Eddie Hambridge's Family Album
Picturing the Past: NarrowBoat, Summer 2007
Euan Corrie
We take a look through the fascinating collection of photographs of former boatman Eddie Hambridge, who can trace his family back through many generations on the canals
Eddie Hambridge’s family worked on the canals for many generations and, with the help of NarrowBoat contributor Lorna York, Eddie has traced his family history. This was made easier by his parents owning a ‘Box Brownie’ camera which was used to record the family and the boats that they worked on. Like many boat people they also acquired photographs from other sources. Eddie kindly allowed NarrowBoat to look through the albums, which reveal a great deal about the operation of the waterways as well as the Hambridge family. Eddie was born on narrowboat Hagley on 17th October 1946. His birth certificate actually says Hadley, but Eddie thinks this is a mistake as his brother was born on Hagley a couple of years before. Eddie’s parents were William and Mary (née Jackson). William in turn had worked for his parents, James and Rosa Hambridge, on Geneva and Little Wonder, and later for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. William and Mary were married in 1939 at 11am on 3rd September, the day war broke out, and so were not allowed to ring the church bells. When not attending the hostel for boat children in Birmingham (“We used to call it Borstal,” Eddie recalls), he boated with his parents until British Waterways made them redundant in 1963, when he found work ‘on the land’, whilst his parents remained on the boats at Sutton Stop. He was soon to return to the waterways, however, finding work with Willow Wren with his cousin Percy and brother Alfred on the motor boat Comet and butty Argus (later he had Snipe) in March 1965 carrying coal to Dickinson’s paper mills at Croxley and wheat to Wellingborough. In September 1966, Eddie moved to join Sam Waller and Graham Wigley at Birmingham & Midland Canal Carrying Co. “They were good bosses, I got on well with them,” he affirms. He first worked single-handedly on motor Linda (ex Victoria) and then with David Hogg as mate on butty Ash on the Croxley coal run. He also carried timber from Weston Point to Harecastle and from Sharpness to Warwick, and two loads of 40-gallon cardboard drums of solid pitch from ships offloaded at Liverpool to Oldbury. He later worked on several smaller local contracts in the Midlands including laying the North Sea gas pipe, Saltley reservoir and finally the Thurmaston gravel run until that contract ended. He then went to work for John Pinder of Hopwood Craft, which later moved from Hopwood to Horninglow Basin at Burton-on-Trent, now his home town. There he was involved with the construction of the narrow-beam Royal Navy craft used for their canal recruiting campaign, as well as the wide-beam hotel boat Tranquil Rose and a widebeam passenger trip boat. He has since built boats both for himself and friends and keeps his current boat moored on the Trent & Mersey Canal near Burton, thus maintaining his family’s links with the canals.
Eddie Hambridge with the model boat made by his grandfather James in the 1940s. The hull is carved out of single piece of wood and it used to have side cloths and be fully rigged. However, as children, Eddie and his siblings used to play with it and it got damaged. Eddie is now slowly restoring the cabin before he starts work on the cloths.
A 1920s view from the towpath bridge that gives access from the Grand Junction main line towpath to that of the Slough Arm at Cowley Peachey. Eddie Hambridge’s grandfather’s (Jim Jackson’s) boats are heading towards the end of the ‘long level’ that extends from Camden on the Regent’s Canal and Norwood Top Lock to Cowley Lock. Eddie recalls that the boats had come down from Cowley to wind in the end of the arm and were returning to load glass sand by Cowley Peachey Bridge, which is visible in the distance. This would be carried to glass works at Smethwick (alongside which his mother, Mary, was born in 1917). The sand pit is now the site of a marina recently developed by British Waterways.
Study of the original photograph shows that only one of the horses is actually doing the towing, with the boats breasted up for the short journey to the loading wharf. The boats are Genie and Shamrock of L.B. Faulkner’s fleet from Leighton Buzzard and Eddie’s mother is seated on Genie’s cabin top. The tug tied on the left at the entrance to the Slough Arm appears to be H. Sabey’s Fastnet which was used to tow trains of wide boats along the long level from Paddington carrying rubbish for tipping into brick pits along the arm. There were return loads of sand, gravel and bricks to the city.
Agnes Jackson (Jim Jackson’s wife and Eddie Hambridge’s grandmother) standing behind the layby at Bull’s Bridge on the Grand Union Canal which is now occupied by houseboats of all descriptions. The layby was built in the early 1930s to accommodate boats from the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co fleet when awaiting orders for their next load northwards from the London area. Alongside was a purpose designed and built maintenance depot with drydocks, slipways, stores and machine shops capable of undertaking any maintenance work required by the company’s expanding carrying fleet. Its site is now occupied by a Tesco superstore. Some of these craft, in British Waterways’ post-nationalisation livery, are in the background. Frustratingly it has not been possible to identify the Harland & Wolff-built motor boat, which retains its original liner funnel style exhaust uptake but has acquired a curious cover over the hold as though it may be in use as a passenger trip boat in summer, perhaps on the London Zoo waterbus service on the Regent’s Canal.
Tom Jackson, brother to James Frederick (Jim) Jackson, Eddie Hambridge’s grandfather. He is obviously in his best clothes and proper high buttoned boatman’s ‘weskit’ for the photographer.
Hettie Jackson, sister of Jim and Tom Jackson, in her black bonnet. These became popular after Queen Victoria died in 1901, a fashion which lasted into the 1920s and ‘30s for the older generation of boat women.
James & Rosa Hambridge’s boats Geneva and Little Wonder are seen in and leaving Ironbridge Lock (77) in Cassiobury Park at Watford on their way down the Grand Union Canal to one of Dickinson’s paper mills in the late 1930s.
Violet is steering the motor whilst her young sister Doris sits on the slide. Their mother Rosa has charge of the butty. The latter has been allowed to draw out of the lock under the influence of the water moved by the motor’s departure.
Careful examination of the picture reveals that Violet has just placed the towing line on the motor’s dolly. This line runs aft from a pulley block on the butty’s mast through the running blocks which can be seen set up on the top planks. Rosa has taken a turn of the line with her left hand around the towing stud which is fitted into a hole on the butty cabin top.
As the motor goes ahead she will surge the line around this stud so that the towing force is taken up steadily until the motor’s stern is up to 70ft ahead of the butty fore-end. In this way a rapid start from each lock may be gained. But there is a penalty. In the butty’s cabin below Rosa’s feet there must be a large coil of line which will whip out and round the stud as the motor goes ahead and this is probably the reason why Doris and her puppy are confined to the motor for the run down to the mills. Any small fingers or limbs caught by the fast moving rope would stand no chance, and the motor steerer would not be able to get the way off the boats in time to help. In wet weather the butty cabin and hatches were rapidly reduced to a muddy mess by this towing technique. However, in skilled and careful hands it allowed rapid departures from the numerous locks.
Geneva was built as a horse boat by Nursers of Braunston in about October 1924 for Chas Nelson & Co Ltd of Stockton. She was registered at Daventry on 11th November of that year. By 16th February 1937 she had been bought from the Monk family by James Hambridge and been converted to a motor boat, as a result of which she had to be re-registered. James gave his address as Hawkesbury. On 24th June 1942 a Birmingham Canal Navigations gauging table was issued for the boat which had come into the ownership of J. Toole Ltd of Bilston. It had been broken up by May 1953.
Little Wonder was registered at Towcester on 13th January 1925 for James Hambridge who had no other home than the boat. On 14th June 1932 she had to be re-registered because a fore cabin had been added. This time the owner was recorded as being Rosa Hambridge, who stated that she came from Banbury.
Rosa Hambridge (Eddie Hambridge’s grandmother) and one of her daughters on Little Wonder.
James Hambridge sitting on cabin top with, left, Mary Jackson (Eddie Hambridge’s mother), and behind her Sarah Hambridge, and Rose, Violet, Doris and John, on We’ll Try.
The motor boat We’ll Try is believed to have been built on the Grand Junction Canal’s Paddington Arm for James Hambridge but any firm evidence of this would be welcome. She was registered at Tring for James Hambridge in May 1927 and gauged for him by the Oxford Canal Co the following month.
The photograph was probably taken whilst waiting to load at Longford Colliery, a short distance on the Coventry side of the junction at Sutton Stop.
James Hambridge, Eddie’s grandfather, and father of Bill on We’ll Try, probably at Longford. Violet is on Little Wonder.
Rose, Bill (Eddie Hambridge’s father), Violet and Doris Hambridge on Geneva at Longford with Little Wonder behind.
Sarah, Doris, Rose, Violet on Geneva at Longford with Little Wonder behind.
Pretoria awaiting coal loading orders at Sutton Stop, the junction of the Oxford and Coventry canals, with Rosie and Johnny (children of Rose and John Hambridge) looking out. Pretoria joined the Samuel Barlow Coal Co in about April 1941 from the Moira Colliery Co, for which she had been built in 1929.
Marina Jackson at Bull’s Bridge layby with motor Carnaby in the background. Carnaby was built by Harland & Wolff at Woolwich for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co and delivered in January 1937. The boat is painted in the early British Transport Waterways livery with yellow predominating over the blue. Carnaby survived to be taken into British Waterways’ maintenance fleet in which she worked until recently on the Grand Union Canal.
Just south of Watling Street Bridge (now No 96) at Bletchley, which carries the former A5 road over the Grand Union Canal, are the remains of Fenny Stratford Basin. Boats once entered this basin, passing through the swing bridge seen here that carried the towpath over its entrance. In the foreground Eddie Hambridge’s father, Bill Hambridge, is emptying. Eddie recalls that “they used to go up a bank and round to the brewery yard”, hence the heavy iron-wheeled barrow. Mabel Wilson seems cheerful despite all the shoveling she must do.
Marina Jackson obviously enjoyed having her photograph taken; here she poses near Tusses Bridge on the Oxford Canal. Carnaby’s butty Andromeda is visible with the boats facing towards Sutton Stop where they are presumably returning empty for orders. Agnes Jackson peeps from the butty cabin. Andromeda was also built by Harland & Wolff but, unlike the Town Class motor, she is a member of the slightly smaller Star Class and was delivered earlier, in November 1935.
Perhaps this is tea time at Regent’s Canal Dock in the late 1930s! These craft from the Grand Union fleet are tied abreast well out into the dock from the North Quay.
In the background the electric cranes on the Medland Wharf (probably some of those installed in 1937) are parked and there is no activity outside the warehouse or on the lighters alongside it. To the right of these is the chimney of the pumping engine house, built on the site of the former dock entrance lock, to supply water from the River Thames for the dock and canal, and hydraulic power for dock machinery. Beyond the lighters and narrowboats to the right are the gables of the south quay warehouses. Amongst the boats, few are identifiable; there is a mixture of craft from Harland & Wolff and W.J. Yarwood & Sons of Northwich. Of the former the lady of butty Banbury, in the foreground, has her shopping bags on the stern. A young lad in short trousers is dealing with the water cans on the roof of wooden ‘Ricky’ butty Lambourne. Otherwise range fires are well banked up, menfolk and children are waiting, and the shadows are lengthening from a south westerly sun, so surely the rest of the ladies are slaving over the meal preparations!
Agnes Jackson (Eddie Hambridge’s grandmother), with Marina Jackson and Violet Jackson (Eddie Hambridge’s aunts). Violet married Albert Beechey. They are working a pair of ex-Grand Union Canal Carrying Co boats up Braunston Top Lock.
Notice the running blocks set up as described previously; in this view the removable T-stud inserted into the butty cabin frame against the hatches is clearly visible. The tiller stands on end in the hatches ready to be inserted into the rams head as the boats leave the lock. It would not be left in place whilst working the lock in case it should swing around as the lock filled and hit a crew member or the lock wall.
Bill Hambridge manoeuvers the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co’s Epsom and Bedworth in Regent’s Canal Dock in the late 1930s. The boats were only a year or two old when the photograph was taken.
Epsom had been delivered from Harland & Wolff’s North Woolwich yard in March 1937 and her matching butty had come from the yard under an earlier order the previous October. It appears that the steerer is moving the boats under handicap of having much of the running gear and top planks piled on the motor’s cabin top because the holds have been cleared ready for loading.
The ship in the background is alongside Bergen Wharf which had been extended out into the water space in the 1920s. It is surrounded by a cluster of lighters and canal barges. Presumably Epsom and Bedworth are intended to join other narrowboats tied close under the ship’s bows ahead of them towards the north west corner of the dock.
Bill and Mary Hambridge approach Lock 96 near the bottom of the Hanwell flight as they make their way up the Grand Union after loading in Brentford about 1940. The boats have been clothed up, but there still remains some mopping off and cleaning to do after loading. They are still working the motor Epsom aboard which Bill was photographed a couple of years earlier but now paired with the wooden Cardiff which had been built by W.H. Walker & Bros at Rickmansworth in August 1936. Both boats have acquired the simplified wartime Grand Union Canal Carrying Co livery.
This interesting set of photographs was taken at Brentford Gauging Locks in the 1950s – a location that has now changed out of all recognition.
This view was taken from the lockside close to the toll office almost under the footbridge over the locks. Alan Brooks seems to be about to set off up the Grand Union Canal with his loaded pair of ex-Grand Union Canal Carrying Co boats. The motor has not been positively identified but is probably one of the Harland & Wolff built Star class vessels – usually known as ‘small Woolwiches’, perhaps Perseus. The butty, Tiverton, was a wooden boat delivered from W.H. Walker & Bros’ Rickmansworth yard in February 1937. She was one of 62 such craft built there to work with the steel motors from Yarwoods of Northwich and Harland & Wolff.
Peeping into the right hand side of the frame is one of the large wheels that operated paddle gear at these locks. Beyond the duplicate lock chamber, the background is closed off by the roof over Fellows, Morton & Clayton’s small side dock.
This second photograph shows the motor moving out of the chamber as Maggie Brooks is about to step aboard with the mooring line coiled in her hand.
This reveals that Tiverton has been loaded with wheat, which has been transhipped from a lighter in the dock in the left background. The motor has been neatly clothed up to protect its cargo but this has yet to be done on the butty. Narrowboats loaded in Brentford Dock would have to be brought down to the Gauging Locks despite the fact that they were invariably bound up the canal away from the Thames and therefore had no need to pass through the lock.
On the lockside there still stands (despite redevelopment all around) the office of the toll clerk. This official was responsible for measuring the height of dry side visible on the boats from which, using a table kept in the office, he could calculate the weight that had been loaded into the boat. The number of the appropriate gauging table for the motor boat may be seen painted on the cabin side in the photograph (left) but unfortunately the picture is not clear enough to discover the boat’s name with certainty.
It seems highly unlikely that the pair would set off up the locks towards Hanwell without the butty being clothed up because of the risk that the wheat would be spoiled by water from the gates and paddles splashing aboard the boat. There is a lorry on the lockside right against the toll house, whose owners appear to enjoy watching others at work. Stacked on the wharf ahead of the boats are barrels of lime pulp awaiting loading for carriage to the Roses’ lime juice factory at Boxmoor. The line of trees beyond marks the course of the River Brent.
The final view confirms that Alan Brooks was not planning to set off upstream with his butty in a state of disarray! The motor has been brought back into the lock alongside the butty but now against the toll office. Presumably the shunting of the boats was simply to save the toll clerk having to walk over the gates or bridge to the island between the duplicate locks in order to measure its freeboard.
Violet Jackson (standing on the butty’s mast beam) and Maggie Brooks (on the gunwale) are making progress with the clothing up. The vertical ‘stands’ would have had to be put in place before loading but the planks put out of the way of the grab used to lift the grain from lighter to boat at Brentford Depot.
Whilst gauging the boats, time could be saved by progressing with lifting the planks onto the stands and securing them as well as pulling up the side cloths. The nearer of these is still neatly rolled along the gunwale but Violet has unrolled the right hand one and passed the strings from it over the planks. The strings will be passed through eyes on the left hand cloth before being taken back over the top planks and hitched to keep the cloths taut. Once this is done the heavy top cloths will be unfolded over the planks to hang down and overlap the side cloths and then a long narrow tippet will be secured over the planks so as to reduce the wear and tear on the top cloths. The whole will be water tight and the grain thus remain dry until arrival at Wellingborough or whichever of the mills it is destined for.
The angle of this view is different to the others since the photographer stood on the island created when the lock was duplicated in 1900. In the background there are large numbers of drums as before and some impressive stacks of metal ingots, probably aluminium. A corner of the toll office peeps into shot from the right.
Robert Longden
Congestion at the entrance to the Newdigate Colliery or Bedworth Arm on the Coventry Canal. Robert Longden stood on Bedworth Hill Bridge looking south towards Sutton Stop and Coventry to take this photograph sometime in the late 1940s.
Eddie Hambridge’s uncle Tom Hambridge has brought his Fellows, Morton & Clayton pair wide around the turn to line up with the bridge hole, possibly en route to one of the collieries around Atherstone to load. FMC always aimed to carry perishable or higher value goods but as the waterways and many of their competitors were nationalised into the British Transport Commission they found trading conditions harder. By the time their craft were sold to the nationalised concern in 1949, coal cargoes were increasingly common.
His motor is Hawk, the hull of which was built by W.J. Yarwood & Sons for FMC to fit out at their Uxbridge yard in 1927. After service in the nationalised British Waterways fleet she was bought by Peter Froud for his Inland Waterway Holiday Cruises company and converted as a hotel boat. The present author was, for a time, her skipper when she worked with the famous, and now restored, Shropshire Union Flyboat Saturn as butty. Her butty here has a forecabin to provide extra accommodation for the boatman’s family and presumably the young man standing on top of it is responsible for the clouds of smoke from its small bottle stove which have enveloped him.
At the moment when Tom Hambridge came around the turn, a Grand Union pair was backing into the arm to load coal which would be brought alongside in railway wagons from Newdigate Colliery.
The butty appears to be Seascale, one of the big wooden boats built by Walkers at Rickmansworth which was delivered in 1936. She will be towed backwards by her motor, the fore end of which is immediately astern of her. There was no winding hole in the arm and reversing up to the wharf with empty boats was easier than reversing out when deep laden.
Alongside the Grand Unions is the fore end of a Samuel Barlow boat also awaiting its turn to load. The Fellows, Morton & Clayton, or ‘Josher’, motor in the background may also be waiting to wind and back into the arm as it is not in a suitable place to tie up and Coventry canals, and has no lines ashore.
What price a movie film of all this activity! It will never be repeated, since the arm is now stanked off and the colliery and its railway sidings have all vanished under new development.
By the time this photograph was taken, in 1963, the age of the pleasure boat had clearly come into the working boater’s world.
The junction of the Oxford just outside Coventry, had been known for perhaps a century as ‘Sutton Stop’ after the long-serving toll clerks from the Sutton family. Although boatmen did not need such signs to tell them where they were, British Waterways thought otherwise – and continues to do so – as witnessed by the plethora of modern signs of which this is an early example. However, not long after this photograph was taken, BW demolished the lock house at Marston Junction, and with it the water supply!
The two children are Eddie Hambridge’s brothers: Dennis aged 12 (who lived until 1988) and Stephen aged 8.
Birmingham & Midland Canal Carrying Co boats loading coal at Market Bosworth in late 1967. B&MCCCo loaded there after the canal above Snarestone had been closed earlier that year. Traffic later transferred to Gopsall Wharf, leased by the Ashby Canal Association. The warehouse at Bosworth Wharf had been demolished in about 1959. A mud hopper was loaded and settled on the bottom of the canal against the wharf because the canal was too shallow for boats to get alongside; a conveyor was set up over it to load coal delivered by lorry.
Eddie joined B&MCCCo in September 1966. He steered Linda (ex Grand Union Canal Carrying Co Royalty Class motor Victoria), which is out of sight ahead of the other boats, having already been loaded, and Ash. Ash had been built for the Grand Union’s Erewash Canal Carrying Co subsidiary. Outside Ash is Collingwood, a British Waterways Admiral class motor which had been built by Isaac Pimblott at Northwich in 1957 and was crewed by Malcolm Edwards. Collingwood’s butty Angel had been built by Harland & Wolff for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co in 1936 and was steered by John Gittens.
Doug Greaves’ always immaculate motor boat Otley (ex GUCCCo) was subcontracted to Birmingham & Midland Canal Carrying Co for a time. It was photographed in the top of the ‘Old Thirteen’ at Farmers Bridge in Birmingham where the Long Boat pub was soon to be built. Eddie Hambridge stands on the gunwale while Graham Wigley (a director of Birmingham & Midland) talks to BW chairman Frank Price.
The retaining wall at the back of Crescent Wharf, once the Shropshire Union Railways & Canal Co stronghold, on the Newhall Branch in the background is about to be swamped by redevelopment.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Eddie Hambridge and family for the loan of the photographs and to Pete Harrison and Alan Faulkner for help with detail of the boats.
