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Art of the Waterways:
Measham Pottery - Evelyn Booth investigates the myths surrounding the curious brown pottery that has become synonymous with narrowboats - and yet many still wonder if it was ever used on boats.
Historical Profiles:
Llangollen Canal - A historical profile of the UK’s best known waterway compiled by Richard Dean and Peter Brown with the story of how a planned north–south route ended up as an east–west canal – and how it was nearly lost to us for ever in the 1940s.
Famous Fleets:
Severn & Canal - Alan Faulkner turns his attention to a varied fleet of narrowboats, barges and tugs that operated on the river Severn and the adjoining canals.
A Broader Outlook:
Cromwell Lock - To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Trent enlargement Act of 1906, Mike Taylor and Euan Corrie look at the work carried out at Cromwell Lock.
Picturing the Past:
Marple Top to Bottom - On the 40th anniversary of the National Rally at Marple, we look at some much earlier photographs of working boats above and below the locks.
Tracing Family History:
Parish Registers: boaters' churches - Lorna York continues her quest for boating ancestors
It was in 1983 that I became interested in Measham Pottery. I had seen a few teapots and jugs and, having been a canal boater for a decade or so, had become aware of an intriguing link with the canal fraternity which had been denied by some sceptics.
With the arrival of our first narrowboat, we found ourselves heading down the Shropshire Union Canal to Chester. It was there, in popular Watergate Street, bristling with antique shops, that I fell in love with my first Measham teapot. Like a kid in a candy store, I could not take my eyes off this brown, treacly monster, bedecked with floral sprigs, peacocks, daisies, and its exaggerated spout, with a replica of itself serving as the knob on the lid.
My husband, in a desperate attempt to drag me away from the shop window, came up with an ‘out of the air’ estimate of value – £150 I seem to remember. Then, foolishly, he bet me that I couldn’t buy it for that amount.
Half an hour later, as we left the shop wit…
