by Geoff Body
The substantial building of Thorney Mill on the upper reaches of the River Parrett. Adjoining the mill are the remains of the old lock and the sluices which were vital to maintaining an adequate depth of water upriver.
The Parrett was bridged at Langport as early as the thirteenth century. The Great Bow Bridge replacement followed in the fifteenth, but its low arches precluded the 20-ton barges from Bridgwater continuing upriver. Coal, salt and much of the shipment tonnage arriving at Langport was unloaded for local use or to go into storage pending later sale and onward movement by packhorse or wagon. From the quay and warehouses on the north bank of the river and just downstream of the bridge, some of this tonnage was then sent forward to a surprisingly large number of townships in the surrounding areas of Somerset and even beyond the county boundaries.
Goods moving beyond Langport by water involved the awkward process of transhipment to smaller barges of 5–10 tons for conveyance to places like Thorney Mill further along the Parrett and, occasionally, a short way along the River Isle. Movement along the Yeo/Ivel to Ilchester can be traced back to Roman times, but depths beyond Load Bridge, which regularly unloaded coal and culm, were often inadequate. On this last stretch barges sometimes managed to get as far as a small basin by the old packhorse Pill Bridge, a little way outside Ilchester.
Improving this access to Ilchester was the objective of the Company of Proprietors of the Navigation from Ivelchester to Langport which obt0ained its Act of Parliament in June 1795. Sadly its dream ended six years later with the coffers empty and only a small amount of construction at the Langport end completed. Better fortune attended the Westport Canal, a 2½-mile link from the River Isle to a basin and warehouses at Westport from which goods could be moved on by road to places like Barrington, Ilminster and South Petherton.
The Westport Canal and waterway improvements beyond Langport were a supplementary feature of the wider scheme authorised by the Parrett Navigation Act of 1836. This was designed to improve the river downstream from Langport and to aid and stimulate the substantial trade already carried. It provided for locks at each end of the Stanmoor to Langport section plus a further lock at Oath, designed to produce improvements in and greater control over the highly variable water supply and consequent river depths. Another major feature of the legislation was the replacement of the former restrictive bridge at Langport. The river improvements part had been completed by 1838 and the new bridge some fifteen months later. Traffic at this period amounted to some 55,000 tons per annum and the expectation was that the lock tolls plus a special temporary charge for crossing the bridge would recoup the £42,000 construction costs involved. Over the next few years the amount of traffic increased by some 20 per cent, but this prosperity began to decline after the opening of the branch railway from Taunton to Yeovil in 1853.
The River Parrett and former sluices at Langport with the old Parrett Navigation lock and toll collector’s house beyond the small island.
The River Tone wanders its way through Taunton Deane and the county town itself before joining the Parrett at Stanmoor. As early as 1638 it had been made navigable between that point and Ham Mills just outside Taunton and before the end of that century was bringing significant quantities of seaborne coal from the channel to be carried by packhorses for the last 3 miles into Taunton proper. By 1717 the whole length had been provided with further locks to enable small barges to bring in Swansea coal transhipped at Bridgwater. Other goods also contributed to the steady rise in annual tonnages and the revenues of the Conservators of the Tone, with some quite significant dividends being paid out. The undertaking was important, useful and quite substantial in that it had four conventional locks and a similar number of half-locks.
A major change in the water route to Taunton arose from a complexity of grandiose schemes put forward for a ship canal. This was a part of an age-old dream of linking the Bristol and English channels to avoid the long sea journey around Cornwall and had several permutations including one to link Bristol with Exeter. The debates over each scheme raged quite fiercely at times. Emerging from these various promotions came the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal, which would, and did from 1827, provide an easier and more direct route to Taunton than that via the two rivers. After some in-fighting the canal company and the Tone Conservators came to an accommodation and coal continued to move via the Tone for some time.
Prompted by the advantages brought by the new Bridgwater–Taunton waterway, a scheme for a link to Ilminster and Chard followed and produced an Act for a canal of some 13½ miles from a junction with its ally at Creech St Michael in 1834. It was a difficult undertaking necessitating tunnels and inclined planes and using small tub boats, 26ft long and designed to be hauled up and down the inclines by means of a caisson or trolley running on rails. The troubled undertaking finally reached Chard in 1842 to enjoy some initial success, again by the dramatic impact of cheaper coal prices.
In 1841 the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal was extended from its former Bridgwater basin at Huntworth, around the town of Bridgwater, to a new dock on the Parrett and downstream of the town bridge. Significantly, this was also the year in which the probing Bristol & Exeter Railway had arrived on its southward path to Exeter and spelled the eventual end of the good years on these water routes to and via Taunton. The Parrett Navigation suffered the same fate after the railway branch to Yeovil opened, while the Glastonbury Canal had to endure the indignity of purchase, closure and conversion to provide trackbed land for its railway usurper. After twenty-five years from its opening in 1842, the Chard Canal went the same way and was sold to its railway rival for £5,945, a fraction of its construction cost.
THE LANGPORT BOATMAN
We’re completely free, the barge and me,
In tune with the tide and the weather,
From Langport Quay to the salt of the sea,
In harmony together.
We work up the Yeo, to Westport we go,
Anywhere on the Parrett, Tone or Isle,
Any creek, pill or rhyne will do us just fine,
And we’ll get there by skill, luck or guile.
From a boy of just eight, I’ve worked dawn ‘till late,
To learn every trick of the stream,
Stuckey’s Bank made a loan, now the barge is my own,
And at last I am living my dream.
I’ve a mate, of course, and a boy with a horse,
But my biggest friend is the tide,
High, low, slack or neap, we need three foot deep,
And our sweeps, sail, and a chain overside.
Welsh coal means you sweat, hay mustn’t get wet,
There are withies and stone for the taking,
But as Bow Bridge appears, and the journey’s end nears,
You forget that your muscles are aching.
I admit there are days when the job hardly pays,
And the cargoes are scarce, wet or heavy,
But the barge is now mine and we do just fine,
Even after the ‘Nav’ takes its levy.
Though the railway gets near, I’ll stay of good cheer,
And barge on through sun, wind and rain,
If things go awry, I can always apply,
For a new job – of driving a train!
Geoff Body
PART 2
Ports, Pills and Wharves
6. NORTH SOMERSET
Apart from the considerable shipping activity and settlements around the mouth of the River Avon, the remainder of the coast as far as the entrance to the River Axe, together with its immediate hinterland, was essentially a pastoral, self-sufficient area until the coming of the railways. No doubt the odd early cargo was landed on beaches or in pill entrances, some passed up the Yeo and Banwell rivers and other modest waterways and some coal continued to be brought in to places like Clevedon and Congresbury, especially for small manufacturers and bulk users like gas works. Some produce was forwarded by sea to Bristol and occasional loads became available for special works such as
the movement of stone for sea defences.
Crockerne Pill, now known simply as Pill, had centuries of providing channel pilots and their cutters and the hobblers who toiled at their oars to tow vessels up the Avon. Opposite the earlier docks at Avonmouth, the southern mouth of the river where it reaches the estuary is now the site of the modern Royal Portbury Dock. Further on, the creek wharf at Portishead was used by local fishermen and others and has survived the era of the town’s docks development and the considerable power station coal, Albright & Wilson chemicals and the timber wharf traffic handled there. Now all the traditional dock activity has been replaced by the large marina and housing development which has taken place around the dock waters.
Thanks to its sheltered position in the lee of Brean Down the pill off the River Axe at Uphill has a long history of sailing vessel movements, once Welsh cattle for fattening and later coal, salt and general cargoes inwards and stone, bricks and lime outwards. And the activity did not end there for small craft went surprisingly long distances up the Axe until drainage sluices put an end to this age-old practice. Further back in time, before the pattern of waterways was changed by drainage schemes, a waterway route to Glastonbury existed via the Axe and the connecting link to the Brue via the Pilrow Cut.
Well before the resort of Weston-super-Mare emerged from its humble origins in the nineteenth century, Uphill was the most important shipping location between the River Avon and the mouth of the River Parrett.
Pill
Originally and more properly known as Crockerne Pill, this large village is situated on the south bank of the River Avon, not far from its mouth. Although only a few miles from Bristol, it was largely self-contained and self-sufficient until the second half of the eighteenth century, for only a difficult and circuitous horse track connected the village with its busy and important neighbour. The modest inlet at Pill was fed by a small stream and provided a shelter for pilot cutters and other small boats, while the larger sea-going merchantmen could moor up to the low cliffs just upstream to wait for tide and towing or to tranship their cargoes to and from lighters. Naval vessels also used these moorings, known as the Hung Road as mooring hawsers could be attached to the cliff face.
Early pilot cutters were built at Bristol, but for many years subsequently local boatbuilders, Rowles, Cooper and others, built fast and extremely seaworthy pilot cutters at Pill, and the community there reared the men who sailed them. They went out in all weathers to await the merchantmen arriving with supplies for Bristol’s growing port and population and for those heading to Gloucester or the South Wales harbours. From 1861 Cardiff, Newport and Gloucester began to share in this pilotage activity and fierce competition could often occur.
In the heyday of sail an incoming ship had to take on a pilot once past Lundy and the cutters would race out there, and often further, to earn their ten guineas pilotage fee. From 1891 the compulsory pilotage boundary was altered to Flatholm. Before getting their certificate, aspiring pilots had to spend at least seven years learning the waters as westermen, or Western Men. Their job was to bring the cutter back, with just a boy to help, once the pilot had transferred to his seagoing charge.
Pill village also provided the hobblers and towing teams to haul vessels up the tidal Avon and moor them at the Bristol quays until the advent of steam tugs gradually made the boats, rowers and horses redundant. At one time oxen were used for the towing task, one naval vessel in 1630 needing ‘eight tow-boats and sixty yoke of oxen’ to clear the River Avon.
In medieval times there was some shipping trade in pottery from nearby Ham Green, but there was hardly any industry at Pill and the locally-produced supplies it provided for passing deep sea ships were transferred by small boat. Some goods came ashore this way from vessels waiting in the Hung Road, but a watchful customs post tried valiantly to ensure duty was paid. There was a customs presence at Pill from 1693 and the watch house, which comprised working and living quarters for the local revenue men, still exists there.
Not that all was sweetness and light. Both pilots and hobblers were a competitive bunch and depended on being tough and active to reach and persuade shipmasters to take on their services. When vessels in the Hung Road obstructed the task of the hobblers strong words would be exchanged. Pill itself catered for the needs of its own and visiting seafarers for drink, tobacco and other pleasures denied them at sea. But none of the various small excesses and disturbances compared with the activities of one local man named Morgan whose infamy may well be perpetuated in the name of a small creek just downstream from the main village.
Morgan and his son were a thorn in the flesh of the Bristol authorities throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. The father seems to have been at odds with the Corporation of Bristol for twenty years or more, with his son then taking the same course to such effect that a petition against his behaviour was sent to the Privy Council in 1630. He was accused of removing mooring posts to build a personal stronghold by the river at Pill and there running eleven pothouses which offered tobacco and strong beer to all and sundry, to the detriment of both morals and behaviour.
The Archbishop of York and the Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas were deputed to investigate, a commission which involved them in heading down the Avon in boats laden with ‘roast beef, pies, sweetmeats, cakes and wine’. Thus fortified, they duly condemned Morgan’s actions, but any change seems to have been slow and small for it took another petition in 1637 to secure any measure of compliance. Even then the younger Morgan went down fighting with a complaint about his treatment to the House of Commons in 1641. Clearly Pill was a place of maritime importance and had its own idea of independence.
Today, the once-busy ferry across to the slipway by the Lamplighters Inn on the other side of the Avon at Shirehampton no longer carries crowds of local workers, and modest and muddy Morgan’s Pill just downstream is the only reminder of this colourful character. The tiny inlet there once featured as the northern end of a scheme for a canal south to Bridgwater and Taunton. Forgotten too is the National Shipyard Company’s prospective shipyard just beyond Morgan’s Pill. This project originated in 1917 out of the need to replace wartime shipping losses. To cater for the materials of construction a new signal box, three loop lines and a branch towards the river were built a little way along the main railway line towards Portishead, and a modest new station opened in 1918 to serve the workers. The yard was abandoned incomplete in 1921 and its station closed two years later.
Low tide at Pill, looking across the River Avon to Shirehampton. In earlier times this little harbour would have been crowded with pilot cutters and the hobblers’ rowing boats.
Royal Portbury Dock
This impressive development, built over a five-year period from 1972 on a virgin site on the southern side of the mouth of the Avon, is rather outside the scope and purpose of this book, but needs brief mention because of its importance and for the sake of being comprehensive. Operated by the Bristol Port Company, it is now a major port and has the largest entrance lock in the UK. The lock’s 951ft length and 135ft width permit the accommodation of the very large bulk carrier vessels which bring in substantial numbers of cars and high volumes of coal and aviation fuel. Containers and timber are also major imports and there are forwardings of wheat and motor vehicles.
Portishead
The nineteenth century brought great change to Portishead. Its location on the widening estuary beyond the mouth of the River Avon had given the small agricultural settlement links with the sea for hundreds of years, but the tidal creek which probed inland as far as the former mill that became the White Lion Inn was used only by the numerous local fishing vessels and small trading craft. By the end of the eighteenth century several market boats regularly took fish, corn, cider and other produce up the Avon to Bristol, and various types of building materials were brought in for local development on the return voyage. The proximity of Portishead to the King Road where larger vessels sheltered, waited for the tide or tran
shipped cargoes probably meant that the local people sometimes got involved in less respectable activities. An early watch house was located there and preventive officers were active.
Once the nation’s economy had recovered from the crippling cost of the Napoleonic Wars, activity around Portishead increased. It was selected by the City of Bristol for development as a seaside resort which would be a major amenity for its citizens. Money was invested in landholdings and plans were prepared in 1828 for a hotel which was duly opened in 1831 with a landing stage nearby. A regular packet boat service operated to and from Bristol so that visitors could enjoy the Royal Hotel and its gardens, landing its passengers at the parish wharf at high tide and near the hotel when the water was lower and continuing to operate until the coming of the railway. The area suffered a setback when attempts to secure government investment failed and nothing came of Brunel’s plans to make Portishead a terminal for his Great Western steamship. These were, however, years of stuttering growth, albeit just through more visitors by steamer initially. There were several schemes for piers and one for an atmospheric railway link with Bristol which was to be provided with an incline up to the embryo Clifton Suspension Bridge.