The Kennet and Avon Canal (Navigation) was a
part of a revolutionary new era and we know from
contemporary reports that it cut a visible scar
across southern England as it provided the inland
waterway link between the two major ports of
Bristol and London. It ran from High Bridge in
Reading to Hanham Mills at Bristol, via Newbury
and Bath. From Hanham Lock to High Bridge,
Reading is 87fi miles which, with the River
Thames, provides a corridor for family migration.
The Company Minute Book shows that by 1823
toll receipts had reached a trading plateau. By
that time the Kennet and Avon Canal Company (K&ACC)
owned two wharves at Reading and Bradford-on-Avon,
six at Bath and others at Aldermaston, Newbury,
Hungerford, Froxfield, Great Bedwyn, Pewsey,
Semington, and Hilperton. In 1823 amongst the
Company's direct employees was an engineer who
was paid £300, with a house, and 31 lock keepers
who received 10s 6d a week plus a cottage. There
were also a number of other workers including 26
labourers, 12 carpenters, a blacksmith, two pump
men and a mason.
The tonnage and toll receipts reached a peak
around 1840 as a result of carrying railway
construction materials but serious competition
from the railway companies soon eroded the
financial returns of the Company. At this time
salaries were also reduced and dividends fell.
The Great Western Railway took over the canal in
1852. But the 1823 figures show the extent of
employment by the Canal Company at that time
although it does not indicate the extent of canal
business.
Throughout the country there had always been a
preference by some families to travel with and to
live on board the boats. There were many factors
influencing such a decision but it was a practice
which became more commonplace as competition with
the railways developed and incomes dropped.
Families, including very young children could be
used as unpaid crew. Documentary evidence of this
happening to any extent on the K&A remains
elusive.
The canal is a 'broad' canal, where the locks
could accommodate both barges and narrow boats.
The K&A Minute Book also defines a wide boat'
that the Company called a 'mule' at ioft (3m)
wide. Most of the supporting evidence uncovered
to date for families living on board is
photographic from later years. The photographs
show families present on both wide boats and
narrow boats. The huge 'Newbury' barges 109ft (33m)
long and 17ft (5.2m) in the beam and carrying 120
tons worked the Thames and the Kennet up to
Newbury but needed eight to 12 horses to haul
against the river current, worked by at least six
men; definitely at that time a male preserve. So
an ethos of male prominence was handed down,
reinforced later by K&ACC rules defining the
number of men to crew the 'fly boats' providing
the five day through service with from Bristol to
London. In 1844 the Company ruled that each barge
or pair of boats working 'fly' (fast service with
navigational priority) must be crewed by a
captain and four men; also that each single boat
must be crewed by a captain and three men.
Narrow boot ‘Caroline’ at lock 29
at the bottom of Caen Hill
Some families did travel with the boats,
mostly the narrow boats and wide boats in the
'slow' trade. This is evidenced by the
photographs of the narrow boat Caroline owned by
William Escott of Seend captured at the bottom of
Caen Hill, Devizes c.1897 and the photograph of
the wide boat Perseverance owned by Bill Chivers
(formerly by Henry Bright) and captured
Wide boat 'Perserverance' photographed in
1913
unloading round timber beside a log cutting
operation at Thames Side at Reading in 1913.
Henry Bright and Bill Chivers operated from
Newbury, both on the Kennet and on the Thames.
Typically the boats were crewed by men but this
did include father and son teams. The late Tom
Hams and his father, George, both worked as barge
men for Robbins, Lane and Pinniger (RL&P),
established in 1812 as boat builders, traders and
sawmill owners at Honeystreet. Tom claimed that
his father earned 12S a week as captain of the
barge Unity. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century this was below the national average for
this work but if a captain did not have to pay
for his crew or stabling for the horse and had
housing provided, then it could have been a
reasonable income. During his later years shortly
before his death, George worked the Unity to
bring sand, ballast and cement from London to aid
in the construction of the National Defence line
of gun emplacements and tank obstacles which
followed the Canal across southern England during
the Second World War. During this time he worked
a 15-hour day, sleeping on board at night. George
also spent a large part of his life carrying tin
plate boxes from RL&P to Bristol for South
Wales and returning from Avonmouth with deal
boards and scantlings. Alec Huntley who lived
beside the canal remembered timber stamped with
exotic sounding names such as Archangel,
Murmansk, Bergen and Oslo. RL&P also ran a
fertiliser factory at Honeystreet and Tom used to
take the Unity to Avonmouth to pick up carboys of
acid using two horses to haul the laden barge
back up the Avon and on to Honeystreet because
the GWR considered the cargo too hazardous to
carry by rail. But only one horse was needed to
return the empty carboys, so two days
'Unity' entering the eastern portal of
Bruce Tunnel at Savernake as both horses are led
over the top
after the barge departed the second horse
would be walked to Woodborough station to catch
the train for Bristol and meet up with the barge.
Honeystreet was an important trading point on
the K&A with virtually the whole village
owned by RL&P who also provided housing for
their workers. With such rural stability it is
not surprising that families did not migrate but
enjoyed stability for more than a century.
Boats trading beyond the K&A Canal and the
Thames were almost certainly narrow boats as both
the Wilts and Berks Canal (W&B) and the
Oxford Canal were narrow, the locks being only 7
feet (2.1m) wide. It is likely that family
migration was more likely to follow the narrow
boat trade.
Jack James is pictured sitting on the roof of
his narrow boat, Jack, a horse drawn butty, with
his wife standing in the doorway to the cabin, a
photograph taken at Kennet Side in Reading in
1923. Family living on board is indicated by the
care of the cabin paintwork and the polished
brass rings of the chimney of the range. As on
all narrow boats the cabin space would have been
8ft 6ins (2.6m) long and 6ft 6ins (2m) wide.
Accommodation would have comprised the cooking
range on the left as one entered down the steps,
a side bench on the right, a floor to roof
cupboard with a drop down table on the left
beyond the range and then a bed folding down from
the left to cross the boat at the bulkhead. Coal
was kept under the steps and fresh water in a can
or barrel on the roof. The GWR did not permit
steam or motor driven boats
Jack James' boat 'Jack' at Kennet Side,
Reading 1913
without special permission as they were said
to travel too fast and cause bank wash but these
craft did have one extra luxury; a bucket in the
engine room provided toilet facilities.
Jack James was in partnership with Bill
Chivers and Jack Garner in a company called
Thames Transport. During the 19305 the business
went bankrupt and Jack moved to the Oxford Canal
where he traded coal to Oxford for a number of
years. He then converted the boat for more
spacious residential use and lived on it with his
wife on the Trill Mill Stream at Oxford. He later
joined the newly formed Grand Union Carrying
Company as a skipper, where he earned enough
capital to buy a house at Stoke Bruerne and
become the lock keeper there. This is just one
example of events leading to a family's migration
following the waterways. Huntley and Palmers'
biscuit factory at Reading transported their
products by water, thus reducing breakages. The
logo from a late nineteenth century biscuit
wrapper shows a couple crewing a narrow boat (see
front cover illustration). Coal for the factory
was brought down from the Midlands by Barlow's
boats via the Oxford Canal and the Thames to the
factory on the K&A at Reading. These would
probably have been family boats, on journeys of
such distance.
But families did work wide boats and barges on
the K&A and the Thames. The photograph of
wide boats above Newbury Lock c.1920 shows the
outer wide boat nearest the lock has a fore cabin
as well as the main cabin at the stern. This
would provide sleeping accommodation for up to
two extra people, usually children, and is such a
rarity on a wide boat on the K&A that it
could be the Perseverance already referred to and
attributed to Bill Chivers. It is known that
Chivers traded on the Kennet and on the Thames to
London, part of his general trading being to
carry the products of Simonds' brewery from
Reading to London for export.
Accommodation in a wide boat was simply more
spacious than the narrow boat with a cabin up to
9fl ft (2.9m) wide. The Kennet barges at 13ft
loins (4.2m) in the beam had markedly different
accommodation. The cabin was below the stern deck
Above Newbury lock c. 1920
with access via a deck level companionway from
the bulkhead. This had a lift off hatch and as
one descended the steps the stove or range was on
the right. Seats and bunks were diagonally on
either side with cupboards and a drop table at
the stern. The helmsman stood on a platform in
front of the cabin with quite a long tiller.
In the same Newbury photograph the part sunken
wide boat is the then redundant Defiance owned by
another well-known Berkshire trader J T Ferris
who was the last of a family of canal traders.
The Defiance had a payload of 6o tons and until
1919 carried grain from the Hungerford area to
mills at Burghfield, Aldermaston and Newbury.
Yet another Newbury trading family was H
Dolton & Son Ltd., corn merchants. With their
wide boat Betty carrying 60 tons and with a
narrow boat (c. 30 tons) they carried grain from
all points as far west as Wootton Rivers,
delivering to mills on the Kennet with some trade
on the Thames until 1915.
Full consideration of the people of the
K&A Canal would go beyond the few examples
which space has allowed and to do full justice to
the subject would include disciplines other than
boat people. But as a closing note it is
important to mention the lockkeepers/lengthsmen
and to select just one example. The census of
1891 shows that David Mizen, son of Robert Mizen,
occupied the lock cottage at the top of the Bath
flight of locks. His eldest brother, Emanuel, was
listed as a canal labourer at this time and
Robert lived there in the later stages of his
life. Subsequently Great Western records show
that the family had started to spread along the
canal and the name reappears further east at
Seend. The lock keepers did not necessarily work
the locks for the boatmen but had
responsibilities for maintenance and possibly
inspection of a section of canal. They kept logs
and reports for the company or the engineering
workshops. The lock keepers were the eyes and
ears of the canal and knew probably better than
anyone all the latest news.
