| Description | An interview with Graham WIGLEY, a single man with no children, who is a Managing Director, canal company, born in Sutton Coldfield and now living in Birmingham. Graham WIGLEY’s father was a Accountant, born in England and his mother a Secretary born in England. In the interview, he talks about …
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I was born in March, 1944 actually in Birmingham, although quite a lot of my earlier life was spent in Derby, which is where the family came from…My original dwelling in a boat was in Kingstanding…
36" Father went into the building business after the war, businesses failed, family moved about.
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I moved back to Birmingham in the Autumn of 1957 when I was 13…
39" I actually had always rather liked Birmingham because going there as a child…I was very impressed by its immensity, although in those days it was a grey city, that’s my abiding memory…all the buildings were black, they’ve all been cleaned now…I remember seeing the council house which was really really black…this is in the…late forties…
1.28 ...by coming back to the city in 1957 things had changed, things had brightened up…although the redevelopment of the 1960s hadn’t really started and so there were still bomb sites and things…
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School memories.
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3.12 Left school at 16.
3.17 Parents wanted him to have a desk job, first job as junior clerk.
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4" I started work when I was 16, going on 17…in 1961.
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5" Working at Lewis’s Bank at 18, 19.
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Left the bank and studied to be a teacher.
1.27 I graduated…in 1966…
1.39 First job in Birmingham, set up canal company.
2.41 How he first became interested in canals.
3.11 …eventually when I was about 10 or 11…this was back in 1955, I got a bike…
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30" Aunt went on a canal holiday in Holland in 1954, then tried the same thing in England on ‘Hotel boats.’
3.12 …in 1960 she actually paid for me to…go on one of these trips with her, which was the first canal trip of any length that I’d had…
3.32 Trip from Stourport to Leicester.
4.59 Moving to Birmingham in 1957, my first thought was to explore this vast system…of local waterways…
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1.52 Canal traffic had died off, although in the Birmingham Black Country area it was still vibrant because of the sheer fact of the…extreme amount of industry that was still going and also the fact that we were near a coalfield…it wasn’t only coal that was carried on the canal but that was one of the main things…
2.30 No investment in them, old, badly maintained machinery.
Horses were often more efficient than tug boats.
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18 My interest started in 1957 and I continued to explore on my bike really until 1963 when I left for college in Derby.
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4" …Back to 1957…I decided to join the English Waterways Association…set up to promote canals…
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Objectives of the Association.
1.43 Well, this would be around about 1960, so I’d be about 16…
1.58 Wanted to increase use of canals, did a local trade survey to see if people were interested in using the canals and discovered that they would be.
3.00 Carrier companies weren’t interested.
4.08 Decided to set up their own carrier company.
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Bought some boats off British Waterways.
41" Now all this coincided with this terrible winter of 1962, 63 when the canals were frozen for literally months…this dealt a very severe blow to canal carrying all over…
1.16 British Waterways in the spring of 1963 decided to abandon most of their narrow boat canal carrying…
1.44 Gave them the opportunity to buy a fleet of boats.
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10" The actual setting up of the company was in 1965, so I was 21…
16" Setting up the company, investors.
1.35 Started using the fleet, trying to bring new trade to the canal, getting first contracts.
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12" Difficulties of gaining contracts within the Birmingham and Black Country area.
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1.42 …firms in the 1960’s were beginning to modernise and relocate and all this sort of thing, so firms were moving physically away from the canal in some cases.
1.55 Collieries were closing down, handling machinery not very efficient, turning to road transport.
4.14 …so actually, funnily enough one of the very first runs we ever did was for Dawes Cycles in 65 and one of the very last long distance runs we did was for Dawes Cycles in 1971. So…we were left with a fleet of boats in the early 70’s with very little opportunities to carry successfully…
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Had to rethink the business, financial difficulties. Converted one of their boats into a passenger trip boat.
46" …and by 1974 a trip boat…which still operates…
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4" Moved into a canal boat.
51 It became an increasingly sensible idea to actually move onto the boats. We’d save money, we’d be on the job all the time…and so that’s what we finally did in 1969.
1.52 Living in a canal boat: cosy, not much space.
3.53 Started to rent boats for excursions for young people.
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Still hiring boats for the same purpose.
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The first time I visited Gas Street Basin was in 1957, I’d be 13 then…
19" Gas Street Basin was disappointingly quiet.
55" It was a little world cut off from everywhere else.
2.22 It was only later on…maybe early in 1958 that I noticed that there was some activity…mainly from…the salvage department of Birmingham City Council and they had this fleet of boats all of which were horse-drawn…
3.22 It was a great pity when the fleet was disbanded in 1964. Had it lasted another 20 years then I’m sure it would have continued to the present day.
3.32 Describes the boats they used, the same type used for 150 years.
4.30 Horse-drawn boats and horses wearing brasses with the City of Birmingham arms stamped on them.
4.56 Coal boats,tug boats.
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1.55 In 1961, British Waterways decided to exhibit in Birmingham’s boat show which was held at Bingley Hall.
2.09 Painted everything along the canal, it put Gas Street ‘on the map.’
3.45 By the time we decided to actually move in there in 1965…it was definitely getting a little bit dog-eared.
4.07 More boats began to join them, search for ‘alternative’ lifestyles, made them unpopular with the Council.
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Flower power and the drug scene brought the place into further disrepute.
25" British Waterways sold off lots of warehouses and canal buildings, wanted to redevelop the site but it never happened.
3.10 Then in the 1980s there was a new scheme altogether…and the tide was beginning to turn. The city began to realise that perhaps the canals were not such a bad idea after all and perhaps if they were done up…the canals would make a good start to regenerate it and so gradually the city began to put money into tow path rejuvenation.
3.50 Sympathetic redevelopment.
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24" The basin became more pleasant and touristy.
2.01 But some original canal boat dwellers left because they felt like goldfish in a bowl; no privacy.
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Privacy and noise problems.
18" Less cohesive sense of community now.
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4" …a fundamental difference from 1957…a feeling of loss of the traditions of commercial traffic, the horse boats and the people that worked them…it had a whole different feel about the place in those days with the great emphasis on the coal industry and the manufacturing industry, you could walk along the tow path and there was hammering of forge hammers…now that’s changed…now what you see is very much an entertainments area…trendy office buildings, new wharf-style flats, green areas…
1.16 Canals couldn’t have continued in the same way. More people use them.
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Graffitti problems, vandalism.
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Largely middle class canal users now. Costs about £600-1,000 to hire a boat.
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…when we started our company in 1965…
Trained boatmen and their families lived on their boats, lived in cramped conditions. Hard work for the women.
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1.02 It’s the sense that you can always get away…it’s the fact that they know they always could move…they could break out, it’s like being in jail with the door open…it’s the potentiality to be able to go…all |