Grain barges plying their trade once symbolised a busy city
GRAIN barges were once a familiar sight on the Severn, as they were on the Berkeley to Gloucester canal.
Ships from around the world brought wheat to Avonmouth and Sharpness where their cargoes were decanted into flat-bottomed barges bound for the flour mills in Gloucester Docks and Tewkesbury.
The image of a sturdy tug with two or three barges in tow was so closely a part of Gloucester’s commercial life that it was used on the cover of the official city guide book in 1950. But by the 1970s this age-old way of life came to a close when the last working grain barge made her final voyage.
It was in March 1975 that the Nancy H left her berth at the City Flour Mills in Gloucester Docks for the last time on official business. Sailing down the canal, she entered the Bristol Channel via the Sharpness lock gates and continued to Avonmouth to take 160 tons of Manitoba wheat on board. This had been delivered by a coaster from Antwerp.
The Nancy H was owned by Priday, Metford and Company. This family firm of long standing in its heyday brought grain into Gloucester docks from France, Poland, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Russia, India and Canada to its City Flour Mill. The firm remained in business until 1994.
The Nancy H was built in Yorkshire in 1935 and for the first 28 years ferried petrol up the Severn to a depot in Stourport. In the early 1960s she was converted from a gasoline carrier to a grain carrier and followed that trade until put out to pasture.
Healing’s Mill in Tewkesbury (S Healing and Sons) had been taken over by Allied Mills by the 1970s and operated the only three commercial craft from the town. These vessels were the grain boat Deerhurst, plus two dumb barges (which means they weren’t powered) named the Apperley and the Bushley. Each was capable of carrying 220 tons.
The Severn has always been a challenging stretch of water to navigate with its high tidal rise and fall, its treacherous currents and shifting sandbanks. But it’s said that in days gone by experienced rivermen would use the force of the Severn bore to take heavy loads upstream, much in the way that surfers in their wetsuits ride the wave today.
As well as marking the end of grain barges in operation on the river, 1975 was the year when the Gloucesterbased
company of John Harker Ltd closed down its operations in the Bristol Channel area. Until then the firm’s oil tankers were part of the daily scene on the Severn and the canal to Gloucester. They ferried petroleum products between Avonmouth and depots at Gloucester’s Monk Meadow, Worcester and Stourport.
Along with grain and petrol, commercial traffic on the canal included cocoa beans, sugar and chocolate crumb. Cocoa beans arrived from Africa at ports in the Bristol Channel and were then loaded onto lighters and brought up the canal from Sharpness to Frampton on Severn where Cadbury’s opened a factory in the First World War. The site is now a business park.
Until closure in 1982, the Frampton factory mode 112 tons of chocolate crumb here a day. This was then loaded back onto lighters bound for Gloucester where they rejoined the Severn.
On up the river they continued to enter the Staffs and Worcester canal and eventually Bournville where the crumb was converted into the Cadbury family’s famous confections.