Historic Boats Finally Arrive at Norbury Wharf

NEWS FROM SHREWSBURY AND NEWPORT CANAL TRUST
Historic Boats finally arrive at Norbury Junction
After a journey that has taken five months a pair of historic working boats gifted to the Shrewsbury and Newport Canals Trust have finally arrived at Norbury Wharf, ready to be restored to their former glory.
The boats, built in 1936 by Harland and Wolff, on the Thames at Woolwich, are Bainton and Berkhamsted, a pair of Town Class boats that were built to work together.
For 15 years they have been tied to the bank of the Grand Union Canal at Weedon, near Northampton, without moving. Then their owner, Roger White, decided to donate them to the Trust as the best way of ensuring the future of the vessels he loved.
There were just 24 pairs built and it is little short of amazing that this pair have been brought back together after being scattered across the canal system and are now destined to play a key role in the Canal Trust’s plan to restore the Shrewsbury and Newport canals.
The original plan was to bring them from Northamptonshire to take pride of place at the Canal Trust’s popular annual festival at Norbury Junction in early May - but Covid intervened.
The Shrewsbury and Newport Canal Trust team, led by Trustee and historic boat fanatic David Ray, managed to get the boats as far as Alvecote near Tamworth before lockdown halted the journey.
A few days ago, as August drew to a close, a skeleton crew set out from Alvecote on an ambitious three day journey to finally get the boats back to Norbury Junction - where the Shrewsbury and Newport Canal once began it’s journey westward - for restoration work to begin.
One of the four-man crew was Roger White, who found himself at the helm of his old boats for the first time in 15 years. With David Ray, David’s dad, Graham and another Trustee Phil Jones , the quartet worked the pair through lock flights and along the Coventry, Trent and Mersey, Staffs and Worcester and Shropshire Union Canals at the height of the holiday season.
They passed through many holiday hotspots including Fradley Junction on their first day, after descending the pair of locks at Glascote - a process that involves filling and emptying every lock twice - once for the motor and once for the butty - with some strenuous bow-hauling of the unpowered butty.
Day two took them from Fradley to Great Haywood, past the Shugborough Hall estate and, once through the lock, making a magnificent sweeping left turn through a narrow bridge and onto the Staffs and Worcester Canal. The sheer number of boats slowed down their progress at they stopped overnight in Penkridge, camping out in the leaky cabins and holds of the old working boats.
The final day brought torrential rain as the four men completed the run through the locks of the Staffs and Worcester and brought the pair onto the Shropshire Union Canal at Autherley Junction.
Wet, tired and four hours behind schedule the rain turned to drizzle as they entered Gnosall through the short rock tunnel south of the village. Even on the final stretch holiday boats were making steering the working pair interesting.
But the final few miles brought them to Norbury Junction late in the afternoon, happy and rightly pleased with their efforts
For Roger White it was a nostalgic journey as he has owned the boats for 43 years, and for many years operated them as camping boats for youth groups and others all over the canal system.
David Ray, a director of Norbury Wharf Ltd, where the boats will be kept while they are restored and an owner of several historic narrowboats, says the plan is to do some checking on the hulls in Norbury Wharf’s dry dock and perhaps get some paint applied before winter.
The Canal Trust plans to have teams of volunteers working on the restoration of the boats, under expert supervision, and to use them as part of it’s educational programme which aims to teach youngsters and adults about the history of the Shrewsbury and Newport Canal and the working people and boats of the UK’s unique canal system.
That will delight Roger White who says he wants to make sure that the boats are looked after and kept together as an original pair.