Lindisfarne, Northumberland

Reuse, recycle, repurpose

I’ve thought since my schooldays (learning about the history of the Anglo-Saxon period and the beginnings of Christianity in England) of the monastery of Lindisfarne and its wonderfully isolated position off the Northumberland coast. At long last, two weeks ago, the Resident Wise Woman and I finally made it there. We were, of course, delighted with the place – and glad we arrived early in the morning* a couple of hours before the hordes of other tourists turned up. Regular readers of this blog who know Lindisfarne will guess that as well as the obvious sites I wanted to look at the sheds near the harbour and near the castle that are ingeniously made of upturned boats.

I think it was probably a production of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes that introduced me to the idea of upturned boat sheds. The opera’s eponymous hero has such a shed – Grimes lives in Suffolk (the country both of Britten and of George Crabbe, author of the poem on which the composer based his opera), but the practice of reusing old and leaky boats as fishermen’s storage sheds was once common on many parts of the east coast. At Lindisfarne, there have been such sheds at least since the 19th century and a dozen remain at the harbour and there are a further three at the castle.

Of course many decommissioned fishing boats were broken up for scrap – a lot of the wood became firewood.† But upturning a boat and preserving its timbers with pitch or roofing felt or some sort of waterproof cloth produced a cheap shed for storing a fishermen’s gear. You could put nets in there, a dinghy, and whatever else you needed to store. And the result, provided the shed is well looked after, is an aesthetically pleasing combination of lines and curves – basic model: an upturned boat alone; taller version: an upturned boat propped on top of a wooden substructure. We are used to recycling – breaking up everything from cardboard boxes to old motor cars so that they can be turned into something else. We’re familiar with reuse – especially, if we’re interested in building conservation, in finding new uses for old buildings. Repurposing, turning one (redundant) thing into a different (useful) item, is equally important and transformative. These little sheds, modest buildings indeed, shine an old light on an ever-present problem.§

- - - - -

*Two important rules when visiting Lindisfarne: check the tide tables so you don’t get cut off and if possible arrive before the crowds.

† Storing firewood was one of the uses of the sheds near the castle.

§ For another take on what to do with old boats, see this blog post from long ago.

Black Country Living Museum, Dudley

In motion and at rest,1: Immortal Diamond

A memory from a visit to the Black Country Living Museum in 2019. Diamond is part of the museum’s fine collection of canal boats. The museum is crossed by canals that belong to the Birmingham Canal Navigations and on a small branch of this network the museum has built a boat dock populated by vessels that were once common on the canals around Birmingham and the Black Country. Many of these are day boats – designed to take cargoes such as coal, iron, limestone, and clay over short distances that you could cover in a day. Among their number are one specific type – the Joey boats, steerable from either end, that I’ve already mentioned in an earlier post.

Diamond is not a Joey boat, but an impressive composite narrow boat (with metal sides and a wooden bottom). She was first registered in 1928 and was built by John Crichton & Co of Saltney, Chester, for the Midland and Coast Canal Carrying Company of Wolverhampton. She was no day boat, but had two cabins, making her suitable for long journeys between the Black Country and the Mersey. She was damaged in an air raid on Birmingham in 1944, and rebuilt, after which she was renamed Henry, under which name she had 16 years carrying coal, after which she was sold again, rechristened Susan, and continued to work until the museum acquired her in the 1970s.

The fact that a narrow boat could be built in the 1920s and see the best part of 50 years’ service before being ‘retired’ to a museum reminds us how long-lasting canal transport was in Britain. Canals began before the railways, survived the coming of rail, and were only really killed off by the inexorable rise of road transport.* So boats sporting the delightful paintwork of Diamond – both the bright colours of the exterior and the lovely images of castles and flowers that appear when the folding doors are opened – had a long innings. That we can still appreciate these beautiful boats is due largely to the canal revival, spearheaded by campaigners such as Tom Rolt and bodies like the Inland Waterways Association in the postwar period. Museums like the BCLM have also played their part. Thank heaven they did, so that such things can still be appreciated and enjoyed, and so that, in these confined times, I can remind my readers of the richness of colour, historical interest, and folk art that’s available online. 

- - - - -  

* For a vivid account of the lives of those working and living on narrow boats in the 20th century, see Sheila Stewart, Ramlin Rose: The Boatwoman’s Story (OUP, 1993)

Black Country Living Museum, Dudley

Dunshippin

It sometimes seems to me that I don’t have to go very far before, as I look at some timber-framed building, someone will come up and tell me that ‘It’s built from old ship’s timbers, you know’. That is invariably the phrase, ‘old ship’s timbers’. I am often sceptical of such claims, as I look at a building full of straight lines and right-angles, and think of a ship, with all its curves. And yet, perhaps I am wrong to doubt. After all, a ship was a valuable item, and if it was towed, like Turner’s Fighting Temeraire, to be broken up, there would no doubt be much salvaging of its precious timbers. The great battleship in Turner’s painting was said to have been built using the wood of 5000 oak trees.* There would be planks and beams and posts and masts that a builder could make use of. And watching a neighbour repairing the roof of his cottage last year revealed that many of the roof timbers were little more than debarked tree trunks – there was hardly a straight line to be seen.

As I contemplated the tiny building above, my thoughts could not have been further from Turner’s Temeraire, This is recycling in the raw, a building made by cutting off the stern of a boat and turning the sawn-off part through 90 degrees.§ A bit of weatherboard for the rear wall, an old shed door at the front, some iron to hold everything together and the men of the boatyard had got what they needed – a small privy to make the yard more convenient and decorous.

The vessel that was dismembered to produce this almost-instant privy was a joey boat. This was an open boat, built with a square section to accommodate a large cargo, which it was designed to haul over a short distance. Most were built of wood and horse-drawn; many were double-ended, so that when you got to the end of the journey you could remove the rudder, fit it at the other end of the boat, and return home without turning round. There’s not usually much in the way of a cabin – a Joey was expected to travel a short distance, deliver its load, and return to base before nightfall, so crew did not have to sleep on board. Joey boats† were especially common on the Birmingham and Black Country canals, so it’s appropriate that this recycled one is at the Black Country Living Museum. No longer used for its second purpose (the museum has perfectly good modern facilities!), it stands as a testimony to the longevity of recycling. Exemplary.

- - - - -

* According to the website of the National Gallery, where the painting, a great pictorial elegy for the age of sail, hangs.

§ Buildings were also made from upturned boats. They can be seen on the shore at Lindisfarne (and in sets of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes).

† Why Joey? Opinions differ. It could be after Joe Worsey, a boat builder who made numerous such vessels. Or it could be a tribute to Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), Birmingham’s Radical Liberal mayor, who led efforts to improve the city and the lives of its working people.