst, Tiverton Road, Bampton, Devon EX16 9LJ, £9.95 inc. p&p.

556 The RCTS has long been noted for the high standard of its publications on locomotives and this standard has been maintained in the current work on a very different subject. Keynsham is a small town between Bath and Bristol and has a station on the opening of this section of the GWR on 31 August 1840. It developed considerable commercial importance when Frys built their chocolate factory at Somerdale, adjacent to Keynsham, soon after WWI, their premises at Bristol having proved inadequate. There are no fewer than 19 chapters, covering all aspects of the subject of the title from early history to the proposed closure of the station in 1969, the subsequent improvements carried out and the increase in commuter traffic. Two chapters are devoted to 'Station Masters' and 'Personalities'. Not only Fry's own siding is described but also four other private sidings, the best known of which served Robinson's paper mill. All in all a very informative and well balanced account of the life and times of a small country station and the personnel associated with it. The price is most reasonable. NEIL PITTS

THE LIGHT RAILWAY ERA 1896-1996, John Scott-Morgan, 190pp, 247 x 177mm, 18 colour and over 250 b&w illustrations. Atlantic Transport Publishers, 1997, ISBN 0 906899 72 9, £19.95. This book has a misleading title. It describes 40 minor railways in England, Wales and the Channel Isles. Most received Orders under the 1896 Light Railways Act, but a dozen or so (e.g. Swansea & Mumbles, Colne Valley & Halstead) were not strictly "light" railways. Conversely, most "light" railways associated with main line companies (e.g. Welshpool & Llanfair, Leek & Manifold) are omitted. The book itself is actually a reprint of two of the author's earlier books, The Colonel Stephens Railways (1978) and British Independent Light Railways (1980), with 18 added colour photographs. Texts of the original books are largely unaltered, including clerical errors. Subsequent events are mentioned briefly in the introduction. Photographs are not quite as sharp as in the previous editions. For each railway there are usually 3-7 historic photographs, supported by a page of text containing details of locomotives and a potted history of the line. More space is allocated to the most well-known lines, mainly in Colonel Stephens' empire. With many evocative illustrations, the book captures the character and charm of Britain's fascinating minor railways, most of them long departed. ALLAN BRACKENBURY

ISLE OF WIGHT HERE WE COME, THE STORY OF THE SR'S I. OF W. SHIPS DURING THE WAR 1939-1945, Hugh J. Compton, 8Opp, card cover, two maps, 12 drawings and displays, 32 photographs, Oakwood Press, 1997, £6.95. This book is a welcome product of research by our member, Hugh Compton. It reflects the extent to which the old railway companies were in fact transport undertakings with numerous interests related to railways, including transport by road, air and water. The Southern Railway owned a large fleet, serving France, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight. Hugh Compton has written the story of the Isle of Wight vessels during the Second World War, with mention of what happened before and what came after. He includes both railway and naval service - perhaps the most tragic loss was that of the P.S. Portsdown on a normal Portsmouth to Ryde sailing. Although the channel was swept regularly, the mine that sunk here was probably dropped shortly

557 beforehand, in the darkness, by parachute. While mainly about the ships, a great deal of information is given about people and conditions of service, and much of this has a period flavour. For instance, when a German plane was shot down from the P.S. Southsea, the S.R. General Manager sent £10 for the benefit of the crew. This was spent on two armchairs for the Ward Room. Forward planning ranged from measures to be taken in the event of a German landing on the Isle of Wight to the post war replacement of vessels lost. G.H.R. Gardner, the Assistant for the Isle of Wight, unaware of the future on the island railway system, suggested the provision of a train ferry. Perhaps inevitably, there are the usual publisher's errors; insignificant, such as Strathnaven for Strathnaver, Colwill for Colwell, or 2,7000 for 2,700, or, more puzzling, incorrect cross-references, e.g, the names of Commanding Officers of S.R. vessels at Dunkirk differing between the text (p.20) and the appendices. The photographs are of great interest, especially the views taken of the Isle of Wight by the Germans in preparation for their landings. This is a fascinating book on an unusual subject. Its value is enhanced because, in addition to documentary sources, the author was able to contact people who were there at the time. EDWIN COURSE

CAMBRIAN RAILWAYS 1859-1947, C.C. Green, 224pp, 472 b&w illustrations, 3 maps, boards, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2508 8, £16.99. This is not a new book, but a reprint under one cover of the 1977 Cambrian Railways Album and the second volume that followed in 1981 With the exception of an author's note at the beginning and two paragraphs on recent preservation activities at the end, the content of the combined volume appears to be unchanged from the original parts. This means that the internal page references within what was the second volume are not correct, and that some captions have dated. Although not now billed as an album, this work is primarily a collection of captioned photographs. It is a rich and varied collection including people, buildings, bridges, signalling and ephemera as well as extensive coverage of locomotives, passenger and goods rolling stock. The pictures are presented in a broadly chronological order from the beginnings of the early constituents through the grouping to nationalisation. There is also brief coverage of the post nationalisation era and the Great Western line from Ruabon to Dolgelley. The Cambrian was a line full of character and the author, a leading expert on the line, brings this out in his text. The captions are substantial and informative, containing a wealth of historical and anecdotal material, but as a narrative they lack the continuity and cohesion of a fully history. The reader who is already knowledgeable about the Cambrian will take this in his stride, but those unfamiliar with the history and geography of the line may find it more difficult to follow the finer points of detail. With so many picture album railway books on the market, this one is clear of the pack in terms of the quality and quantity of its content. Overall it represents excellent value at the price. TIM EDMONDS

PORTRAIT OF THE ATLANTIC COAST EXPRESS, Stephen Austin, 112pp, profusely illustrated (monochrome), map, timetables, boards, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2472 3, £12.99. The title 'Portrait of ....' conjures up a vision of yet another album which this publication most certainly is not. It is a well illustrated account of the famous SR

558 express which ran between Waterloo and numerous West Country resorts from 1926 until 1964. The eight chapters cover a history of the service, operation, the route(s) over which the various sections of the train passed, locomotives and rolling stock employed, the resorts themselves, the two final chapters being entitled 'Miscellanea' and 'The Legend Lives On'. The selection of photographs is widespread and they have reproduced well. Timetables for different dates are appended. The map is, appropriately, of the lines in Devon and Cornwall served by the ACE (and other trains of the Southern Railway, one of which is the Lynton & Barnstaple!). It is, of course, a map from SR publicity, presumably of 1935 or earlier. Illustrations include a couple taken during the 1948 locomotive exchanges. This episode the author dismisses as the only definite result was to confirm the accountants in their belief that one steam locomotive was much like another. A book to be recommended to all interested in the Southern Railway and railways in the West Country generally. Good value. NEIL PITTS

ESSEX RIVERS AND CREEKS, Robert Simper, 86pp, 310 x 31mm approx., 149 photographs, 3 charts, boards, Creekside Publishing, 1995, ISBN 08519927 4 0, £14.95. I bought this in Colchester for nostalgia, but still more for the pictures of Thames Barges from my grandfather's fleet (and for the superb camera work of the Brightlingsea photographer Douglas Went). There is even a picture of 'stackies, such as I mentioned in my letter (Journal168), though not with brailed up sails. There is a large number of dates (mostly years, admittedly, but none the less useful) for a range of minor events, in an area so far little studied. Closing and re-opening dates for the Wivenhoe and Rowhedge ferries - rowboat ferries form an era of study waiting to be followed up. The book makes no pretence at scholarly detail, but the student will at least be able to identify the year in which to dig deeper. It should promote the study of transport history in an area where land and water meet. Certainly a book to delight sailormen and devotees of "God's own county". JOHN HIBBS

OPERATING BRITISH RAILWAYS HISTORY VOL. 2 MOTIVE POWER CHIEF, AJ. Somers, 104pp, A4 size, profusely illustrated, hard covers, Xpress Publishing, 1997, ISBN 1 90105601 5, £12.95, but on special offer to R&CHS members at £1195 postfree from Bookmart, 30 Hollincross Lane, Glossop SK13 8JQ. Jack Somers has collaborated with Bill Becket, another LNER stalwart, in writing and publishing this book of memories of the times when Jack was doing more than most in keeping the railway running in conditions of varying adversity - and, in war time, danger. Sir Nigel Gresley once said that the steam engine was the most human machine ever designed and, as much as anything, this book is an account of the interrelation between man and machine, the lives, strengths and weaknesses of both. Factual accounts of the author's days as a premium apprentice at Stratford, through successive promotions to his final appointment in helping with the introduction of diesels, portray clearly the life of the motive power assistant, supervisor and chief. Among his appointments, the author was ADMS at Peterborough in the 1950s, when detailed improvements to the Gresley Pacifics were under investigation and later introduced. Of particular interest are reproductions of two Standing Orders, one on reporting locomotive casualties and the other on valve gear setting. Both bring home to those of us who were not professional railwaymen the importance of attention to detail in these important aspects of locomotive working. Anecdotes are in abundance:

559 of the King's Cross cleaning squad sent to Old Oak to do a cleaning job on 'King George V' (presumably because they could do better than the local team) when a J3 came to the rescue of 'Mallard', and Jack's confession that he would rather have faced Field Marshal Montgomery than L.P. Parker. The book lacks an index and, strangely, the photographs are not individually attributed. But it is reasonably priced, and reproduction is to a high standard. The cover photograph is of 'Thane of Fife' heading north out of Peterborough, an expression of what the book is about. It is not to be missed. GEOFFREY HUGHES

Short Reviews THE EASTERN & NORTH EASTERN THEN & NOW, Gavin Morrison, 256 pp, c700 photo illus., hard covers, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2529 0, £29.99. A substantial volume of photographs of 300 locations in the English part of the erstwhile LNER. The 'then' is mainly the 1950s, the 'now', mostly taken by the author in the 1990s. Many well known places, locomotives and trains are featured, including some splendidly evocative panoramas of railway operating. Several of the forty year contrasts are startling, while other localities seem hardly to have changed, apart from the rolling stock. The accompanying text is personalised by the author and brings the reader right into the picture. The coverage is wide, and the content and reproduction are of high quality.

GREAT BRITISH LOCOMOTIVES, Michael Blakemore and David Mosley, 80 pp, 237 x 183 mm, 78 colour illus, hard covers, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2400 6, £12.99. A book of well-captioned colour photographs of the locomotives in the collection of the National Railway Museum, both in preservation and in their earlier careers. The brilliance of the original liveries is well brought out, notably the contrasting shades of green 'Green Arrow' and 'Lord Nelson'. Among the favourites must be the two Ivatt Atlantics heading the 'Plant Centenarian' in 1953 and two photos of a very workaday 'Duchess of Hamilton', one in green livery and one in red.

LONDON UNDERGROUND IN COLOUR, John Glover, 8Opp, 85 colour illustrations, boads, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2530 4, £12.99. Even the provincial faced with an occasional journey on the London Underground tends to adopt the zombie posture of the regulars intent only in getting from A to B without thought for the surroundings. Yet armed with these 85 superb colour illustrations (mostly by the author) and the very imformative captions, the traveller will be amazed at the variety and interest the system offers. It is all here - urban, rural, old and new, underground and overground - a fascinating publication.

THE HEYDAY OF THE WELSH NARROW GAUGE, Peter Johnson, 8Opp, all colour photographs, hard covers, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2511 8, £12.99.

560 This attractive volume is full of pictures taken only on sunny days. The photography could not recall the atmosphere of harsh winter days when men worked on open footplates of little locomotives in the teeth of gales and heavy rain sweeping across high mountainsides. Yte it reflects many aspects of narrow gauge revival by preservationists and, if it encourages readers to support such schemes, it will be rather more valuable than simply another picture book.

INDUSTRIAL LOCOMOTIVES OF WESTERN FRANCE, compiled by Keith Clingan, 192pp, 31 photographs and 1 map, card covers, Industrial Railway Society, Mr S. Geeson, IRS Publications (WF), 1 Clifton Court, Oakham, Rutland LE15 6LT, 1997, ISBN 0 901096 99 7, £12 (including p&p). A volume for the specialist rather than the general reader. All known locomotives, existing or long since consigned to the scrapheap, in the 17 departments concerned are listed but, as is stressed, there are many gaps in our knowledge. One of a series dealing with the whole of France, an innovation in this latest volume is the separation of entries for preservation sites within each departmntal section. Useful bi-lingual passages and a very useful book for the traveller's pocket.

ON SOUTHERN LINES, Roy Hobbs, 8Opp, 192 x 245mm, 80 photographs, boards, Ian Allan, 1997, ISBN 0 7110 2462 6, £12.99. This is an album of colour photographs, one to a page, taken during the last decade of steam in the Southern Region. Each shows a steam engine. Most were taken by the author, who has produced some magnificent portraits of trains and the surrounding landscape. There is much vareity: most major SR classes are seen, at locations from Ashford to Wadebridge, on shed or on goods, parcels express and branch passenger trains. In short, a fine reminder of steam on the Southern in the early 1960s.

BRITISH RAILWAYS ROAD VEHICLES 1948-1968, Alan Earnshaw and Bill Aldridge, 46pp, 200 x 210mm, 83 photo illus, Atlantic Transport Publishers and Trans Pennine Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0 906899 82 6, £5.99. This slim volume somewhat belies its title. The authors' first hand recollections of the economic and organisational problems which led to the demise of British Rail's traditional freight operations - Express Parcels, Sundries and Wagonload - will be of interest to railway historians. Consideration of their road vehicles, however, is fairly brief, with no technical details, drawings or fleet lists and few statistics. The illustrtions will evoke fond memories among older readers.

BAGNALL: A NARROW GAUGE LEGACY, Introduction by Allan C. Baker, 53pp, 54 photographs and 1 drawing, soft covers, The Narrow Gauge Railway Society, 6 The Crescent, Orton Longueville, Peterborough PE2 7DT, 1997, ISBN 0 9507169 8 7, £5.95 (including p&p). This is a special edition of the Society's bi-monthly magazine containing details of a reunion of Bagnall locomotives at Amerton in May this year and a detailed article on the Government ordered Bagnalls at the end of the Great War. Amerton is covered by articles by those involved with each of the six locomotives concerned. Fascinating detail and excellent photographs.

561 MEMORIES OF THE EAST KENT LIGHT RAILWAY, Peter A. Harding, 32pp, card covers, one map, 49 photographs, Peter A. Harding, Mossgeil, Bagshot Road, Knaphill, Woking, Surrey GU21 2SG, 1997, £2.75 plus £025 p&p. This is a delightful book, consisting mainly of descriptive accounts and photographs taken by the late David Kevan in 1945, 1951 and 1958. It conveys much of the atmosphere of the East Kent Railway, including the surprise of the guard of the train, which consisted of a van and a coach, at the presence of a passenger. While not analytical it is accurate and is highly recommended for pleasure reading.

THE MID SUFFOLK LIGHT RAILWAY, Nicholas Comfort, 144pp, 210 x 150mm, 92 photographs, 14 maps and plans, 4 line reproductions, soft covers, Oakwood Press, 1997, ISBN 0 85361 509 8, £10.95. This is the third edition, much enlarged and improved, of a book first published in 1963. This new edition has nine chapters dealing with the line's promotion, opening for goods traffic and, later, passengers; the route, takeover by the LNER on 1 July 1924, locomotives and rolling stock, events leading to closure in 1954 and dismantling. But, as the final chapter explains, the railwy has refused to die. In 1990 the Mid Suffolk Light Railway Society was formed with the objects of creating a museum and opening up a stretch of the line as a working section. This is a well-written account of a fascinating little railway.

Corrections to the Reviews, November 1997 issue. 1. Page 435, line 8, should give the address of the Industrial Railway Society as: 1 Clifton Court, Oakham, Rutland LE15 6LT. 2. Page 438, line 28. The price of the Cromford and High Peak Railway, by John Marshall, is £9.95. 3. Page 442, line 7, should read '... it was another two decades before the author ...'

562 RAILWAY & CANAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY A company (No 922300) limited by guarantee and registered in England as a charity (No 256047) Local Group Secretaries London (acting) (Chairman) HJ. Compton, 122 Hermitage Road, St John's, Woking, Surrey GU21 1TT

North West E.R. LI. Davies, 'Fron Fawnog, Hafod Road, Gwernymynydd, Mold, Clwyd CH7 5JS 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 R. A. H. Sladen, 25 Linden Grove, Beeston, Nottingham NG9 2AD South West (acting) A. Richardson, 25 Boscombe Crescent, Downend, Bristol BS16 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 Docks & Coastal Shipping P L. Scowcroft (acting) 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 July 1998 Journal should be with the Editor by 20 March 1998 and must conform to the Society's style-sheet. The Editor will supply potential contributors with a copy on receipt of a 81/2" 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 both 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: Fron Fawnog, Hafod Road, Gwernymynydd, Mold, Clwyd CH7 5JS). The Society is registered as a charity (no 256047).

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