Canals & Families (Parish Records)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Sunday, August 19, 2012, 01:50 (4268 days ago) @ unknown

Boatbuilding would have been one of those closely prized crafts that were passed down father to son, similarly ownership of a canal narrowboat would be a family affair. I'm sure you know in the pre-railway days when canals were the country's main arteries, whole families would live on their barges. I live only 100yards from the Grand Union canal where it enters the edge of Greater London coming from Birmingham aka Warwickshire, then on into central London and the old Docklands & beyond. Near us is a wharf where they used to have a narrowboat fitted-out as a schoolhouse for the children off narrowboats that would moorup and stay for the winter months "break". The canal near us is quite wide, the wharfs were important for this timberyard that is still there albeit using lorries now of course (see pic). Not far down the canal from this are local brickfields, gravel pits where clay was dug & made into bricks to be barged into London during it's huge expansion in the 1800s. Ironically the first railway locos on Brunel's new Great Western Railway between Bristol & London were placed on the rails near here, after being shipped by sea from Liverpool to London then canal to here, where the canal was/is adjacent to the new railways, so the canal helped ensure it's own demise....
By complete coincidence my wife is from Banbury, North Oxfordshire, linked to us by this same canal and not far south of Warwick. Banbury owes it's growth to the canal, her mother still lives at Britannia Wharf. But no we're not bargees.

http://www.francisfrith.com/uxbridge/photos/grand-union-canal-c1955_u52006/