al edi ci ti e o p n S • • S p n 40 e o i YEARS c t i i a d l e • Number 213 June 2016 THE BOAT MUSEUM SOCIETY President: Di Skilbeck MBE Vice Presidents: Tony Hales CBE, Harry Arnold MBE, Alan Jones, Tony Lewery DIRECTORS Chairman Jeff Fairweather Vice Chairmen Barry Green, Chris Kay, Will Manning Treasurer & Barbara Kay Membership Secretary Secretary Lynn Potts Other directors Di Skilbeck MBE, Nigel Carpenter, Bob Thomas, Cath Turpin, Mike Turpin OTHER CO-OPTED COMMITTEE MEMBERS David Ditchfield, Martyn Kerry, Ailsa Rutherford CONTACTS TO WHOM CONTRIBUTIONS SHOULD BE SENT Museum Times Ailsa Rutherford [email protected] RE:PORT Editor Jeff Fairweather 0151 201 3617 (acting) 6 Thornton Road, Ellesmere Port CH65 5DF [email protected] Website Sue Phillips [email protected] EMAIL CONTACTS [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Any committee member: [email protected] Those not on email can contact: Boat Museum Society, c/o National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port CH65 4FW Telephone 0151 355 5017 The Boat Museum Society is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England no. 1028599. Registered Charity Number 501593 Visit our website www.boatmuseumsociety.org.uk Contributions for RE:PORT which is published four times a year are always welcome. Copy date for RE:PORT 214 – Wednesday 17th August All views expressed in RE:PORT are those of the contributors concerned and should not be taken as being the policy of The Boat Museum Society, The National Waterways Museum or The Canal and River Trust. [cover] Mossdale arrives in 1976 photo: Tony Hirst RE:PORT Number 213 Dates for your Diary June 21 Tue EPL&FHS Mike Day gives a talk on old postcards. 17 Fri – 19 Sun BMS at the Middlewich Boat Festival 21 Tue – 25 Sat BMS supporting the CRT Explorers at Lymm 26 Sun Lymm Transport Festival July 2 Sat – 3 Sun Museum 40th Anniversary celebrations. Canal & River Trust open day on the wide locks 14 Thu Waterways Research Network 11am – 2pm the Rolt Conference Centre. Contact John Benson in the archive for details August 14 Sun NWM Horses at Work and at War September 2 Fri – 3 Sat Brindley 300 conference Event to commemorate the 300th anniversary of James Brindley’s birth. See enclosed flyer. Contact John Benson in the archive to book your place 9 Fri – 10 Sat A2SN (Archives & Artefacts Study Network) Workshop Shipping the Goods in more ways than one More details at www.a2sn.org.uk/ 16 Fri BMS Gavin Hunter will give his superb presentation: From Toll Roads to Motorways BMS meetings are held at 7.30pm at the NWM. All welcome. EPL&FHS – The Ellesmere Port Local & Family History Society meets at 7.30pm on the 3rd Tuesday of the month in the Rolt Centre at the NWM. This extended edition of RE:PORT looks back to the opening of al edi ci ti e o the Museum 40 years ago. p n The aim has been to include the memories and accounts of S • • S as many people as possible: both as short pieces and with some p n 40 e o as longer articles. i YEARS c t i i a d l e In an exercise like this there will inevitably be a little over- lap, but it can be fascinating to compare different recollections of what was a major moment in the Museum’s history. 3 Number 213 June 2016 CHAIRMAN’S REPORT he Boat Museum Society (BMS) cele- brates its forty-fifth anniversary this year Tat the same time as The National Waterways Museum (NWM) celebrates its fortieth an- niversary. I have only known it for the past five or six years, during which, though there have been developments, notably the transfer of the inland waterways and museums to the Canal and River Trust (CRT), survival has been the priority of both BMS & NWM. The tremendous efforts of the previous chairmen, committee members and mem- bers with the support of dedicated staff and management over the past forty years have kept the spirit and ethos of the museum alive through some very difficult times. When I first arrived at the museum in 2011 Steve Stamp was chairman followed by Chris Kay and over six very difficult years these two gentlemen, with two very different styles, kept the Society together and gave me a solid base with which to work from. We owe them much, simply because through them and their committees we have survived as a society. All our current committee work well as a team and we owe them our thanks, I would personally like to thank the members of the Committee for their efforts in running the Society over the past few years. Pioneering museum volunteers will meet in June to mark the historic anniversary of the restoration work that lead to the opening of the derelict and disused Ellesmere Port Docks back in 1976. Those young men and women, the waterways preservation stalwarts, are now aged in their 70s & 80s and still involved in the award-winning museum whose buildings were rebuilt from nothing after falling into disuse in the 1960s. It was in Decem- ber 1974, that members of the fledgling North Western Museum of Inland Navigation (NWMIN) moved into the derelict Ellesmere Port docks to start restoration work. Forty years on, to the day of the opening of the museum, some of the original members will meet to exchange stories and anecdotes about that historic development and the re-build- ing of the historic dock buildings and site. On that note I am going to close and leave it to others throughout this edition of RE:PORT to recount their memories and stories of what is a truly amazing achievement. THE NATIONAL WATERWAYS MUSEUM. 4 RE:PORT Number 213 Will Ellesmere Port Museum be here in 40 years’ time? ne cannot help but admire the fortitude and determination of those volunteers over 40 years ago who gave up their weekends to dig up bricks and mud, clear away weeds Oand rubble and rebuild a derelict – and I expect smelly - dock. Once upon a time, Elles- mere Port, was one of the largest Inland Waterway dock complexes in the UK deriving much of its trade from the transhipment of goods and cargo from ocean going vessels to inland craft for the industrial heartlands of the Midlands and Manchester. This historic site was a significant cog in the industrial growth of the nation, but by the 1970s the site was at risk; buildings in ruins, the basin empty, the Telford Warehouse burnt down and a proposal to divert the Canal so that boats would no longer be able to reach the Port from the Shropshire Canal. It was a brave decision under the circumstances (ironically made easier by the loss of the Telford Warehouse) to choose this site for a museum about the inland waterways. Thanks to the Volunteer effort and the support of Ellesmere Port & Neston Borough Council, today the site is a conservation area with a Pump house, dry dock, four locks and numerous grade II listed buildings. Over the years the Museum has grown and changed in many ways, expanding its displays from just the Toll House, two changes in governance, amalgamation with the Waterways Museum in Gloucester, the transfer in of the British Waterways archives and the acquisition of the prefixNational . The National Waterways Museum holds the most comprehensive collection telling the story of the Britain’s canals and navigable rivers over the last three hundred years. The Collection isdesignated by Arts Council England in a scheme which identifies and celebrates outstanding collections which“deepen our under- standing of the world and what it means to be human”. The majority of the seventy-one boats in the collection are listed in the National Historic Ships register and twelve form part of the National Historic Fleet. The Waterways Archive is without parallel in the UK and of international significance. With such an eminent collection you might be asking why this museum isn’t up there with nationally acclaimed museums like Beamish, or Ironbridge? After all we were founded about the same time and are an open air site that celebrates Britain’s industri- al past. Whilst these latter museums are thriving with visitor figures each year in the hundreds of thousands, we are struggling to achieve 30,000 visitors per annum. So what has gone wrong? This is a difficult question to answer. Museums are expensive, complex businesses and it is apparent that Ellesmere Port has had its fair share of difficulties in the past, leaving it in a precarious condition. Despite the best efforts of volunteers and staff alike, the Museum has been unable to care for its collection effectively and is now struggling to resource the changes required to make it sustainable. Certainly when the Canal & River Trust took over in 2012, they were able to arrest the decline and put the basics right, but there is much more to do and while the Canal & River Trust are committed to supporting the museum, their budgets are already over stretched. If the Museum is to be around in another forty years, we need to find a way of increasing our income, boosting our visitor figures and becoming more resilient to the vagaries of economic change. 5 Number 213 RE:PORT How do we do this? I believe we need to set our sights high. We need to aspire to be an outstanding national museum which is comprehensive in its collection and authorita- tive in its interpretation about our subject matter.