Liquid Highways
An Education Resource ‘Pack’
Contents
1. Introduction & Copyright Agreement
2. People on the Canals
3. Water and Canals
4. Building a Canal
5. Foxton Locks and Inclined Plane
1. Introduction
Foxton Locks is an ideal place for a school visit. There is a wide variety of different experiences available, from the locks to the remains of the Inclined Plane, and from the Museum to the busy canal junction. The old Stable, next to the Top Lock Cottage is available, by arrangement, for educational parties. The canalside Victorian School, in the nearby village of Foxton, is run by the Leicestershire County Council as a field centre, and can be hired for use as a base.
This ‘pack’ of educational information has been designed to meet some of the needs of schools and others that wish to use the area for educational purposes.
The ‘pack’ consists of -
- Background information sheets about some general aspects of canal history.
- Information sheets about Foxton locks and the Inclined Plane.
Copyright
The Copyright of the matirial in this web site is vested in the Trustees of the Foxton Inclined Plane Trust. Permission is given by the Trustees for any of the material to be copied, in reasonable quantities, by teachers or students for educational purposes only. Permission is not given for the commercial exploitation of the material without prior written permission of the Trustees.
2. PEOPLE ON THE CANALS
Clothes
By the end of the 19th century canal people had adopted distinctive styles of clothing.
The men wore corduroy or moleskin trousers with wide, brass studded leather belts. Their collarless shirts were striped and they wore a coloured neckerchief. Broad, brightly coloured, braided braces were worn over the shirt and were always worn with the trouser belt. A waistcoat with brass buttons was common, and sometimes a jacket that matched the trousers was worn. Every boatman and boy wore a flat cap, however hot the day.
The women wore clothes that were similar to the fashions "on land'' but were distinctive in their own way. An ankle length skirt, a blouse, an apron, a shawl and a bonnet were worn. The skirts were often made of strong materials, such as drill, and were decorated and hemmed with coloured stripes of appliqued material. Blouses were made with leg-of-mutton sleeves and tucked bodices. Grey and black materials were very popular. Aprons usually had no bib and covered the whole of the front of the skirt. They were made of white cotton material.
Bonnets were similar in style to all outdoor working women's bonnets but were far more elaborate in design. The stiff brims were made of rows of corded quilting. The main part of the bonnet was made of rows of frilled tucks and gathered cording. A long frill called the "curtain'' hung from the back over the shoulders. The bonnets were often decorated with crocheted lace and ribbons. When Queen Victoria died, in 1901, all boat women made a black bonnet and, from that moment until the 1930s, the bonnets were nearly always black.
There were changes to clothing styles during the 20th century. During the first two, or so, decades of the century, the boatmen's flat cap gave way to other styles, including the bowler and the trilby. During the 1930s, the women started to wear dresses made of coloured printed cottons in the styles of the time.
Health
Canal people often had problems with their health.
The cabins on a boat were very small and everybody lived and slept close together. In cold weather the hatches were kept closed and there was no fresh air.
A reporter from The Birmingham Daily Mail wrote, in March 1875, "I was puzzled to know how boat people can stand such sudden changes in temperature. They come out of an overheated cabin onto the exposed cabin top. When the family retires for the night the cabin is usually suffocatingly hot, and as the fire goes out, in the cold weather, it cools to a very low temperature….I should fear that lung diseases are common.”
Many canal people suffered from pneumonia and other chest diseases. But the canal people would rarely have anything to do with doctors or nurses. They thought that doctors were figures of authority and they did not like authority. They were frightened of delay since if a boat was not moving it was not making its living. As one boatman said, "… we would lose a day's wages every day we lay there. We just stay sick until we get well".
There were other reasons for ill health. Some boats were rat ridden because of the cargoes that they carried. In some boats, the rats were able to move freely between the cargo and the living cabin. Other boats carried unhealthy cargoes including manure and hoofs & horns for the glue factories.
Pure water for drinking was always a problem. There were only a few pumps and wells along the length of the canals for fresh water. This meant that water had to be taken from the canal itself.
Washing was also a problem. Usually, the water for washing clothes was from the canal, and the children were seldom washed. People noticed how dirty they were.
The lack of toilets was another problem. There were no toilets on the boats, except for buckets, so other arrangements had to be made. This usually meant that the canal itself or "the other side of the hedge'' was used. However there were no hedges in towns so the state of the canals can only be imagined.
Education
In 1877, a canal woman said to a reporter from The Standard newspaper, "There's many thousands of ‘em on the canals that doesn't know a letter in the book".
Canal children rarely went to school. This was because of the constant movement of the boats between towns. The children might attend a school in one place for a day. Then they would be travelling for the next few days. One boat boy complained, "I can't go to school because the boat always goes on".
In contrast, children who lived in villages and towns went to school regularly. In 1870, an education act was passed and elementary schools were founded in most places. Children from the villages and towns would often help on the farms or in the factories, but at least they learned to read and write.
In the 1920s, the N.S.P.C.C. (the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) wrote a report about canal children. They found that most of them were illiterate. One boy was described as "a grand scholar'' by his father. But the inspector found that the boy could not write his name.
Some children could read and write a little. It seems that they learned when they were ill or when their boat was not working and they stayed in one place for a longer time. Eventually, special schools were set up for canal children at Brentford and Paddington. Schools in Birmingham and Braunstone, Northamptonshire also took the children as pupils.
At these schools, the children learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. It was said that they were very direct. If they did not like something they said so, but they were always ready to co-operate with others.
Nowadays, there are no canal children and the special canal schools have closed.
Lock Keepers
Lock keepers worked for the Canal Company. They were the watchmen who looked after the locks in their length of the canal. Locks need constant maintenance, because the weather, nature, and careless boatmen, can all damage them. It was the lock keeper's job to keep his lock in working order and to carry out some of the repairs. Of course, the larger repairs would have to be carried out by gangs of workmen.
Sometimes the lock keeper would help boats through the locks, though usually he was not paid to do this. On the quieter canals, the company might expect him to act as a carpenter, reservoir man, pump minder, or even toll collector. Sometimes the company would expect the lock keeper to be an unofficial policeman and to keep an eye out for drunken boatmen, thieves, or boatmen trying to cheat the tolls.
Foxton, winter, late 1800. the canal was described as a bower of roses in the summer and a hell of ice in the winter. this boat family are operating the locks themselves. The women are wearing typical bonnets and the brass buttons on the boatman's jacket can be clearly sean.
The Horse is feeding from its' Nose tim' feeding the horse like this distracts it from the temptations of succulent growth in the hedge bottom.
Being a lock keeper was not, however, an unpleasant occupation. He would have a house that was usually set in pleasant surroundings with a plot of land attached. He would be able to tend his garden, to provide fruit and vegetables for his family, and he would be part of the village community.
3. WATER AND CANALS
The Water Cycle
It is a surprising fact that over 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water. Most of this water is in the oceans. It is this oceanic water that drives the water cycle.
Water is constantly evaporating from the surface of the sea. The water vapour rises in the atmosphere and is moved about by the winds. As it rises it cools and the vapour condenses into water droplets to form clouds.
The water droplets eventually fall to earth as rain or snow.
The rain soaks into the soil and rocks or flows off the land surface. In this way, springs, streams, rivers, ponds and lakes are formed. The water in the rivers flows down to the sea where it mixes back with the seawater and is eventually re-evaporated.
Vegetation absorbs water from the soil, and the leaves of the plants breathe out moisture (transpire) into the atmosphere. There is also evaporation directly from the ground surface, and some rain falls directly onto the ocean so that it does not pass through rivers.
How does water get into a canal?
A river sometimes has a source in a spring or a lake. The water flows, through rocks, from a wide area around the spring. From the spring, the water starts its journey to the sea through streams and rivers.
Canals were been built by engineers, who cut a long trench across the dry ground. The trench needed to be filled with water so that the boats could travel along its length.
Some canals were fortunate enough to be fed by a river at the head of the canal. A good example of this is the Shropshire Union Canal, fed by the River Dee. The river was dammed at Llantysilio and the water was diverted into the canal by a valve house.
A canal in a valley bottom often ran alongside a river or stream. The natural river could be used to keep the canal water up to the correct level. There are many examples of this on the canal network. A good example can be seen on the Lower Oxford Canal where the canal and the River Cherwell run parallel with each other, and water is transferred from the river to the canal at several points. The Grand Union canal around Leicester has a slightly different arrangement. The River Soar keeps the canal full but in certain places it replaces the canal as the navigable waterway – the canal and river run along a common bed.
Some canals do not have the advantage of a natural source of water. The engineers had to devise ways of getting water to the highest points on the canal. One important way was the building of summit level reservoirs. These were man-made lakes built on high ground, with watercourses arranged so that the level of the canal was maintained. The reservoirs were built where water could be gathered. There are many good examples around the country, including the Welford Reservoir. This reservoir, near to Foxton, fed the Grand Union Canal as it made its way from Watford Gap to Foxton across the summit.
The engineers tried to get their water supplies in the cheapest possible way, and this usually meant tapping natural sources. Some canals however were not fortunate in this, and water had to be pumped. Water could be raised from a lower level to the summit level by steam pump. Pumps were used at Braunstone, Northamptonshire and Cromford, Derbyshire. It can be seen that pumping water like this was an expensive business. The steam engines were expensive pieces of machinery that needed men and large quantities of coal to make them work.
The canal builders of the Fens, in Eastern England, were fortunate in their water supply. Firstly their water came from the drainage of the land and secondly they did not have big hills to deal with. This meant that water could be moved into their canal quite easily. This was done by pumping the water, using the power of the windmills, which were dotted along the watercourses.
Over, under, through
A hill is an obstacle for a canal builder. Still water cannot have a slope, which means that there are serious problems to solve. There are four ways to overcome a hill: go round it, go through it, go over it in steps, or be lifted over it.
Going round
In areas where there are only small hills, the canal engineers built their canals round the base of the hills. In order to keep the canal level, they followed the contour lines. Going round the hill makes the canal longer, but it would be cheaper to build and only add a relatively short amount of time to the journey. Good examples of a contour canal are the Ashby de La Zouch Canal, which has no locks or tunnels for about 33 kilometers, and the Harborough arm of the Grand Union.
Going through
The engineers might decide to build a tunnel through a ridge of hills. This was a difficult decision to make, but in some cases was the only answer to the problems. A tunnel was very expensive. It required a lot of labour and materials, and usually took a long time to build. The softer the rock, the quicker the tunnel could be dug but, at the same time, more bricks and stone were needed to hold up the roof. Harder rock might need gunpowder to break up the rock and progress was much slower. Tunnels were dangerous to build and many canal builders died in accidents. Thereare good examples of canal tunnels in Dudley, West Midlands,Braunston in Northamptonshire ,and Harecastle near Leeds. Saddington and Bosworth tunnels are near to Foxton.
Going over
A common solution to a hill was to go over it in a series of locks. A lock is a trapped pond of water that is moved through gates down hill. Depending on the combination of gates used it is possible to take a boat up or down a lock. Locks have working parts in them and so the canal companies employed lock keepers. The keepers made sure that the gates were kept in good condition.
There are many good examples of locks on the canals, but the Foxton flight is probably one of the best. There is a working model of a lock in the Canal Museum by the Middle Lock at Foxton.
Lifted over
Going through a flight of locks can be a slow business and so, about 100 years ago, canal companies looked for quicker ways of going over hills. Foxton Inclined Plane is a good example of one way that the problem was solved. The canal boats were floated into large tanks of water that were raised or lowered by steam power, on rails, up or down the hill. How the Inclined Plane worked is described further down.
4. BUILDING A CANAL
How canals were built
The first canal to be built was the Duke of Bridgewater's Canal that went from his coalmines at Worsley to Manchester. This canal was finished in 1761 and reduced the price that people had to pay for coal to burn on their fires. Soon others saw the advantages in using canals to carry goods and several canals were soon built. By 1772, the first canal was built in Birmingham.
Many miles of canal were built during the 1790s and the 1800s. Britain was at war with France at this time and an efficient way of moving goods around the country was needed. So canals were built to transport food, fuel and military items to where they were needed.
The canals were built by a small band of skilled waterway engineers who worked for the Canal Companies. The engineers and their agents employed skilled men and labourers to do the construction work. These men became known as "navigators'' later to be shortened to "navvies''. Often the navvies came from the local area though many of them came from further away. They were attracted by the good wages that were paid. These men lived a tough life and were usually paid once a month. Sometimes there was trouble after payday when the money was spent at the local pub.
In 1795, two drunken navvies, who were working on the Leicester and Northampton Union Canal, were arrested in a shop in Kilworth. Forty soldiers took them to Leicester because trouble was expected A mass of navvies attacked the soldiers and released the two. The military were enraged and they scoured the countryside until they rounded up several of the navvies. The Loyal Leicester Volunteer Infantry were called upon but they forgot their ammunition!
The life of a navvy could be dangerous. This was especially true when working in tunnels. As the Doncaster Gazette, of 10th June 1803, reported: '' George Sharp, a canal contractor and three other men, employed on the Huddersfield Canal...having set what is technically called a blast, to blow up the fragments of rock, retired to witness the explosion. An unusual time having elapsed they supposed it to be extinguished and approached nearer, when the powder unhappily exploded and killed George Sharp on the spot; two of his fellow workmen were dreadfully bruised and remained blind for sometime, and the others received several wounds from the splinters of rock.''
Building a canal
Building a canal was very expensive and could only be started after Parliament passed an act for each project. Two hundred years ago there were few accurate maps of the country, so a surveyor would make detailed maps of the route. This allowed the route of the canal to be laid out with pegs.
The digging of the canal was the next stage. This was carried out by the navvies by hand, using picks and shovels. All the waste material was taken away in wheelbarrows. Sometimes horses were used to help with the lifting and pulling. If the canal builders were fortunate, they would be able to flood the part of the canal behind them. This would enable boats to be floated up to their workings to take away the waste.
As the canal bed was dug, it had to be puddled. Puddle is a mixture of clay and loam that was laid thickly over the canal bed to make it watertight. The puddle was between half-a-metre and a metre thick. To make sure that it was completely watertight, the navvies would trample over the mud with their own feet or drive cattle back and forth.
While the canal bed was being dug, other features were being built. Bridges were built over the canal, towpaths wre completed, hedges were planted, locks were built and various buildings were constructed. Soon after the construction was finished, there would be a grand opening ceremony and the first boats carrying goods would pass along the canal.
Flash lock or staunch
The first Inland navigations were river improvements; the Romans built the first man-made waterway in Britain. The first known canal was constructed in china over 2000 years ago and is still in use today.
In 1670, a section of the river Welland between Stanford and Market Deeping was bypassed to form a navigation. At just 13 kilometres long, with 12 locks, it was typical of early river improvements.
5. FOXTON LOCKS & INCLINE PLANE
Between 1793 and 1797, a canal was built from Leicester to the south. The aim was to join up with the Grand Junction Canal, just built from London, at Braunstone in Northamptonshire. Going via the River Nene and Northampton, this canal would provide a route to London for goods such as coal from the Midlands coalfields However, there were construction problems including to have to build a tunnel at Saddington near Leicester and the canal Company ran out of money. This meant that the canal stopped at Debdale near to Foxton and goods were then transported by road. The direct link to the River Nene was never made.
In 1810, a new canal company was formed to join the two canals, starting with the flight of locks at Foxton. The locks from Leicester were 4.5 m (15 feet) wide and were able to take "barges''. These locks used a large amount of water and there were water supply problems in the Foxton area. lt was decided that the locks at Foxton would be built at just over 2m (7 feet) wide. This would enable only narrow boats to use the locks but would save a considerable amount of water each time the locks were used. They would also be much cheaper to build.
To climb the 22.5m (75 feet) hill it was decided to build a staircase of locks, where the top gates of each lock were the bottom gates of the next. Water from one lock goes through the paddles into the side pound and back into the next lock to equalise the levels. The two flights of five locks have a passing pond between them to allow a boat going up the flight of locks to pass a boat going down. Lock- keeper's cottages were built at the top and bottom of the flight.
For nearly 90 years canal traffic between Leicester and London had to pass through Foxton. But the boats could only move one at a time through the locks and this bottleneck slowed the journey and affected trade.
By the end of the nineteenth century, an alternative solution to the congestion was sought, so that bigger boats could be used to compete with the railways. In 1900, the Inclined Plane (the Lift) was built. It was sited at right angles to the locks and carried boats floating in tanks, running on rails. There were two tanks, which counterbalanced each other, and a steam engine that provided extra power to operate the system. Each tank could hold two narrow boats, or one 'wide' boat, which meant that two boats could be raised and two lowered at the same time. The Lift operation took 12 minutes for the transit of up to four boats; this compared with 45 minutes for two boats to navigate the lock flight (one up, one down, passing in the middle). The lift gave a 7.5-fold improvement.
The lift was in operation for only 10 years and was closed in 1911. This was because of growing competition from road and rail transport, and because there had been no improvements to other bottlenecks on the route, which still slowed the traffic. When the lift closed, the boats reverted to using the locks and, eventually, the lift was demolished in 1927.
The locks continue to be used to the present day. Today there is very little commercial traffic and almost all of the boats that use them are pleasure craft.
Technical Information about the Incline Plane
The Grand Junction Canal Company decided to build an inclined plane boat lift at Foxton, bypassing the locks, to speed the passage of boats. In 1898, the work was started by I. & H. Gwynne & Co. of Hammersmith.
The completed lift was opened on 10th July 1900 and cost £37.500.
During the construction there was a fatal accident. According to Foxton Parish records, George Robinson, one of the navvies, was killed by a fall of earth The victim’s workmates collected a sum of money together to pay for his funeral in St. Andrew 's Church, Foxton.
A description of the engineering shows how immense the undertaking was. The lift consisted of two moveable docks that were built of steel plates and were mounted on eight sets of wheels running on four pairs of rails. Each dock measured 24.30 m by 4.57m and was capable of taking two 35 ton narrow boats or one 70 ton barge. The docks were connected by steel wire ropes, that were 17.5cm in circumference, and passed round guide pulleys to the hauling drum. The docks were arranged so that when one dock ascended the other descended, balancing each other. This meant that the engine was only needed to overcome the friction of the moving parts.
The engine for driving the system was of the double-cylinder high-pressure jet condensing type. The power of the engine was transmitted to the hauling drum by a worm screw arrangement. There were two boilers of the Lancashire type, although only one was used to raise steam. The other was held in reserve.
The gates of the docks were raised and lowered by hydraulic power. This was to enable a saving of manual labour.
lt took just 12 minutes for a boat to pass up or down the Inclined Plane, including the transit, and manoeuvring the boat in and out of the dock. This meant that the Inclined Plane worked at full capacity it was possible for it to lift 8400 tons in a 12-hour day or approximately 2.5 million tons in a year.
Three men were employed on the lift. One man, the stoker, looked after the boiler, whilst one man worked at the top and the other at the bottom to open and shut the dock gates. It was estimated that the cost of operating the lift was approximately 7d (3.5p) if the docks were full to capacity and there were no breaks in working. However in practice it was more expensive to work because there were periods of idleness between boats and it was often worked below its designed capacity.
A Trip down the Locks
This account of Foxton Locks was written some time ago and gives us an interesting insight how the locks work.
“An experienced crew will make things look easy and will already have checked their way ahead is clear. They will wind up the top paddle to fill the top lock; thereafter red and then white paddles in pairs will equalise the levels between the locks. The paddles are underwater sluices connected to the dockside posts. Red paddles fill locks, white ones empty them. The wisdom of the rhyme: “Red before white and you'll be alright: white before red and you'll be dead'', becomes apparent. It is important to get water moving out of a sidepond (to fill the lock below, using the red paddle) before using the white paddle to empty a lock into a pond that may already be full and on weir (using the white paddle). Excess water can safely be discharged over the weirs, but too much can result in a drama akin to a champagne fountain! A dangerous situation on a real-life scale.
Foxton has two sets of five lock chambers, set in 'staircases' - i.e. the lower gates of the chamber also act as the upper gates of the chamber below, hence their impressive total depth. The side ponds, or pounds, do not operate solely to save water - they hold 5-10 locksfull - to enable plenty of water to be available.
The saving comes in the ease with which the flight can be set for a second boat, without the need to pass water down the whole flight, as in some staircases in other parts of the country. At the halfway point, boats have a chance to pass each other in the meeting pond. Here a little forward planning is needed - the crew may need to moor temporarily to enable an ascending boat to pass. ‘One up and one down’ is the fairest way, and saves water as well. Before the old Boat lift earthworks were built, these central ponds were much bigger, the flight working more efficiently to the original specification.
The set sequence of red/white paddles is broken too, and a little thought is necessary to progress into the lower locks. The lower half of the flight should be easier now, since the ascending boat has filled the locks and set the flight by its passage. In seemingly no time at all our boat will be swimming out across Foxton Junction looking to moor up and follow the established traditions of the waterways - into the pub to "celebrate another successful passage of the hill".
A Trip up the Inclined Plane
This account of how the Inclined Plane worked was first published several years ago.
“To understand the method of working, follow an imaginary journey through the lift; on an ordinary day when one of the many horse drawn coal boats made its passage. Approaching beneath the wide arch of the bottom dock bridge, the boatman would see the Lift tank for the first time. Drifting into position, the gate was lowered behind him, mooring ropes made fast to the bollards, and the horse led away.
A uniformed attendant broke the hydraulic connection, ducked into his cabin, and signaled over the telegraph to his colleague in the winding house above. A pause - then movement, very slow at first. As the tanks rose from the canal, water cascaded from the recesses in the wheel assemblies and dripped from the structure work, to be caught in special gutters on either side.
Compared with waiting turns at the locks, then toiling up the locks for the best part of an hour, the smooth ride up the long climb in the lift was completed in about 8 minutes (in motion). There was time to contemplate the splendid view.
Nearing the top, progress would slacken as the tank rolled over the crest; from the boat, looking back, the unique situation would be impressive. The lift operator would control the docking as the rear wheels slipped into their pit and the leading wheel flanges nudged into the timber stops, finally coming to rest. The buffer stop rams were engaged, pushing the tank imperceptibly into contact with the dock face.
With the hydraulics reconnected to the gate cylinders on the tank, both sets were raised. The horse, having plodded up the path round the site, led by a boy, was hitched up; the line tightening as it leaned into the collar, legs braced to 'start' the boat out of the lift entrances. Drips from the raised gates would splatter on the side cloths. The boat was on its journey once more, out across the 'twenty mile'.
