Memories come flooding back on canalside strolls
MERVYN EDWARDS looks at how canals helped shape Staffordshire as we know it today, and the structures that still remain to remind us of our waterways heritage
STAFFORDSHIRE canals have served more purposes than they were ever intended to. They kick-started the Industrial Revolution and encouraged the growth of new towns, yet were adventure playgrounds for the reckless as well as dumping grounds for all manner of factory waste.
Their rich past is presently being explored by BBC Radio Stoke’s Terry Walsh and yours truly on Sundays, as we stroll along the towpaths of the Trent and Mersey Canal discussing locks, bridges, tumbledown buildings and the social history of the ‘Cut’.
Several structures remain to remind us of our canalside heritage.
Though the Etruria Works manufactory of our most illustrious potter, Josiah Wedgwood, is long gone, the enigmatic roundhouse – nicknamed ‘the pepper pot’ – remains and is easily visible from the canal towpath.
We can only guess as to its original use, though it is claimed that Wedgwood conducted engine experiments in it and that it may have been used to house the factory’s manual fire engine – whose arrival at Etruria underlined the importance of the inland waterways.
The fire engine, supplied to Josiah in 1783 by Samuel Phillips of
London, was sent from the capital by river and sea to Gainsborough, and then to Etruria by canal.
The roundhouse remains well below the level of the canal today, though is well-preserved, having been used by The Sentinel newspaper as a small museum of printing and ceramics some years ago.
Other structures have attracted the attention of Terry and myself on our canalside travels, such as the Harecastle Tunnels and the Etruria Industrial Museum – formerly Shirley’s bone and flint mill.
Middleport Pottery remains a conspicuous landmark, standing on a stretch of the canal that saw much industrial activity – and some tragedy, as you are about to find out.
We’ve all seen Levison Wood, left, the Moorlands journalist and explorer on television, though I am well-acquainted with his father, Lev Wood senior, who is a fine history speaker.
Some time ago, I was conducting some archive research and found a reference to a case in which a blind man had fallen into the canal at Middleport in 1929. Disorientated, he shouted for help and attracted the attention of passers-by.
Virtually submerged and exhausted, he was rescued by a chap who jumped into the water and hauled him out, and who then revived him through artificial respiration.
This was a notable act of heroism, as the rescuer himself had suffered from rheumatism for some time. His name was given in the local press as Levison Wood, of Burslem.
I telephoned Levison Wood senior and asked if the rescuer was any relation – and was informed that he would have been our Lev’s grandfather.
So Levison not only has a courageous son, but he had a plucky grandad too.
Some of the poorer people in society eked out a primitive existence on canal boats – as did one family whose vessel was moored near to the
towpath of the Newcastle Canal at Kingsway, Stoke, in 1930.
The owners of the canal – the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company – had obtained a court order to evict these bargedwellers, who had originally been allowed to moor on the canal on account of the acute housing shortage.
Their eviction was swift and brutal, with officials breaking up their boat with hammers and dumping their furniture on the towpath.
“The husbands of all three of the women concerned,” reported a newspaper, “were in prison for having disobeyed ejectment orders, and the women, all of whom had large families, were stranded.
“Mrs Llewellyn has seven children, the eldest of whom is not yet 14, and the youngest a baby three months old; Mrs Best has three children; and Mrs Beardmore has eight children.”
Subsequently, the housing committee managed to find temporary accommodation for the women and their children, but by this time their whole way of life as canal people had come to an end.
My own love affair with local canals continues. I have been involved in several sponsored walks along the towpaths, and in 2004 I walked all 17 miles of the Caldon Canal with a group of friends.
The year after, I managed it on my own, there and back – from Etruria to Froghall – a distance of 34 miles.
In 2012 I was pacemaker for charity fundraiser and walking specialist Keith Meeson, who walked six miles of the Caldon Canal in miner’s wooden clogs in aid of Donna Louise Trust.