Boat Inn, Goodrich / Glewstone (General)

by Judith Webb , Herefordshire, Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 15:44 (4485 days ago) @ slowhands

Just an addition to this posting, even though it was made a long while ago. There were ferry boat crossings at both Glewstone and Goodrich. The one at Glewstone was operated from the Boat Inn, (now invisible from the dual carriageway A40 at the bottom of the hill just before Pencraig), just opposite where Boat Lane emerges from Glewstone. The Inn and ferry were operated throughout the C19th by the Price family and at least 2 members of the family were drowned whilst operating the ferry. They are commemorated in the Churchyard of St Giles, Goodrich.

The Goodrich Ferry, also known as Goodrich Boat, is another matter entirely. On advertisements for Wye trips, they appear as 2 different stopping-off points. The Goodrich one being specifically for visitors to Goodrich Court and the armoury collection 'from the ferry, walk up the lane through the village and through the first green gate'.

The obvious candidate for where it was sited, is just below Goodrich Castle, where there was a small derelict cottage for many years, which may have been the ferryman's cottage. However there may have been another crossing point at New Mills Road, near Huntsham, where there is a barn conversion, called The Boathouse.

Again there were drownings at the Goodrich boat, Mary Banfield (nee Price), a daughter of the Prices of Glewstone's Boat and a sister of one of those victims, who was the young mother of several small children and who was drowned whilst ferrying passengers, in front of her children, in 1848.