English: A working narrowboat near Wolverhampton. There are still working boats on our canals, often one man businesses performing services to other canal users, e.g. selling coal, wood, or diesel fuel; canal memorabilia souvenirs and painted canalware; boat painting and decoration and maintenance, or, as here fender making and sales.

This is Mal Edwards, photographed with his permission and stopped by me on his way back from the fens. Mal Edwards was the last lengthsman* to work the Newport and Shrewsbury canals into the 1960s. He can also be seen on some websites as lock-keeper at Grindley Brook Staircase.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/yourvideo/pages/mal_edwards_01.shtml

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• lengthsman: In rural areas, a lengthsman was a man who took pride in keeping his district neat and tidy, well swept and free from litter. On the canals, a lengthsman was responsible for patrolling his length, looking for leaks, seeing to routine maintenance, cutting back vegetation etc. (information from http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/l.html )

"I started working on the canal when I was only 14. I was a lengths man on the Shrewsbury, the canal. It was my job to cut hedges and to keep the toe path clear.

Since then, I've carried aluminium, coal, feldspar, salt and tinned salmon. For a short time I was captain of the prettiest Joshua boat ever built, or so the other boatmen said. She was called The Apple. She was nice with only 20 tonnes on but any more and she would sit funny.

The canal was full of characters then, like George Page and Chocolate Charlie Atkins. In 1965 we both used to carry aluminium to Wolverhampton and when it was quiet he showed me how to make rope fenders. It wasn't long before I was making my own which were sold to the pleasure boaters in the summer months.

Wages weren't good on the waterways and the money came in handy, buttons, puddings, all boats have them even to this day. It wasn't long before I became a full-time fender maker. I even learned to make rope.

He says, (presumably when he was at Grindley Brook) "for a few years I lived in a house near the canal but the pull of the waterways brought me back onto a boat. Now it's just a short walk to work in the morning. Round the bend and over the lock gate. In the last 45 years, I've cruised well over 100,000 miles on ten boats. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing."