Hazel and the Salt Union

Reader's Letters & Queries: NarrowBoat, Spring 2014

Hazel and the Salt Union After reading Colin Edmondson’s excellent article on the River Weaver (Summer 2013 NB), I was prompted to write in the hope that your readers might help solve problems which have been puzzling members of the Wooden Canal Boat Society for a while. Hazel, last year’s winner of the Ken Keay Rose Bowl Award presented by the Historic Narrow Boat Club, is in the process of being fitted out, as funds allow, as a ‘Wellbeing Boat’. She will provide canal holidays for groups of disadvantaged people. The history of Hazel, her registration as Mull for the Salt Union in 1914, her sale to Agnes Beech of Little Leigh in 1929 and her subsequent life in the 1950s onwards as a pleasure boat have been well documented. However, the period from 1914 to 1929 was a blank. As a volunteer who has worked on Hazel and had already researched the Salt Union records for details of my family, I offered to see what I could find out about Hazel. I had searched some …