Summer 2024 - Issue 74

The Summer 2024 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.

Front Cover: The short boats of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal had a unique form of decoration. And there was a subtle difference between craft painted in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Here, Annie of Shipley, Yorkshire receives the final touch to the paintwork at Apperley Bridge.

Historical Profiles

Foxton Inclined Plane

Andy Tidy explores the short history of this lost Leicester Line lift

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Working the Waterways

George Bate’s Worcester & Birmingham Canal

Andy Tidy uncovers the detailed records of a canal maintenance worker from the first half of the 20th century

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Historical Canal Maps

Bottom Boat Canal

Richard Dean illustrates a short but contentious Yorkshire scheme

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From the Archives

Family History Sources

Joseph Boughey uncovers the lives connected to the tragic drowning of a boater in 1881

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Leisure on the Waterways

What would Tom Rolt think?

David Cheetham ponders what the celebrated waterways writer and campaigner would make of the contemporary canal and river scene

This is our free-access sample article from the Summer 2024 NarrowBoat

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Historical Profiles

Boats of the Eastern Leeds & Liverpool

Chris M. Jones looks at some of the wide-beam craft that once worked the L&L in Yorkshire

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Life Afloat

Alice Lapworth

Tim Coghlan explores the life of a former working boatwoman who recently passed away

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Historical Profiles

Waterways go to War

Chris M. Jones studies a World War II government publication laying out the state of Britain’s transport industry

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