How messing about saved our canals

11:11am Thursday 30th October 2008

It is forty years since an act of Parliament made it possible for people to spend their holidays and their leisure time ‘messing about’ on Britain’s 2,200 miles of inland waterways.

As Brentford people know too well, by the 1960s, commercial boat traffic on Britain’s canals had all but collapsed. But encouraged by waterway enthusiasts and campaigning groups, Harold Wilson’s government recognised the important role that waterways had to play in tourism and leisure and, with the 1968 Transport Act, secured the future of this valuable asset for future generations.

Last year, 252 million visits were made to British Waterways’ canals and rivers Now British Waterways wants the public to contribute to the anniversary celebrations by sharing photos, drawings and nostalgic jottings of memorable day trips, holidays and visits.

Contributions will be published online in a giant waterway scrapbook.

Photos and memories should be sent to 40yearsofmemories@waterscape.com The scrapbook will be online at www.waterscape. com/40years. Later in the year, an exhibition of the winning memories will be displayed at The Waterways Trust’s National Waterways Museums.

Our two photographs show views of Thames Lock. Top, from Carolyn and Peter Hammond’s neat 2006 publication Then & Now Brentford is this 1923 view of the barge Success going upstream from Thames Lock.

The Success was the first steel barge built by E C Jones (later E C Jones & Son) which had works just downstream of the lock on Brentside Wharf, now the premises of MSO Marine. The firm E C Jones was established in Brentford in the 1890s, first as a barge repairer and canal carrier and later as a boat builder. It was known for quality workmanship and built all kinds of boats including innovative Bantam tugs that attached to the back of barges to push rather than pull.

The Jones family sold the business in 1982 and it closed in 1992.

When the 12 mile section of the Grand Junction Canal was opened from Brentford to Uxbridge in 1794 there was no lock here but the tide caused problems for navigation so a lock was installed sometime before 1818.

The building on the left beyond the lock is the engine house which contained the steam engines that provided power for the cranes used in Brentford Dock.

The canal, completed to Braunston, Northants in 1805, was amalgamated with other canals in 1929 when the name was changed to the Grand Union Canal.

In 1962 a second lock was added and both were mechanised and the lock keeper’s house on the left was rebuilt.

In the modern photograph two craft have emerged from the lock, The Floating Leaf, right, and the Liberty. Thames Lock, where lock keeper Rob Beard presides, is number 101 on the Brentford-Braunston route.

If your memories are of holidays and fun days spent on the canals and rivers in our circulation area why not share your pictures and recollections with readers of the Nostalgia page.