Canal Boat — January 2018

38 January 2018 Canal Boat canalboat.co.uk

Oldbury. The Barlow’s boats carried coal
from the Warwickshire coal fields to
wharves in Oxford or to Wolvercote Mill
on The Thames. The Clayton’s boats,
known as the gas boats were decked over
and carried tar from Oxford gas works to
the Midland Tar Distillery at Banbury.
Although the occasional horse drawn
boat went down to Oxford in the early
Forties, most boats worked in pairs with a
butty being towed by a motor boat
powered with either a Bolinder or Petter
single cylinder semi-diesel engine which
had to be heated up with a blowlamp
before it could be started.
When the wind was blowing in the right
direction these engines could be heard all
the way from Northbrook Lock to The
Pigeons and Bletchingdon. They were all
wooden boats of oak and elm built and
beautifully painted at Braunston, Glascote
near Tamworth, Polesworth and the
Tooleys’ yard at Banbury. The last loads
on the canal were taken by Willow Wren
boats to Juxon Street Wharf for Colonel
Morrell’s brewery.

All the boats that I remember were

beautifully painted and decorated. The

Barlow’s boats had the company name in

white shaded lettering on green

backgrounds, stylised roses and castles

painted on the cabin doors and panels and

diamonds on the stands and planks.

Clayton’s had red cabin sides. There was

a variety of decoration around the sterns

and fore ends. The richly painted rudder

posts of the horse boats and butties,

known as the ram’s heads, were decorated

with plaited rope work scrubbed white

and the tail of a loved but dead horse

sometimes hung from the top. Polished

brass rings adorned the stove chimney

and engine exhaust pipe and further

brass, crochet work and hanging plates

were to be seen inside the boat cabins.

Water cans and hand bowls or dippers

were decorated with roses and mop

handles were painted in spirals of red,

white, yellow, blue and sometimes green.

A pair of freshly painted loaded boats, low

Samuel Barlow butty Grace being loaded at Longford on the Coventry

Rose Skinner junior (married to Joe’s hephew Jack) on Samuel Barlow boat Cylgate