Since 1898
The company history
From one coal boat and a handshake to eleven painted hulls on the Bridgmoor. One hundred and twenty-eight years.
It began with coal and a two-sentence contract
The Kennel Lane coal yard's first contract with Isaac Hesketh reads, in full: "Hesketh to carry coal, weekly, weather permitting. Hesketh to be paid, weekly, weather permitting." It has been renewed, in those words, every spring since 1898, and the yard's fourth owner and the firm's fifth generation renew it in the same handshake.
Canal carrying survived where the railways predicted it would not, by being too slow to die and too stubborn to notice. The Bridgmoor's trade never justified a rail spur, and so the coal kept moving by water, and the firm that moved it kept painting its boats as if the whole canal were watching. It was. It still is.
"We are not in the carrying business. We are in the not-stopping business."Isaac Hesketh, painted on the cargo shed, 1921
The firm, decade by decade
Constancy and a handshake
Isaac Hesketh signs the Kennel Lane coal yard as his first customer. The contract is two sentences long and has never been renegotiated.
Martha paints the first hull
Martha Marlow, a boat painter's daughter, decorates Constancy's cabin side. Boatmen start calling the firm 'the bright ones'.
The families tie up
Isaac's son and Martha's daughter marry. The firm is renamed Hesketh & Marlow and the biscuit tin of enamel orders becomes a legal matter.
The graving pump
The yard's cast-iron pump is installed, second-hand, from a decommissioned dry dock in Felly. It has pumped out the dock, without complaint, ever since.
The flight falls in
A frost-shattered lock wall at Lock 9 closes the canal for five months. The firm hauls coal by cart and keeps every customer.
Nine boats
The fleet peaks at nine pairs of horse-hauled boats; the towpath stables are built at Bridgmoor Basin, now the towyard gallery.
Engine boats
The last horses retire. Islay, the last of them, is retired to a meadow the firm rents to this day and sends hay to, monthly.
The passage service
With the trade shrinking, the firm starts carrying people instead. First season: 800 passengers, all tea included.
Centenary
The Kennel Lane coal yard renews the two-sentence contract for a third century. Constancy II is repainted to the 1902 pattern for the occasion.
Today
Eleven boats, four daily passages, one dry dock, and the towyard painting anything the canal looks at.