A Horse, A Boat, and You

by Alice Lapworth

Paperback £6.99; ISBN 978-0-9564536-4-8; April 2012; SGM Publishing

A Horse, a Boat, and You is the second book from SGM Publishing to recount the reminiscences of an ex-boater from the days of the canal carrying trade. Their numbers are rapidly diminishing with the passing of the years, and the memory of those times will soon be lost but for the publication of books such as these.

Alice Lapworth is one of those who remain of that vanishing breed of people, a group to whom this country owes a greater debt than many realise. She was born in 1944 to George and Anne Wain, a boating family, in the back-cabin of a horse-boat at Tunstall, on the Trent & Mersey Canal. The canals, begun in the 1700s, were the driving force of the industrial revolution, providing the transport link that brought together raw materials and fuel for the factories, and carried away the finished products. They made an inestimable contribution to many conflicts also, up to and including the Second World War, delivering vital munitions to the ports and returning foodstuffs for the working population of the midlands. Only with the development of modern roads and the ‘we need it now’ ethos of modern business did their profitability come to an end.

Alice grew up on the canals; she married a boatman and bore her own daughter on the boats. With the end of carrying some forty years ago, not only her job but her entire way of life was gone for ever. Her story is told here in her own words, edited once again by waterway novelist Geoffrey Lewis but retaining Alice’s voice throughout. Her memories include tales of her parents and grandparents, and take us back to the days of horsedrawn boats on the waterways of the north-west of England as well as the slow decline of the trade after the war. Dozens of her family photographs illustrate the text, and her stories open a delightful window into the world of the boating people – a world we will not see again.