Sheffield And South Yorkshire Navigation

[Guest Flyinglensman]

This set of images were taken in the late 1960s or early 1970s of the Sheffield canal when commercial navigation was getting a rare site. The photographs were shot by the late Reg Frost, for an article he had written on the subject in the now long vanished Firth Brown News. I thought they may be of interest. Unloaded barges, high in the water, had a tight squeeze to negotiate Bacon Lane bridge!

[SteveHB]

Fantastic set of old photos, thank you for posting.

[Unitedite Returns]

Truly are stunning, quality images, the best that I personally have seen on this particular subject. Certainly taken by a good photographer.

Health and Safety would have a dickey-fit!

[lysander]

Thanks for the pics! I worked as Export Sales/Shipping Manager for a company based on the canalside at Tinsley. I organised a shipment of over 200tons of steel to Norway... using barge to Hull. This was the first time the company had used this mode of transport in many decades...It was an experience never to be repeated ,so slow was the loading...and then we saw the barges wait for, seemingly, days ...until I was told the tidal conditions were suitable. However, it was much cheaper than using road or rail and I seem to remember "Forward"...which was also the GCR's motto!

[boginspro]

These photographs bring back some great memories of the canal I have not seen for years. Thanks for great pictures of a then still working canal.

[Waterside Echo]

The shot with the goods wagons in the sidings, can anyone pin point them on the map. W/E.

These photographs bring back some great memories of the canal I have not seen for years. Thanks for great pictures of a then still working canal.

[SteveHB]

It is by the side of the canal basin W/E, the arches are still there.

Link to Flash Earth

[Guest Flyinglensman]

A few more pictures from the canal. This time I was a guest on one of the Humber keels which sailed from Sheffield basin to Vic Waddington's wharf at Rotherham. The trip was organised by the Inland Waterways Protection Society, in a bid to highlight the canal's use as a commercial waterway. It took place on a wet day on the 17th May 1969. The leading light of the society was Mrs Bessie Bunker, from Holmesfield, (author of "Portrait of Sheffield" - Robert Hale July 1972) whose dynamic personality was also behind the same society's renovation of the Buxworth Basin on the Peak Forest Canal. She is the lady in the white hat in the foreground of the first picture. Various other notorieties were present, but I cannot recall their names without reference to some old press cutting I have somewhere. In the second picture, the figure with the camera, behind the bespectacled man front left foreground, is the late Harry Parker, who, for many years was the picture editor at Sheffield Newspapers.

[Waterside Echo]

Thanks Steve. If that is the case, then all the rails had been taken up and removed by 1967. The area was then used as a car park by driving up the approach from Wharf Street, passing the coal offices on the right and paying the attendant one shilling, [he sat in a old police box]. I used that car park every day for quite some time. W/E.

[boginspro]

It is by the side of the canal basin W/E, the arches are still there.

WE.jpg

OS map #94_crop.jpg

Link to Flash Earth

Looking on a map the area now seems to be occupied by a hotel, another tower block and a lot of car parking space.

Edit, just looked at SteveHB's link to Flash Earth, not tower blocks, just big buildings.

[boginspro]

A few more pictures from the canal. This time I was a guest on one of the Humber keels which sailed from Sheffield basin to Vic Waddington's wharf at Rotherham. The trip was organised by the Inland Waterways Protection Society, in a bid to highlight the canal's use as a commercial waterway. It took place on a wet day on the 17th May 1969. The leading light of the society was Mrs Bessie Bunker, from Holmesfield, (author of "Portrait of Sheffield" - Robert Hale July 1972) whose dynamic personality was also behind the same society's renovation of the Buxworth Basin on the Peak Forest Canal. She is the lady in the white hat in the foreground of the first picture. Various other notorieties were present, but I cannot recall their names without reference to some old press cutting I have somewhere. In the second picture, the figure with the camera, behind the bespectacled man front left foreground, is the late Harry Parker, who, for many years was the picture editor at Sheffield Newspapers.

More great pictures and memories, I was lucky enough to have traveled on a similar trip in the late fifties or early sixties. Thanks again.

[Unitedite Returns]

Bessie Bunker, now there's a blast from the past. My brother still likes to tell me about the trip that she arranged up the Stourport Arm of the then defunct Stourport Canal, in 1964, or thereabouts. The first time that it had been navigated by any vessel for many a year.

[Ponytail]

A plan of the intended canal from Sheffield to Tinsley by W. and J. Fairbank. 1815.

Includes Greenland Engine. 

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