Chronology
We are building a picture of the life and times of this resilient survivor. Thanks go to volunteer John Cook for his time and efforts as our sleuth in residence!
This is intended as a starting point for research, with each entry about Kilsby (in the yellow boxes) including links to the source of information for those who are curious to learn more. We will continue to add to this page as and when we discover more about Kilsby’s life.
Please do get in touch via the contacts page if you have anything to add, question, or verify - this is a work in progress and any input will be gratefully received!
1757
The Sankey Canal, the first canal of the industrial revolution, opened in North West England, between the River Mersey and St Helens.
1760-1830
The age of ‘canal mania’, in which most of the network was built, transporting raw materials into factories and taking finished products out, fuelling British industrial growth when the roads were too primitive and the rivers too unpredictable for such a task.
The Bridgewater Canal, between Runcorn and Leigh, opened on 17th July 1761. As the first canal in Britain to be built without following an existing watercourse it became a model for those that followed it and earned its reputation as ‘England’s first canal’. The construction of the Bridgewater (on which Kilsby operated in the 1940s and 1950s) was overseen by James Brindley (1716-1772) who was also the surveyor and original engineer of the Oxford Canal, construction of which commenced near Coventry in 1769. He was also one of the Oxford Canal Company’s first shareholders.
1830
The first time a railway used a true steam locomotive running on rails was the Liverpool to Manchester railway in 1830. This is probably the true landmark in rail and mirrored the route of the groundbreaking Bridgewater Canal.
1880s
Braithwaite and Kirk was founded in 1884, by Richard Charles Braithwaite and Walter Kirk. They were initially engaged exclusively with the production of Steel bridges, mainly for export, including the 100ft span Tsitsa Bridge in South Africa in 1897.
Fellows, Morton and Clayton Ltd was formed in 1889 by Joshua Fellows, Frederick Morton and Thomas Clayton. At the time of formation the general cargo fleet amounted to some 11 steamers and around 112 butty boats, and was to become one of the largest and most famous canal carriers.
1912-1913
Fellows, Morton and Clayton (FMC) commissioned Braithwaite and Kirk to build 24 iron composite butties at £190 each. The fleet commenced with Grange (no. 261) in 1912 and was completed in 1914 with Yarmouth (no.284). Kilsby was no. 275.
The term butty refers to an unpowered cargo vessel, designed to be towed by horse or another boat. Iron composite means that the boat has iron sides and a wooden bottom, a construction style that started in the 1890s.
Kilsby was built using all riveted iron plate sides on forged iron frames, to a traditional FMC design, but has, along with the other 23 boats in the fleet, a slightly fuller bow than is normally seen on FMC boats. Braithwaite and Kirk could bend larger iron sheets than regular boat builders, with each side of the bow and stern being formed from a single plate. They were reputedly well regarded by boaters for their propensity to bow haul into a lock at almost any angle without stopping.
http://darley135.blogspot.com/2012/03/braithwaite-kirk.html
https://www.canalmuseum.org.uk/press/ilkeston-presspack.pdf
Britain’s Canal and River Craft (book) by Edward Paget-Tomlinson.
Boat Spotting part 2: Fellows, Morton & Clayton by Chris Deuchar. Waterways World Magazine, December 2010
Photo : A pair of FMC boats on the Grand Union Canal, from Canal and River Trust archives, early 20th century:
https://collections.canalrivertrust.org.uk/bw192.3.2.2.12.8.46
1914-1918
World War One.
‘‘Despite the railways, successful canals held on to their traffic during the 19th century, and some increased their tonnage of goods carried. It was the First World War which really marked the beginning of the end for carriage of goods by canal.
There was increased unionisation, with demands for working hours unsuited to canal transport, while surplus army lorries created a road transport industry. With little Government support, these problems - coupled with the move away from traditional industries and falling demand for coal - led to a rapid decline in canal transport. ‘‘
Mike Clarke, canal historian
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/canal-history/the-decline-of-the-canals
1923
When Fellows, Morton and Clayton proposed a reduction in boatmen’s rates of pay averaging 6.4%, the Boatmen’s Strike of 1923 broke out, bringing a halt to virtually all long distance traffic on the canals between London, the Midlands and North East England. Kilsby (in the foreground of the photo here) spent 14 weeks chained to the bank at Braunston.
The dispute was eventually taken to arbitration, and the Industrial Court imposed an adjusted reduction of 5% to take effect in two equal instalments on 19th November and 18th December 1923.
Narrowboat Magazine Spring 2012: https://narrowboatmagazine.com/converted/44041
http://www.steamershistorical.co.uk/Web_FMC_Steamers/picturing_the_past__207.pdf
1923 (behind the scenes)
One of the few historic photos we have of Kilsby, shown here with narrowboat Japan at the Braunston strike.
We were delighted to hear from Mark Edwards, who has put names to the faces of the family living and working on Kilsby at this time - His great aunt May (Lucy May), great grandparents, William and Lucy Edwards and two of their six sons, Jack, ‘who always wore a trilby’, and William junior, the youngest boathand. William Edwards came from a long line of boat people, Mark managed to trace the family back to be descended from the famous Beesleys of Fisher Row, right here in Oxford!
After working on Japan and Kilsby, the family moved to FMC boats Owl and Florence some time around 1930. Owl has also been restored.
By the onset of World War Two the family had moved on to land, with no known members still on the cut. However, with such expansive families we could easily speculate that here may, somewhere out there, be a distant cousin afloat!
Read about the restoration of narrowboat Owl here: https://www.narrowboatowl.com/
1934
In a memoir told to Robert Davies for Waterways World Magazine, Albert Brace, who spent his working life as a Midlands boatman, recalls his birth on narrowboat Kilsby:
‘‘I was born on the narrowboat Kilsby (in 1934) to Jack and Eliza Brace at the Bordesley Street Depot, in Birmingham. Here, the company had the use of a basin plus warehousing facilities. This depot was close to the bottom of the Ashted Locks, half a mile west of Bordesley Junction. The company’s (Fellows Morton & Clayton) boat building and repair dock was a mile away at Saltley on the Grand Union. I had two brothers, Jack and Isaac, and a sister Violet. We all learned the ways of the canals as we grew from infants. Kilsby was our butty boat; the iron motor was Pilot, built in 1924 at Saltley and registered in Birmingham. However, boat people were always moving from one boat to another, always trying to find one in better condition or maybe with a little more room, so we transferred to the motor Nautilus, built at Northwich, and the butty Egypt. Later on we were to have the motor Erica with the butty Fay. ‘‘
Excerpt from…‘A Life on the Boats’, Waterways World Magazine October 2008.
Photo: Taken by Cyril Arapoff in 1930s, showing the cabin and back of the Fellows, Morton & Clayton butty Grantham, no. 262 (Kilsby is no.275 in the same fleet)
1939-1945
World War 2, Kilsby survives.
1945
Kilsby was one of four boats from the same fleet to be sold on for £344 to the Bridgewater Department of the Manchester Ship Canal and given a new purpose as a mud boat, transporting sludge from dredging operations. The cabins were removed and Kilsby was renamed Mud Boat No. 4 (MB No 4). The photo here shows mud boats numbers 6 and 7 of the Manchester Ship Canal, and are indicative of how Kilsby, sorry, Mud Boat No. 4, would have looked at this time.
There are reports of Kilsby also having been renamed Helsby around this time… but the reason for this remains unclear at the time of writing….
http://www.spurstow.com/rogerfuller/historic/fmc.htm
1946
The Inland Waterways Association was formed to campaign for the conservation, use, maintenance, restoration and sensitive development of British Canals and river navigations, laying the foundations for the future of the system as a leisure facility, residential option, and heritage asset. Tom Rolt was one of the two men responsible, having previously published Narrow Boat, an account of his journeys on England’s deteriorating canal system on Cressy, a narrowboat which was refurbished and repurposed at Tooley’s in Banbury, just like Kilsby!
1948
The transport Act of 1947 nationalised the canal, railway and long-distance road haulage networks from 1st January 1948. The canal network had deteriorated after years of neglect, and damage in the Second World War.
1960s-1970s
Kilsby (pictured here in 2007) was shortened from 70ft to 60ft, motorised, and a wooden superstructure built on to the hull for residential use. It is thought that the wooden cabin was built by the Clayton Brothers, who owned Kilsby in the 1970s.
photo by isisbridge:
1989
Kilsby arrived in Oxford in the early ‘80s and was part of a widely publicised struggle to create permanent residential moorings along the city centre final ‘arm’ of the canal…
"A post-1945 housing shortage in Oxford encouraged many people to take to floating homes. The trend continued in proportion to improvements to the canal system as a whole, and by the mid-1980s a large number of residential boats had accumulated on the stretch of canal near Jericho. These boats were the cause of some concern to the authorities, and a well-publicised dispute over mooring rights ensued. In 1985 a councillor was quoted as saying, ‘We do not want a boat city in Oxford, and are determined that this little flotilla is going to have to sail on.’ The British Waterways Board was equally uncompromising, offering no better solution than to threaten the boat dwellers with eviction and confiscation of their vessels. It was a time when to boaters BW meant ‘We Trouble You’!"
Today there are some 200 residential boats on the canal and river in the Oxford area.
Excerpt from A Towpath Walk in Oxford by Mark Davies and Catherine Robinson (ed. 2) 2012
Photo of the Hythe Bridge arm moorings, Kilsby in the foreground, 2011, by isisbridge:
1993
Helen Mcgregor moved on to Kilsby in 1993, living onboard for 27 years at the Hythe Bridge arm residential moorings in Oxford city centre.
2019
Helen donated Kilsby to the Jericho Living Heritage Trust in the winter of 2019, and so begins the next chapter in Kilsby’s extraordinary life….
2023…
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