We are fortunate in having a little living history in the form of regular visits by traditional trading narrowboats.  Two of these craft "Anne" and "Alton" can be seen supplying diesel, coal etc to our community of moored boats.  Both cover a large area and seem to have thriving businesses.

Anne was built in 1960 by E C Jones of Brentford for British Waterways and sold by them in the 1980's.  This type of boat was unusual in having a steel cover to the hold instead of the more usual tarpaulin.

Alton is a much older boat having been built by Harland and Wolff in 1936 for The Grand Union Canal Carrying Company. She is now owned by Brian McGuigan and is based in Furness Vale.

Alton was previously operated by George Boyle who can sometimes be seen steering the Judith Mary.  George now owns the canal tug "Sandbach".  This was built by Yarwoods of Northwich in 1946 for the L.M.S. Railway Co.

The 19th Century census shows a number of boatmen living in Bridgemont and Whaley.  These people would no doubt be engaged in local trading as the long distance canal carriers lived on their boats.  A number of canal carriers operated until the early 1970's but then rapidly died out as they were no longer competitive.  The last company trading in the North West was the Anderton Company of Northwich.  The boatmen were extremely proud of the appearance of their craft.  They often worked very long hours for little pay.  They lived and raised their families in very confined spaces.  These people maintained a tradition which dated back to the 18th Century and lived within a culture of their own.

The Bridgemont Gallery of Derek Marshall also has a waterways background having at one time been the workshop of a narrowboat painter.  I see that Mr Marshall has recently painted a number of local canal scenes.

parabuild attached the following image(s):

Thank you Gnats for adding to my posting about narrowboats.  I was interested to read that you have a family connection to the canals.  It was quite common for various members of the same family to be engaged in that occupation, often this extended over several generations.  

At one time, back in the late 60's I had a small boat moored at Bulls Bridge in West London.  This was also the base for Willow Wren, a canal carrying company and a successor to British Waterways in the South of England.  I got to know a number of the boating families who were often moored up there for long periods between loads.  I also frequently met the Blue Line crews. 

I am currently trying to digitally improve a number of old colour slides of working boats. Unfortunately none of these are from local canals.