Harvey-Taylor Follow-up

Famous Fleets: NarrowBoat, Summer 2009

Since the publication of Alan Faulkner’s history of the ‘Famous Fleet’ of Harvey-Taylor of Aylesbury (NB Winter 2008) several more photographs have come to light

Ruth Tiddy discovered the photographs reproduced on this page in her Featherstone family archive. She writes: “After closer inspection I think the ones of the lock were actually taken by my grandfather Thomas. In the photograph of Daphne leaving the lock (lower right), the thin chap with a file under his arm observing the activity is definitely my very young dad. Under the balance beam can be glimpsed a pushchair and the lower half of a woman who is also definitely my mum (believe me!). I am in the pushchair which was being propelled by my grandma (according to mum). My grandfather was a Methodist minister who was then in charge of the Aylesbury circuit. “The heading is ‘A pair of narrowboats working through a lock near Aylesbury, Whitsun 1948’, although judging by the age of me in the pushchair I think it might be a year earlier. My father was then training as a teacher and no doubt ‘commissioned’ the set as a teaching aid. He rather cheekily capt…