Shropshire Routes to Roots | Transport and communication

4. Life with the canal (home life)

What was it like in Market Drayton when the new canal came?

With a new job on the wharf, John might have needed to move closer to the canal. In towns such as Whitchurch, through which the Ellesmere canal passed, the population trebled between 1811 (just before the canal opened) and 1841 (thirty years after the canal was built). In Market Drayton, the population only increased by a fifth over the same period. However, this was still a significant increase.

The following words are part of a made-up story

I moved to cottage on the side of the canal, where I lived with my wife and three children.

The poster on the right advertises the sale of a house called Canal Cottage, in Little Hereford. Little Hereford was on the Leominster canal, but the cottage was probably similar to the houses at Market Drayton. Cottages were built beside the canal to house lock-keepers and other workers on the canal.

Look at the larger image, which is taken from the bottom of the poster. These are the kinds of things that John might have had in his house.

A printed poster: Canal Cottage, Little Hereford [Opens in new window: image size 30kb]

Poster advertising the sale of Canal Cottage
Larger image, detail from poster, in a new window [30kb]
[Shropshire Archive reference: 4924/2/11/7]

My two children sometimes played with the boat children. The boat children could be a bit unruly. I think they must have led difficult lives, travelling up and down the canals and rarely staying in any one place for very long.

The document on the right gives one reason why the boat children might have found life difficult. It is an extract from the Canal Boats Act, 1877. Open the larger image:

Does the Act suggest that educating children who lived on boats had been a problem?
Does it seem as if sometimes the canal children moved around from district to district?

You can also read the letter which prefaced the act (Opens in a new window). Can you find out what five pieces of information authorities were supposed to supply schools with?

A piece of typed text [Opens in new window: image size 45kb]

An extract, relating to education, from the 1877 Canal Boats Act
Larger image in a new window [45kb]
[Shropshire Archive reference: P58/R/2/9]

Although we never had very much money, we certainly knew how to have fun. We sometimes held tub races on the canal.

In this photograph you can see a group of men, in the swimming costumes which were the fashion of the time, braving the water to race across the canal. They were cheered on by a large and smartly dressed crowd on the bank.

This particular tub race was held in 1887 in celebration of Queen Victoria's golden jubilee.

A black and white photograph of five men about to get into washing tubs and race across the canal [Opens in new window: image size 28kb]

Jubilee tub race
Larger image, in a new window [28kb]
[Shropshire Archive reference: PH/M/6/3/B1019]

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Page created February 2004 and last updated 1 August 2007

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