Between Staffs and Notts
Picturing the Past: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2024
Christopher M Jones
Chris M. Jones explores images showing boats and cargoes carried between Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire
This is our free-access sample article from the Autumn 2024 NarrowBoat
Carriers from the Black Country were frequent visitors to the Trent & Mersey, such as Price & Son of Brierley Hill. When this postcard image was franked in 1914, the company was one of the oldest canal carriers in England, dating back to the early 1800s. By the 1830s it was mainly carrying to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and all parts of north England, then later to Gloucester and London. Apart from merchandise and iron cargoes, the company focussed on transporting fire-brick products from works along the Stourbridge Canal and built up a sizeable fleet of boats. Like many of its contemporaries, it was quick to use railways and advertised itself as a railway and canal carrier based at Round Oak. Minerals were another important cargo and Price & Son boats regularly carried limestone from north Staffordshire along the Caldon Canal. Limestone was in demand in the Black Country for iron manufacturers and lime burning.
The boat shown is heading north and approaching the town of Stone from the south-east with St Michael’s Church to the right of the large tree. It is Price & Son’s Britannia, fleet number 22 and first registered in April 1886, replacing an old boat of the same name. It was used in the company’s trade to London and on the Shropshire Union and Trent & Mersey routes.
This scene could have been photographed in any decade: boats are waiting to proceed towards the collieries at Langley Mill where the Erewash Canal joins the Cromford and Nottingham canals. The collieries in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire served not just customers in those counties but all over the Midlands and south towards London.
These two boats are on the Cromford Canal waiting to enter the Nottingham Canal at Langley Mill Stop Lock 20, with its swing-bridge straddling the chamber. Ahead, against the main road, is the Great Northern Inn and off the image to the right is Langley Mill Lock giving access to the Erewash Canal. The two boats were named Betsy Prig & Sairey Gamp and owned by West & Ellis of Market Harborough. They may have been waiting to load coal at one of the Nottinghamshire pits, such as Digby Colliery just over 3½ miles beyond the lock.
The firm was a coal, limestone, salt and granite merchant and had been around for decades, passing through several names: West, Biddles & Church; West & Church; then latterly West & Ellis. Although it was a large user of the railways throughout this time, it also had a small fleet of boats. By 1917, Charles William Ellis was the sole proprietor and had wharves at Market Harborough canal basin and Welford Wharf. Before World War I, the company had two pairs, the other being Nona & Albatross steered by Harry Jones. Its boats regularly visited the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire collieries passing through Langley Mill.
Sairey Gamp was bought new in August 1905 from boat-builders Rudkin Brothers of Leicester. Betsy Prig was bought second-hand, having been built in June 1904 for boatman William Phipps of Leicester, and originally named Elizabeth. Phipps worked for West & Ellis before WWI steering the company’s Sairey Gamp with his own Elizabeth. Its ownership was transferred to West & Ellis in September 1916 when its name was changed to Betsy Prig, which, like Sairey Gamp, is a character in Charles Dickens’ novel, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.
This helps date the image to between September 1916 and March 1920, when both boats were sold off to coal, lime, granite and slate merchant John Ellis & Sons Ltd of Leicester. During these interwar years the West & Ellis’s boatmen were Joseph Nightingale and George Simmons. John Ellis & Sons Ltd was unrelated to Charles William Ellis of West & Ellis.
Staffordshire salt was taken to Nottingham, as seen in this merchant’s trade card dated 28th March 1906. It shows Gill & Bibbey’s premises at No 2 Wharf in Canal Street, Nottingham, where the company’s warehouse backed on to the Nottingham Canal. Although clearly posed for the advertisement, these boats prepare to unload their salt packed in boxes that have been retouched to highlight them. The boat on the left is Lady of the Lake, registered at Stoke-on-Trent on 16th September 1897 for Gill & Bibbey. The other two craft lying in the arm on the right are unidentified but may well be Arthur & Harry, owned by Frank Gill of Nottingham. Arthur was registered at Stoke on 27th April 1905 while Harry was registered later that year on 29th November.
Frank Gill was American by birth although a British subject by parentage, and traded as Gill & Co, drysalters and coal merchant; William Bibbey & Co was a salt merchant. As business partners they both merged their businesses to form Gill & Bibbey in the latter years of the 19th century. They traded as drysalters, soap manufacturers and coal and salt merchants selling the Castle Table Salt brand. The company was an agent for Lawton & Odd Rode Salt Co of Rode Heath, Odd Rode on the Trent & Mersey Canal above Thurlwood Upper Lock 53. These works were owned by William Bibbey’s father, Thomas Bibbey, in partnership with Edward Massey, and became part of the Salt Union Ltd cartel in October 1888. Thomas Bibbey owned several boats such as Annie and Frances, registered in 1885 for carrying salt and sand to the Potteries. Lawton Salt Works had a sand quarry and Thomas Bibbey was also in business as a sand merchant. Before WWI other boats were bought: Iolanthe and Violet both in 1909.
Frank Gill took over sole ownership of the firm after dissolving the partnership by mutual consent on 13th June 1902, which is probably why boats Arthur & Harry were registered only in his name. The business was incorporated as a limited company a few years later. It continued in business as drysalters and coal and salt merchants at Canal Street until the concern was voluntarily wound up on 30th June 1939, along with many other companies that formed part of the Salt Union Ltd’s successors, Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd.
The River Trent was the dominant water highway at Nottingham and it’s worth taking a look at some of the craft that used it. This early 20th-century view is looking north-west from the south bank at East Bridgford from the towing path. The water level is low, exposing the banks either side and forcing the wide-beam Upper Trent boat on the right to unload its cargo almost in midstream. At this point there was a landing stage and wharf for deliveries at Colwick Hall off the image on the right, with Colwick Park beyond the trees where there was a race course and grandstand. Concealed behind the boat are two carthorses waiting to pull their loaded cart up the bank. This was a typical Upper Trent boat with its centre cross-beam cabin amidships and tall mast from which a square sail could be set if conditions were suitable. It’s not possible to see what the cargo is but it could be a coal delivery. A number of coal merchants and carriers owned this type of craft in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, including Fellows, Morton & Clayton which had several in the late 19th century. Some of these Upper Trent craft fitted with centre cabins were refitted with stern cabins early in the 20th century, but the craft started to disappear after WWI and became a rarity.
One interesting point on the Upper Trent craft is the use of poles fixed at angles at each of the boat’s quarters, and thrust into the riverbed to hold it stable in the current. On the left two narrowboats lie on the mud with the nearest sunken craft being in a rough condition and probably a maintenance boat, while the boat behind is a typical coal-boat.
Coal from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was taken to the south Midlands and further south to London, especially in the 19th century. One of the Midlands carriers involved was John Griffiths of Bedworth, who traded south to London and north for cargoes received through the Port of Liverpool. Some of the cargoes from Liverpool included soap from Lever Brothers Ltd, soda, bleach, sulphur and grain. The imported grain was loaded at either Ellesmere Port or Preston Brook for Coventry or south as far as Northampton, sometimes returning with a backload of empty grain sacks. Traffic from London included waste cotton to Manchester, returning with chemicals in carboys or drums, telephone insulators from London to Manchester, and bone ash from London to the Potteries. John Griffiths started carrying imported timber from Manchester in January 1894, brought in via the ship canal.
At Trent Lock where the Erewash Canal joins the River Trent, John Griffiths’ horse-boat Weaver waits before heading north to the collieries to load. Weaver was bought new and first registered in January 1901.
An interesting scene, in the late 1880s or early 1890s at Little Haywood on the Trent & Mersey, is just a few yards from the Navigation Inn and wharf against Meadowlane Bridge 72. In the distance is part of Colwich Railway Junction where the North Staffs Railway joins the L&NWR, beyond which is the tower of St Michael & All Angels’ Church in the village of Colwich.
The moored boats are owned by William Sproston, who was the publican of the Navigation Inn, farmer and coal merchant. Throughout the 1850s and ’60s he was a boatman, first based at Weston-upon-Trent, then moving to Pasturefields at Stowe about 1856, then to Little Haywood around 1863 as a beer retailer before taking over as innkeeper at the Navigation Inn. He had a large family and his older children went boating with him. When he began running the Navigation Inn, it was his sons who operated his small fleet of boats. William Sproston’s boats mainly worked between Coventry and Preston Brook visiting all points in between. At one point he had boats running daily from Rugeley to pick up loads from Manchester and Liverpool transhipped at Preston Brook.
One of his first registered was Perseverance in 1879, steered by his son Henry, bringing grain and flour from Preston Brook to Coventry. Other boats were later added to the fleet, including William and Emma in February 1880, steered by James Sproston, and Elizabeth and Emma in June 1885 with Henry steering. In the image, Industrious, loaded with sand, may well also date from the 1880s, and the two larger boats on the left, without cloths, could be day-boats and appear to be quite old. Sproston drew coal from Brereton Colliery near Rugeley, and his boats were taken to the loading basin and left there as it took several days before they were loaded and available for collection.
William Sproston’s sons later went into business mainly as farmers, or as coal dealers at Little Haywood and at the canalside town of Stone. He died in March 1896 and three of his sons – James, Herbert and William – continued with the Navigation Inn, farming and the coal merchant business. They jointly bought the boat Barlaston in May 1902, while another son Henry set up as a coal dealer at 19 Stafford Street, Stone, and had the boat Clara.
Henry Sproston’s boat Clara loading coke at Stone Gas Works wharf about 1910. Clara and sister boat Perseverance were bought from the Anderton Co by Henry. The former was named after his second wife whom he married in 1896, and both were bought to serve Stone Gas Works.
Coke was a by-product of gas making, and its light weight explains why the boat has so much freeboard while the cargo is stacked up fore and aft. Note the three gauging indexes positioned either end and in the middle of the hold on the side of the hull. Like many large canals, the Trent & Mersey operated its own gauging system, but rather than the dry-inches or freeboard measurement commonly used on the BCN and other canals, it measured the wet-inches or draught of the boat, which was read from the indexes like measurements on a ruler. This avoided the need to consult gauging tables commonly used with the dry-inch system which canal companies had to supply for each of their toll offices.
Henry’s son Herbert, who was born in 1903, started boating his father’s craft when he left school aged 12, using a horse and a mule. He would take the boats to Brereton Colliery Basin to be loaded, leave them there for loading and then cycle home. Coal was brought to the basin via a tramway down a steep incline. Brereton coal was for household use and the coal for Stone Gas Works came from collieries in the Potteries. Like his father before him, Henry carried from Preston Brook to Coventry with a variety of cargoes, like grain, rice, bricks and bark for Samuel Scott & Co’s tannery at Stafford Street, Stone. Other cargoes were cordwood, feldspar, bones and flints for mills at Stone. They were unloaded at a warehouse on Stafford Street Wharf, then taken by road to Coppice Mill on the Scotch Brook alongside Longton Road, Stone. The Sprostons gave up using boats in the 1930s and turned to road transport.
A list of canal-carriers passing the River Trent to Nottingham and the Trent & Mersey Canal wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Fellows, Morton & Clayton Ltd. Here two of the company’s horse-boats wait fully loaded on the Trent, tied against an old narrowboat decked over and used as a floating jetty. Behind them is a laden Upper Trent wide-boat and, judging by the direction they are pointing, these three loaded boats might well be heading towards Shardlow. In the foreground nearest the camera is moored the horse ferry for craft crossing the Trent to and from the south off to the right. The method used to achieve this is described in NB Autumn 2015. FMC had premises at Brown’s Wharf, Canal Street, Nottingham and was a regular carrier, picking up or landing cargoes at Shardlow. The company had a number of agencies along the canals using other carriers. One of these was John Wood Gandy based at Bridgewater Wharf, Morledge, Derby, who owned a small fleet of boats. His main route was from Derby along the Trent & Mersey to Rugeley, the Potteries, Preston Brook, Ellesmere Port, Manchester, Warrington and Runcorn, bringing imported cargoes from Liverpool and Birkenhead daily.
