Canal Boatwomen Guest Blog

Many thanks to the lovely Jen Newby for inviting me to write a guest post on canal boatwomen on her blog! Jen's fascinating book on Women's Lives will be published by Pen & Sword very soon.

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors update

Here's a sneak preview of the cover for my forthcoming book 'Tracing Your Canal Ancestors' for Pen & Sword.  It's provisionally scheduled for publication this autumn  - I'll post an update to my blog as soon as I get a confirmed release date.

Austen meets celebrity chefs

I was very busy finishing the typescript for my book 'Tracing Your Canal Ancestors' last week, so missed a lot of the fun and frolics for Jane Austen's birthday. If you are fed up with the weather and want cheering up, the Jane Austen spoof 'Sophie' on the Impressions Show  is hilarious - great fun to watch.

Epic Journey

I visited The National Archives at Kew on Thursday to do some research for my book on canal ancestors. I had a very interesting visit; the staff were extremely helpful. The Archives are kept in an amazing building. The British transport system rather let me down, however. The train I was booked on for my journey down was cancelled, and some of those coming back were late or cancelled, too. I was on a total of nine trains that day travelling from Cheshire to Kew Gardens and back again, and was exhausted by the time I got home.


Thank you to my family and all the Londoners and fellow travellers who helped a baffled Northerner trying to cope with the complexities of London transport!

Photo: The National Archives, Kew, Richmond © Sue Wilkes

Canal Ancestors

A quick update to say my latest feature on tracing your canal ancestors is out in this month’s issue of Discover My Past England, so do check it out if you have boatmen or canal company workers in your family tree.
Image: Canal boat family, 1920s. Fellows, Morton & Clayton were a famous canal carrying firm. Work and Workers, Arthur O. Cooke, (T.C. and E.C. Jack Ltd., c.1920s.)