Boating at Barrow

Time and Place: NarrowBoat, Spring 2020

Christopher M Jones

Chris M. Jones looks at traffic on the Leicester Line in the early 1900s.

This early 20th-century image shows Fellows, Morton & Clayton’s horse-boat Kingswood ascending Barrow Lock on the Leicester Line, which largely follows the course of the River Soar. The lock is situated just a short walk from the centre of the village of Barrow-on-Soar. Kingswood was built by and for canal carriers FMC in January 1901 at its Saltley Dock premises, near Birmingham. It was a wooden craft costing £160, built with a fore and aft cabin, which were both registered at Birmingham on 22nd February of that year. This postcard image was franked in 1918, although it dates from much earlier. Kingswood shows up in two inspections: in December 1912 and February 1913 on the Erewash Canal at Ilkeston, with J. Cresswell as its master. From the surviving records, it seems the Cresswells were the only boat family associated with the craft while it was in FMC’s ownership.…