We took a trip over to Eastrington to meet up with Les Reid and Tony Carrigan. We recorded their conversations about the times spent working on the River Trent gravelling, the dangers of the Humber and ‘Between Bridges’, ‘Up Harbour’, on the River Hull.
Les Reid of the Newark Heritage Barge ‘Leicester Trader’ and Tony Carrigan, former river barge mate on the gravel motor barge, ‘Chas’, reminisce about life on the inland waterways in the 1960s.
The featured image at the top of the post is a photograph of Tony’s father, and Les’s mentor, Alec Carrigan, taken in the early 1950s.
You can watch the remarkable rare video from 1965 showing a working barge trip on the barge Girton from Hull to Girton Gravel Pit and back with Alec Carrigan at the helm, and commentary by Les here:
Newark’s unique Heritage Barge ‘Leicester Trader’ is the last Trent size cargo barge built to fit the old locks of the Trent Navigation Company. Saved from being scrapped in 2008 and renovated by Les and a group of local barge aficionados, the dumb barge is now a floating museum, currently moored in the lee of the imposing 900 year old Newark castle ruins.
In this film we meet Les who shows us round the barge, both outside at Newark Marina undergoing its ten year survey and hull maintenance, and inside the exhibition as he tells us about the history of the Leicester Trader, and Newark’s sailing barges.
You can find out more about visiting the Leicester Trader on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/leicester.trader
Rich and Lou Duffy-Howard
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Hiya, can you just alter “graveller” motor barge Chas, ,,,, to gravel motor barge. Could be confusing as Graveller was the actual name of the barge that Bill and Alec had before Girton and the one I spent so much time on. Cheers, thank you. Got another barge skippers son coming tomorrow.
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Great stuff, sorted!
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