Stone Boating

Reader's Letters & Queries: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2015

I read with interest the feature on stone boating and was especially pleased to see the photo of Mountsorrel wharf as I hadn’t realised there was an arm there. I probably took the last boat load of granite from Redland’s Mountsorrel quarry, using the Leeds & Liverpool short boat Wye, loading on 15th August 1975. Not being too sure of the state of the lock cuts I only loaded 40 tonnes but had no problems at all. The photo shows Wye being loaded with a large loading shovel – the narrowboat which normally moored there having been moved out of the way (with permission of its owner). Wye and load were displayed at the IWA National Rally in York. It was intended to deliver the stone to J.H. Walker up the River Foss, but for some reason I don’t now recall we were asked to deliver it to the Redland depot in Goole where it lay for a while before being sold. David Lowe, by email…