The London Canal Museum

Last week, I mentioned the London Canal Museum in my post but didn't write about it then because it is really worthy of its own post. So, without further ado, here it is.

Just to recap, we were doing a day trip to London courtesy of the Eurostar, something neither Koos nor I had ever done before, so it was something of an experiment. Given that we only had six hours between arriving in London and departing again for home, we didn't want to spend too much time travelling from one place to another. As a result, we confined our wanderings to the areas around St Pancras and King's Cross.

Having feasted our eyes on our usual suspects – the Regent's canal and all the boats thereon (see last post) – as well as the gasometers,  we weren't quite sure what to do next.

"Look, the London Canal Museum is just a short walk from here." I pointed it out to Koos on Google maps. Its position was shown next to the harbour called Battlebridge Basin (also mentioned in my last post).

"Hmm," came the less than enthusiastic response. Koos, like me, doesn't really like museums, preferring to see history in the wild, so to speak. However, a canal museum appealed to me.

"Well, let's just walk to that harbour, anyway. We haven't been there before."

And so we set off, meandering through the back streets in what looked to be the general direction of the canal. I say 'looked to be' deliberately since I have zero sense of direction and it wasn't the same way we'd walked earlier in the day. What I'd forgotten was that in the morning, we'd crossed over the Regent's canal to the north side and turned west. This time, we were staying on the south side and turning a little east. 

However, since I don't know my north from my south, let alone east from west, and imagining we were already on the other side of the Regent's Canal, I was taken by surprise when we walked up a side street and saw the entrance to the museum. Yes. I know. It sounds silly, doesn't it? Well, try living in my brain for a while and see how I feel.

Anyway, after some minor discussion about whether to go or not to go, I clinched the deal by saying to Koos, "Come on. I'll pay. At least it'll be warm in there!" 

And what a treat it was.

The first item on display we noted after paying our dues was a beautifully restored towpath tractor. This one was built in 1960, and did the job horses were previously used for– towing barges along the canals.

I've always loved old tractors, and this one was a delight to see. The details of its background and purpose are just visible on the information board in the last photo (thank you, Koos). I had to wonder if the horses minded being made redundant by modern technology – as it was then. I could imagine them sighing as they hung up their harnesses for the last time, but I couldn't decide if the sigh would have been of relief or regret.

As I also mentioned last week, this museum was on the site of two ice wells, the inspiration for which came from one Carol Gatti, a Swiss Italian immigrant who came to London to make his fortune in the 1850s and did so. He was a café owner, but he realised money could be made by supplying ice to all sorts of different businesses. His story, and that of the ice wells, is detailed on the Canal Museum's website, which you can find here. In short, though, he started importing ice from Norway not only to supply local business and hotels, but also to provide clean, natural ice for Italian ice cream makers. The imported ice was stored in these wells before being distributed. Previously, ice from local ponds and lakes had been used, but I dread to think how unhygienic that natural ice might have been...it doesn't really bear thinking of, does it?

Another aspect the museum focused on was about the children who both lived and worked on the canals. I was shocked to read that children were even employed to dig canals. In fact, I almost didn't believe it, but the photo below of the child navvies who helped dig the Manchester Ship Canal was somewhat chilling evidence of the truth.

But then children had to help the boatmen as well. The pictures below show a very young boy leading a a donkey along the towpath and a tiny girl tied to the roof of the narrowboat to prevent her from falling off. 

Another photo was of a small girl tying two boats together in readiness for loading. I believe Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, made laudable efforts to reduce child labour, but the legislation he inspired clearly didn't reach the canals. These photos are undoubtedly from the 20th century.

There were numerous other fascinating photos and information boards on canal life in the museum, but I found the two below especially interesting. The decline of the commercial canal traffic naturally began with the advent of train travel, and was further exacerbated when road transport grew. What I didn't know was that the winter of 1962/3 was the final death knell for canal boat transport. With the waterways frozen for months, barges were completely ice bound, leaving it to the trucks and trains to wrest the final slice of the commercial cake from the narrowboating community.

Nevertheless, revival was already happening in quite a different area – that of the pleasure craft industry. It's a heartwarming story of volunteering enthusiasm, but without the teams of eager canal lovers, the English network would not be half as extensive as it is today. The photo below tells the story of how the IWA (Inland Waterways Association) was founded in 1946 and how, with the help of thousands of volunteers, many of the cuts have been reopened, used now by happy cruisers across the country.

We must have spent well over an hour reading these posters, after which we stepped through the back door into the serene haven of Battlebridge Basin. It was hard to imagine such a peaceful place could exist in the heart of London's inner suburbs, but a resident we spoke to told us it really was as blissful as it looked.

"I used to gaze at this place from the café in that building on the other side," she told us, gesturing across the harbour. "I used to stop for a coffee on my way home from child care with my daughter, and I was determined that one day I'd live here."

Well, now she does. She said she'd had to wait a year to find the right boat to buy in the harbour, but when it came up, there was no stopping her. Was she happy with her decision? The smile on her cheerful face said it all. I've borrowed the photo below from a website titled Battlebridge Moorings, which gives some background to the basin. It's lovely to think these boats will still have the right to moor here for generations to come. Have a read and see its history for yourself.

Photo thanks to battlebridgemoorings.co.uk. The museum is
on the right-hand side of the photo.

Well, that's it again allemaal. I hope you enjoyed browsing through the museum with me and learnt as much as I did. Next week, I'll catch up with more local doings. Enjoy the rest of this one, wherever you are.