A comprehensive collection of canal memorabilia, including books, engraved plans, canal posters, postcards, share certificates, toll rate cards, bargeware and gaily-painted barge accessories goes for auction later this month.
With some lots documenting turbulent times for the canal companies - as did material auctioned in recent years in the Republic - the Sotheby's sale of more than 100 lots takes place on November 27th in West Sussex.
One lot comprises original correspondence dated 1816 to 1817 from Josias Jessop, the engineer son of William Jessop, estimated at £150 sterling (€245).
Mr P. A. L. Vine, author and recognised authority on the waterways of south-eastern England, told The Irish Times that, in one of Jessop's letters on how to reduce expenditure, he advises the management of a canal company to lower its wages. This would work, as "the navigators may initially complain but will soon return to work, as employment everywhere is in short supply".
Published in 1960, a 14-volume series of the canals of these islands, including separate volumes on the canals in the Republic and in Northern Ireland, is expected to fetch £300 to £400.
An early 20th century painted tin bargeware watering can, decorated with bands of brightly coloured flowers, together with a blue-painted tinplate canal oil lamp, is estimated at £250 to £350.
Three pieces of "Measham ware" - a distinctive dark brown pottery - including a large barge teapot, is estimated at £300 to £500.
Used to furnish boats, "Measham ware" takes its name from a town at the end of the Ashby-de-la-Zouch canal in Leicestershire.
A set of Bradshaw's 1833 hand-coloured maps of canals and railways is estimated at £800 to £1,200, while one of the earliest canal-related publications, the 1819 Tour of the Grand Junction by Hassell, with 24 hand-coloured aquatint plates, is expected to fetch £600 to £800.
Meanwhile, an oil painting of a barge by Walter Caffyn, dated 1878, is expected to go for £1,800 to £2,200.
A group of 10 engraved plans for the River Calder is estimated at £200 to £400. A coloured lithograph of the 1839-1872 floating chapel - used by bargees and as a school for their children - on the Oxford Canal at Oxford is estimated at £90 to £120.
The book section includes a first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's first book The Inland Voyage (1878), estimated at £300 to £400, while a first edition of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1889) should go for £100 to £150. Second, third and fifth editions of Henry Taunt's Map and Guide to the River Thames, the first guide book illustrated with photographs, are expected to fetch £100 to £150.
Irish canal companies had turbulent times too. According to Mr Ian Whyte of Whyte's auction rooms in Molesworth Street, Dublin, an 1818 printed notice from "disaffected shareholders of the Royal Canal Company" who had sought to sack the board of directors fetched £60 at a Whyte's auction in the past two years.
"They had a very chequered history. They were forever going bust and having shareholders meetings that turned out to be quite unruly at times. We've had a lot of reports and documents to do with the canal companies over the years," Mr Whyte said.
In the Republic, an early 19th century annual report for a canal company tends to be worth £20 to £50. An original engineer's plan for part of a canal could fetch up to £2,000.
Late 19th or early 20th century enamel signs can be worth from £100 to £150, while photographs of barges can be worth as much as £50, "if they're very atmospheric, especially if it's a horse-drawn barge".
jmarms@irish-times.ie
