Summer 2025 - Issue 78

The Summer 2025 issue includes the following features. You can purchase this magazine from our online Shop.

You can read the articles in this and all other NarrowBoat issues online by becoming a NarrowBoat subscriber.

Working the Waterways

Keay’s of Walsall

Andy Tidy looks at the BCN’s last wooden-boat builders 

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A Broader Outlook

Craft of the Upper Thames

Chris M. Jones examines images showing various boats and traffics on the Upper Thames during the 19th and 20th centuries

This is our free-access sample article from the Summer 2025 NarrowBoat

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Picturing the Past

Gainsborough Delivery

Another delve into the Jack Parkinson Collection shows activity on the River Trent at Gainsborough in the 1950s

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Historical Profiles

Sheldon’s Last Boat

Roy Gibbons relates the story of Angelo, a 70ft dumb boat built in Parbold in 1927  

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Time and Place

A September Day at Tusses Bridge Dock

Chris M. Jones reveals the histories of three boats and their owners seen at Tusses Bridge boatyard on the Oxford Canal

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Unearthing History

Uncovering Derby’s Lost Waterway

Bobby Cowling traces the lost city centre sections of the Derby Canal 

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Historical Canal Maps

Lancaster Canal Terminals

Richard Dean reviews an 1880 survey of the Lancaster Canal

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Picturing the Past

Oxford Canal Cargoes

Although the Oxford Canal is synonymous with coal carrying, many other cargoes were transported. These images highlight two of the lesser-known traffics

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Historical Profiles

Boat-builders of Leicester: The Rudkin Family

Chris M. Jones revisits and builds on the pioneering research of the late Leslie Hales in uncovering the story of Leicester’s Rudkin boat-building family

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