The holiday trade created by Britain’s industrial waterways

These pictures from the archive capture the industrial past of the working boats that once traversed Britain’s canal system, and the beginnings of the pleasure industry that has been their legacy.

The first barges were horse drawn, and operators relied on young boys to lead the animals along the towpath. As competition from the railways caused the boatmen to tighten their belts, the boys – and sometimes the rest of their families – lived on board, acting as unpaid labour.

It was not until the late Victorian era that steam-powered barges began to become the norm, operating between London and the Midlands.

But the engines took up valuable cargo space, and despite the advent of smaller diesel units it became clear that the canals could not keep pace with the railways, let alone the emerging road network. When nationalisation came after the war, some 368 barges remained – an armada by maritime standards but a mere flotilla compared to the fleets of goods wagons on the roads and rails.

In 1963, after years of only rudimentary canal maintenance, the British Waterways Board called a halt to most of its haulage operations, and began the long process of beautifying the old canals and turning them over to leisure. The 127m Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the longest in Britain built as a single waterway, was now a destination of choice for the pilots of old barges newly transformed into houseboats.

Today, some 652m of inland waterways are at their disposal with the newest, the four-mile Ribble Link, having opened as recently as 2002.

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James Mitchinson