Trip to Nottingham

Picturing the Past: NarrowBoat, Winter 2015

Euan Corrie

Euan Corrie examines a rare collection of pictures showing horsedrawn carrying on the Midlands waterways in 1919

The pictures here are from an album entitled ‘Trip by Boat to Nottingham and Back, September 1919’, which was kindly submitted to the NarrowBoat office by Fabian Hiscock, on behalf of the Rickmansworth Waterways Trust, in response to our ‘Crossing the Trent’ feature (Autumn 2015 NB). While the impeccably presented work includes over 50 images, there are few accompanying notes – and those there are tend only to provide basic details on the action and locations depicted. As such, we don’t know why this trip was documented, who the boat crew was, or the exact route of the journey. Even the name of the photographer remains a mystery, though we suspect that the pictures were taken for personal rather than commercial use, as the album contains a handful of unrelated shots. In spite of the lack of information, the images do provide a rare and fascinating insight into horse-drawn working boat practices of the immediate post-World War I era, as well as the …