1. Crazy for Canals Words and music by Kevin Adams
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This song features on the album The Common Land (2002)[1] by Kevin Adams consisting of 13 of his own compositions, most written for various Living Archive MK theatre and radio productions. Three of them, however, were composed for the Millennium Pageant Moreton Made in 2000, which retold the story of the Buckinghamshire village of Maids Moreton.
Its 15th century parish church of Saint Edmund is said to have been built by two maiden ladies of the Pever family – the eponymous ‘Maids of Moreton’. It contains their memorials depicted in its wall-painting and brasses. This was a time when “roads were only just emerging from the medieval mud, and long trains of packhorses were the only means of ‘mass’ transit by road of raw materials and finished products”[2]. By the mid-18th century, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater ‘first had the idea’ of using waterways instead – to transport his coal from northern England to the industrial hub of Manchester. He commissioned ‘the famous engineer’ James Brindley to build a canal to do it. The Grand Junction Canal was incorporated in 1793 at a time when waterway investment reached veritable mania. It soon became the most important canal in Britain. Its Buckingham Arm was opened in 1801 along the southern boundary of Maids Moreton - then a small village a mile north of Buckingham, now on the border of the expanding town. A trade revolution ensued: in bulk goods such as coal, stone, bricks, slates, and lime; in local produce like cheese or fodder; and even in the burgeoning trade of fertilisers with guano brought from Chile! Soon, 20,000 tons a year were being transported, continuing for almost 50 years - until the railways took over… By the 1880s, the canal’s annual trade had dropped to 3,000 tons: it had sewage ditched into it, silt built up in it and its repairs were neglected. The damage was done, and the lost traffic could not be regained. For a while canals had put communities like Maids Moreton in touch with the outside world[3]; but even after the London & Birmingham Railway took away much of its trade, a new interest started to evolve – for pleasure and leisure. In the 1990s, when the newly formed Buckingham Canal Society began clearing the Arm, that it seemed the canal might have a new lease of life. In Milton Keynes, that new life developed resolutely: the erstwhile Grand Junction, now the Grand Union Canal[4], became a pivotal part of the city’s focus on accessible public space as it passed through Fenny Stratford, Simpson, Woughton, the Woolstones, Great Linford and Wolverton. The enthusiasm for canals so vibrantly expressed in Crazy for Canals had certainly found a new upsurge… [1] For more details, see The Common Land | Kevin Adams (bandcamp.com) The link to a live performance from 2013 is also provided with Marion Hill in the lead : Crazy For Canals - YouTube [2] See History of the Canal – Buckingham Canal Society [3] See History - Maids Moreton Parish Council (maids-moreton.co.uk) [4] The name was changed by an Act of Parliament enacted in 1929 |
A team of icebreakers on the Grand Junction canal at Great Linford, March 1895 (Image courtesy Canal & Rivers Trust)
Fenny Stratford, Old Bletchley; WI Canal Boat Outing, c1955
Canal Barges at Fenny Lock
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