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The H&G Canal Trust                              You are here:  Publications:  The Wharfinger

The Wharfinger is the Trust’s quarterly newsletter which is free to members.

Read about:

button.gif (902 bytes) Progress at the restoration sites

button.gif (902 bytes) Liaison work that goes on behind the scenes
   with local  authorities, planning committees,
   local landowners and others

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button.gif (902 bytes) Features written by members such as...

The Birmingham Canals Marathon Challenge

Steve Gittins wrote an account of this event in which the aim is to cover as many miles as possible on Midlands canals in 24 hours. Visiting obscure places such as the Bumblehole Arm and Brades Hall Junction, he graduallyclocked up the points.
...we paused to enter a new looking basin, having established it was long enough to count towards our points total. The residents seemed somewhat surprised to see a BOAT in their basin!
Autumn 1998

Some photographic
detective work!

David Bick's book about the canal features on its cover a photograph taken in about 1880 by Alfred Watkins (who you may know as the "discoverer" of ley lines).
The picture was thought to be of the lock at Oxenhall but Brian Fox demonstrates clearly that it has been wrongly identified. He lists 8 reasons why it cannot be this lock and suggests it is in fact the lock at Rudford photographed a little before it was buried under
the Ledbury-Gloucester railway.
Spring 1997

Demolished!
The fourth edition reported something which would almost certainly not happen today, now that we have such helpful support from the local authorities: the original canal office in the Barr's Court basin in Hereford was demolished.
To add insult to injury, the rubble was delivered to us a few days later to use
as hardcore on a towpath!
June 1984

The very first edition in June 1983 was called
The Hereford Wharfinger.
The name was inspired by the painted sign on the gable wall of the canal-side cottage at Withington
which is pictured below.

WILLIAM BIRD

TIMBER & COAL MERCHANT,

Commission Agent,
AND
GENERAL WHARFINGER,
BROMYARD AND LEOMINSTER WHARFS,
WITHINGTON

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