Dear Motley Crew,
We may have made it through the Harecastle tunnel without encountering the fearsome Kidsgrove boggart, a screaming, headless woman (how is that even possible?) who reputedly roams the tunnel, but we were to meet up with her further along the canal, albeit in another form.
Nothing to be frightened off here - she's 'armless!
The reports of the tunnel hauntings are based on the 1839 real-life murder of Christina Collins, who was killed, but not beheaded, by boatmen in Rugeley, a town a little further down the Trent and Mersey canal. The press of the day noted that “having been most barbarously treated (she) was found dead in the canal in this parish on the 17th June, 1839”. Her grave is in the churchyard there, although we were unable to locate it.
I am becoming increasingly aware that many of the pictures shown in the blog are of old factories, but cruising along the canals as a leisure boater, it’s easy to forget that the canals were originally built as a means of transport to service the burgeoning factories located along their perimetres. Coming across a carrier boat reminds you that some people still make their living from the canals, particularly in the winter months, by supplying narrowboats with essential diesel, gas, and coal.
"Jules Fuels" is just one of the carriers who still ply the canals.
The factories on the Peak Forest and Macclesfield Canals had been built to process and manufacture cotton but here on the Trent and Mersey Canal, at Stoke-on-Trent, the main industry was the production of pottery.
Although pottery production is still carried on here – Wedgewood for example still operates factories – many of the old mills are closed, but, as on the previous canals, their very presence adds a palpable sense of history. I never thought that I’d find old warehouses and factories to be beautiful but there is something stately and determined about the architecture of these buildings. It's such a shame that they can't be given a new lease of life.
These rather beautiful bottle kilns, named for their obvious shape, were used to fire pottery
Given that most of the canal-side factories are now dilapidated and abandoned, we were delighted to round a bend and come upon this lovely old factory that is still in use. Constructed in 1817, it produces the Armitage Shanks range of sanitary ware.
In the 19th century, sanitary ware became a specialty under the management of Edward Johns, hence the origin of the Americanism “going to the john”.
Our progress along the Trent and Mersey canal was now being measured by these rather beautiful cast iron markers. During WW2, the mileposts were removed and buried in order to confuse any unwelcome Germans should they arrive unbidden and want to try an ale down at the local pub. The “R & D Stone” on the base indicates that this is an original casting and was made at the Rangeley & Dixon foundry in Stone.
So, here we are, like Christopher Robin, sitting halfway between here and there
The mileage markers were also indicating that we were nearing Bridge 56, the last of the winter stoppages that would prevent us from reaching our winter mooring at Blisworth.
We passed under it joyfully but our jubilation was short-lived as not long after, we received the news that another flight of locks ahead of us, on the Coventry Canal, had just been closed down. It appeared that “someone” (there they are again, that mysterious and elusive “someone”), had hit one of the lock gates and knocked it from its hinges. For us, with the last of our winter stoppages behind us, it was merely an inconvenient delay, but for boaters headed in the other direction and needing to pass Bridge 56, it meant that they might very well find themselves caught on the wrong side of the winter shutdowns.
The news of the closure slowed down our travels yet again and we chugged on without any great haste now towards Fradley Junction. Here we did a right-hand turn onto the Coventry Canal that would take us all the way to Braunston, the Grand Union Canal, and our marina mooring.
I’ve had to use someone else’s memory of the junction here as the day that we came through, it was nothing like this. It was absolutely hammering down and blowing a gale and the last thing that I had time to do was to record the event.
As is so often the case here, the next day was “dry”, and so we set off into the town to seek out the grave of another supposed ghost.
Fradley, it turns out, had been home to a large airfield during WW2. Officially known as RAF Lichfield, its role was to train men, drawn mainly from the Commonwealth nations, in the handling of Wellington and Lancaster bombers. As could well be imagined, things did not always go well during training and there were, unfortunately, a number of accidents. As a consequence, the local churchyard has a plot of Commonwealth war graves, where Australian and Canadian air force crew who died in these training accidents, are buried.
It was rather an odd sensation to see the RAAF insignia on the headstones – a little bit of home some 10,000 miles away – and the thought occurred to me, that my dad, who had also flown with the RAAF and the USAAF during the war, could well have ended up buried in a plot far from home. We were again struck, as we had been when we wandered through the cemeteries at Gallipolli, by just how young these men were – and at the absolute senselessness of it all.
The cemetery holds twenty or so war graves, but we were seeking one grave in particular. Flight Sergeant Kenneth Helmsley Hewitt, from Toowong, was just 21 years old when he died on the 15th of April, 1943. Cleared for take-off, but realising that he had left his codebook in the mess, he climbed back out of his aircraft to retrieve it and distractedly walked into the flailing path of one of the propellers. His death is said to be behind the reports by a number of locals who live on the housing estate that now occupies the previous airfield, of a ghostly, headless form that has been seen wandering the old runways.
The military theme was set to continue as we cruised towards Atherstone. Pill-boxes of various designs came and went,
and our guide book informed us that Whittington barracks were nearby. However, the most pertinent reminder was that we were beginning to see these signs with increasing frequency.
The range is located near the 400-acre Hopwas Wood and of course, we just had to investigate this further. With the website advising us that today was a "safe" day to go tramping, and seeing no evidence of flashing lights or waving flags, we set off to see what we could see.
What we found was an eerie quiet – no birds at all – and we wondered if they had learned to stay away from the area. It was also breathtakingly beautiful.
We moved on slowly now towards Polesworth, as we still had a few days to wait for the repairs to be finalised on the locks up ahead.
Now here’s a curious thing; all the graves faced east, away from the entrance gate, and most of them had the occupant’s name inscribed on the back of the headstone, making it easy to find the one that you were seeking. Do all graves face east? I’ll have to take note from now on.
Finally, word came through that the locks were open to traffic and we began to see a stream of boats heading down the canal towards us. We waited another day for the rush to pass and then commenced our run up the eleven Atherstone locks. As we worked our way up the flight, we heard stories from the locals about the boats that had been caught in the flight when it closed and the various crews’ circumstances. It seems as though it might have been the biggest thing that had happened here for a while.
We made it to the top in fairly good time, as, for the first time in a long time, the presence of down-flight boat traffic meant that a number of the locks were set for us. In addition, the crews from the waiting boats were helping to open and close gates and paddles for boats travelling up, which saved us a good deal of time. When it works well, it works well.
It was not far to go now until we reached the junction that would take us to Coventry. Given that we're travelling this country at 3 mph, we have plenty of time to contemplate and discuss the more esoteric aspects of life. So, we wondered, if you go willingly to Coventry, can it be said that you're being sent to Coventry? And what is the origin of the expression? The most plausible it seems is that the phrase emanates from a fear of being hanged from a covin tree outside the city's castle during the reign of Henry III. We made a mental note to stay away from all castles.
The Captain, the Commodore and Mrs Chippy
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