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Reviews
| Britain's Restored Canals. By Roger Squires. Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England, UK: Landmark Publishing Ltd., 2007. 192 pp., 90 b&w illus., 13 maps, bibl., index, table of contents. £16.99 pb (ISBN-13: 978-1-84306-331-X/ ISBN-10: 1-84306-331-X).
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Roger Squires has penned a highly readable account of the growth and expansion of Britain's inland waterway restoration since 1946 when the Inland Waterways Association (IWA) was founded by L.T.C. (Lionel Thomas Caswell) Rolt, Robert Aickman, Charles Hadfield, and others. Squires's comprehensive text is as much about the history of the IWA as it is about the restored waterways themselves.
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Squires opens his chronicle with a fascinating chapter on the growth of British inland waterways and canals from Roman times through the years of "Canal Mania" led by the luminaries in the field such as James Brindley. Squires describes Brindley's transcendent idea of the Grand Cross, which was a scheme to unite the rivers Thames, Severn, Mersey, and Trent and their outlet ports of London, Bristol, Manchester-Liverpool, and Hull with each other and with Birmingham near the center. He then turns to the coming of the railroads and the decline of Britain's canal system in the 100 or so years preceding World War II.
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This general treatment is followed by a chapter focusing on the seminal contribution of L.T.C. (Tom) Rolt and his journeys aboard the narrow boat Cressy. Rolt in the late 1930s attempted to navigate the system, often fruitlessly, but his exploits were detailed in his monumental work of 1944, entitled Narrow Boat. This is where it all began, the catalyst that inspired others such as Robert Aickman and Charles Hadfield. It has been said that Tom Rolt stirred the soul of England, and what he had to say resonated with enthusiasts and, on a more limited scale, the general public alike. The upshot was the founding of the Inland Waterways Association in May 1946. Thus began the early campaigns, not only to save the canals but also to restore and revitalize them for tourism and recreation. A new canal age, an echo from the past, had come to England.
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The remainder of the book consists of chronologic chapters, each a distinct episode in the long, epic struggle for restoration of British canals, containing details of new proposed schemes and their resultant defeats or victories: the "First Fruits of Success" (1950s), the "First Major 'Reopenings'" (early 1960s), then the "Leisure Revolution" (1965–70), and so forth up to the present.
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Squires begins the detailed account with the 1951 dispute among the founders of IWA over the association's philosophy and long-term strategy for the future. This serious dispute resulted in the resignation and eventual expulsion of Rolt and others from IWA. For a time, the internal conflict set back the restoration movement, and as Rolt would later write, "... it developed into a major row which split the Association from top to bottom" (Rolt, Landscape with Canals, 1977, p. 173; the final chapter of the book devotes several paragraphs to the rift).
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From this beginning, which may leave some readers wishing for more details, the author chronologically fleshes out the various factors that in combination propelled the waterways restoration movement forward with the happy result that more than 600 miles of canal have been restored. Squires unveils many components or issues that positively impacted the movement, like the value and greater appreciation of heritage coming to the forefront in the years immediately after World War II; the shorter workweek and third week paid vacation, which led to more leisure time and awareness of the environment; the episodic assistance to labor because of high unemployment that helped job creation by putting men to work on canal maintenance and restoration; receiving positive publicity, thereby raising public awareness that brought more people to the cause; the formation of volunteer groups that spent (and still do) weekends and sometimes longer periods on "digs" to clear out derelict locks and canal prisms; the sharp increase of books dealing with waterways and canal navigation; the start of national waterway conferences and boat rallies, further adding to the public's awareness; increase in the number of pleasure-boat registrations, hire-boat bases, and people taking waterway holidays; the formation of a Heritage Lottery and the excitement induced by the approach of the millennium. These and others all entered into the complex equation to varying degrees.
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Of great value, especially to those interested in or proponents of canal restoration ideas, Squires serves up some tasty morsels of positive statistics of what the public investment has leveraged in terms of private funding and full-time-equivalent jobs created, first on page 136 and again, in more detail, in the final portion of chapter 13: "Success or Failure." In the final chapter, Squires also gives some sound advice on approaches to restoration projects and a "recipe" for the successful completion of these schemes.
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Some readers, especially those on "this side of the pond" unfamiliar with British geography and place names, may have problems with visualizing the story of British canal restoration in a proper geographic context. The book would have been enhanced by a foldout map or one covering two adjacent pages, preferably in color, of stream, canal, and place names. Map 1 on page 5, for instance, is a good example. Admittedly the intent of the map is simply to illustrate canals that were open in 1906 compared to 1946 and others past and present. However, a larger scale map with the names of the canals, rivers, and some physical features along with many of the towns that appear in the text would have been an asset to the book.
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Another personal quibble, which may tell more about me than the book, is that some of the early illustrations do not relate to the text that is on that or neighboring pages. For example, the first image in the book (ignoring those on the cover) is of the Lancaster Canal Trust Protest of 1964. It appears on page 6 in Chapter 1, "The Growth and Decline of the Inland Waterways," where the entire text is devoted to the history of the waterways. An image of Brindley or a map of his Grand Cross would have been more appropriate to the subject under discussion. On some later maps, beginning with map 8 on page 103, the legend does not have the proper symbol to differentiate between "New schemes" and "Former schemes." Lastly, there are errors in the index. A few items listed to not appear on the assigned page or pages.
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| Britain's Restored Canals is definitely a good read. The book is aimed at a reader who is familiar with the British "lay of the land" and interested in canal restoration within the historic framework of the rise, growth, and progress of the Inland Waterways Association. This stems from and is a natural consequence of the nature of the topic. That is not to say that those interested in canals outside of Great Britain will not find this work rewarding. On the contrary, most canal enthusiasts will learn something new and find much of interest in these pages. |
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