Transporting Tar in Brum

Working the Waterways: NarrowBoat, Spring 2026

In 1952 a newspaper journalist stepped aboard a family-run narrowboat to record life on Birmingham’s canals

 

In the early 1950s, Birmingham’s canals were widely dismissed as grimy leftovers from another age – functional at best, obsolete at worst. Yet an article from the Birmingham Weekly Post of the time offered a very different perspective. Called ‘Romance and Industry of a City’s Canals: New Angle on Birmingham from the Barge Towy’, it was the front cover story of 18th April 1952 – under the headline ‘Birmingham is Hardly Venice’ – and took up three broadsheet pages. It was written by journalist Vivian Bird and illustrated by John Turnbull. Through Bird’s first-hand account, it follows a working narrowboat and its family carrying tar through the city in the small hours of the morning, revealing a self-contained world that most Brummies barely noticed. Essentially, it is a portrait of canal families at work, captured just as their world was beginning to fade. Graveyard of Boats One boat only passed us on our homeward way &…