Pictures of narrowboats from the various canal carrying fleets plus one or two other commercial narrowboats. More to follow soon. Many thanks to Malcolm "Blossom" Edge for providing additional information for the captions.

Purpose-built narrowboats and other narrow beam vessels from the British Waterways maintenance fleet.

Various trip, packet and hotel narrowboats.

Narrow beam tugs, both purpose-built and conversions from working boats.

Pictures of various narrowboats including hire fleets and privately owned boats. More to ba added ASAP.

Photographs of commercial and residential barges on the inland waterways.

Maintenance barges, mainly from the British Waterways fleet.

Various dredgers that work on the rivers and wide canals of Great Britain.

Wide beam tugboats from around the inland waterways system.

Pictures of wide beam pleasure and trip boats on the Inland Waterways. Also covered are small, unpowered river ferries. More coming soon.

Pictures of various craft that do not fit into any other category.

For many years redundant commercial river craft have been beached along the banks of the Severn between Sharpness and Purton in order to protect the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal against erosion. The boats involved range from wooden schooners, trows and barges to wartime concrete lighters and, at the Sharpness end, some more modern steel vessels. In excess of 80 boats are known to have been beached here and the site represents the largest boat graveyard in mainland Britian.
This unique site is constantly under threat from vandals and souvenir hunters. Name panels from the vessels made attractive ornaments and from the 1940s many of them started to disappear. In 1986 no less than eight vessels were destroyed and several others were damaged by a mindless arson attack. Up until the 1990s British Waterways were still burying vessels in spoil and rubble at the northern end of the site. Recently graffiti has appeared on one vessel and every year timber is removed for barbecues and hand made iron nails are stolen as ornaments. The Friends of Purton have been formed as an organisation to protect and raise awareness of the site. English Heritage are actively being lobbied to provide some measure of designation/protection for the site and a series of plaques and interpretation boards are being provided as funding/sponsorship allows. Please feel free to attend a guided tour of the site and find out about the Friends of Purton - details on the front page.
Marine historian Paul Barnett has spent many years studying the site and has identified the vast majority of the vessels and researched their histories. I would like to thank Paul for his generosity in sharing the information that is presented here.

**UPDATE 25/11/09**

The Friends of Purton are pleased to announce that they have now catalogued their 2007 acquisition of the Graham Farr photographic collection. Started c.1930s the collection consists of several thousand black and white images of local schooners, trows, lighters, coasters, paddle steamers and much, much more.

Thanks are duly made to the late Robin Craig's widow Yvonne, Michael Farr and Llanelli Photographer Derek Newton Goverd for their generosity, foresight and continued support.

Further details regarding individual images and database searches are available upon request to the Friends of Purton, 22 Gurney Avenue, Tuffley, GL4 0YL or barnadillo@aol.com.

www.friendsofpurton.org.uk

The British inland waterway network contains a delightful variety of interesting and picturesque bridges. This section aims to illustrate a selection.

A look at the many and varied canal tunnels in Britain. This section covers those tunnels that are still navigable. Abandoned tunnels (including Ashperton, Aylestone Hill, Butterley, Greywell, Harecastle 1, Lappal, Newbold, Norwood, Oxenhall & Southnet) are covered in the appropriate "Disused Waterways" sections below.

Some of the most striking canal stuctures are the aqueducts that carry the canal system over roads, railways, valleys etc.

...for want of a better term. Photographs of bollards, boundary markers, mileposts, signs and that sort of thing. More images will be added soon.

Various canalside buildings from around the network.

A selection of waterway-related pub signs from around the country. This section is still under construction - more images will be added soon.

A selection of general canal pictures from across the system. More to follow soon.

A look at the historic inland port of Gloucester, served by the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal. For further information on Gloucester Docks I recommend Hugh Conway-Jones's superb site "Gloucester Docks and the Sharpness Canal" - see links.

Pictures of the various types of canal and river lock on the waterways. Also this section features some detail pictures of paddle gear and other lock equipment.

These attractive line art cards were published by Exeter artists and canal enthusiasts Jean Hall and Joy Yeates in the 1970s and 80s. I currently only have a few of these cards. If anyone can supply me with examples of other postcards in the series (scans or originals) I would be grateful. Please note; Jean Hall & Joy Yeates retain copyright on these images. They are not to be copied or reproduced.

J Salmon Ltd are based in Sevenoaks, Kent and are the UK's oldest established postcard publisher. The company is family owned and currently run by the 5th generation of the Salmon family. Over the years Salmon produced numerous canal postcards and these are now very collectable. Here is a selection of the earlier, smaller format cards.

Sometimes known as the Bradley Locks Branch, this arm of the BCN took an almost dead straight course from Moorcroft Junction on the Wallsall Canal to the Old Main Line in Bradley. There were nine locks on the branch of which only the first two are still visible. These pictures concentrate on the north eastern end of the branch which is still recognizable as a former canal. The rest of the route has been completely razed and infilled but nevertheless remains unobstructed. Restoring the branch and connecting it with the remnant of the Old Main Line that runs from Deepfields Junction to Bradely BW workshops would create an interesting and useful east-west link through the Black Country.

The Buckingham Arm branched off the Old Stratford Arm and followed the Ouse valley for nine and a half miles to Buckingham. There were just two locks on the Arm, at Bourton and Hyde Lane. The waterway gradually fell into disuse through the early 1900s and was barely navigable beyond Deanshanger by 1904. The navigation was finally closed comletely in 1944 when the Old Stratford Arm was blocked at bridge 1. The Buckingham Canal Society is working to restore the canal.

Opened in 1825 and closed in 1902, the Bude Canal was built to carry sand from Bude to the inland regions of North Cornwall and Devon. The first two miles were constructed as a barge canal with conventional locks. The majority of the canal was constructed to take tub boats and made use of no less than six inclined planes on a network of three branches.

The short Coombe Hill Canal ran from the River Severn near Wainlode Hill to Combe Hill Basin, a few miles north west of Cheltenham. There was one lock at the junction with the Severn but otherwise there were no major works of civil engineering. The canal closed in 1876 but still retains water for some of its length and is now a nature reserve.

The Hereford and Gloucester Canal closed in 1883 and the eastern half of the route between Ledbury and Gloucester was converted into a railway. I will add more pictures showing the rest of the route as time progresses.

The Old Stratford Arm was a short branch of the Grand Junction Canal which ran from the junction at Cosgrove to Hayes Basin at Old Stratford, a distance of less than 2 miles. In the early 1960s the Old Stratford Arm was blocked adjacent to bridge 1 at Cosgrove. The remaining stub is used for moorings. The Buckingham Canal Society is working to restore the canal.

The Shropshire Canal was a tub boat canal built to supply coal, ore and limestone to the industrial region of east Shropshire. It ran from a junction with the Donnington Wood Canal and ascended 316 yard long Wrockwardine Wood inclined plane to its summit level. The canal then descended via the 600 yard long Windmill inclined plane and the 350 yard long Hay inclined plane to Coalport on the River Severn. A short length of the canal, including the Hay inclined plane, falls within the grounds of the Blists Hill open air museum and these pictures illuatrate this partially restored section.

The Stroudwater Navigation forms the western part of the so called Cotswold Canals. It ran from The River Severn at Framilode to Stroud where it made an end on connection with the Thames & Severn Canal. More pictures will be added to this section in time.

A small selection of pictures of the Thames & Severn Canal. More will be added soon.

The Wendover Arm of the Grand Union Canal was completed in 1797 and, although it carried commercial traffic, its main purpose was to feed water into the summit section of the Grand Union. The canal was closed to boats above Tringford in 1904 but remained as a feeder for the Grand Union. However, the section from Drayton Beauchamp to Tringford was drained and replaced by a pipe below the former canal bed. The canal is being restored by the Wendover Arm Trust. I have nearly finished photographing the Arm, the final couple of outstanding sections will be added soon.

Various shots of disused canals from across the country. More pictures will be added soon.

A few bits and pieces that don't fit into any other section.