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Whixhall and Fenn Moss
© Crown Copyright: RCAHMW
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The Whixall Moss Gang |
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Working on Whixall Moss
The Whixall Moss Gang was employed to raise the level of the canal banks in order to maintain sufficient "freeboard" (distance between the water surface and top of the bank). In practise, this meant taking clay from a nearby claybed, now Whixall Marina, to the canal bank, to increase their height.
A leisure trip on the canal
© Courtesy of English Nature |
The work was never-ending, from the year the canal was opened in 1804 until the 1960s, the gang worked up and down the stretch of canal. Frank recalls that they worked a 48 hour week from Monday until Saturday lunchtime. Clay was transported by horse drawn barge throughout the freezing winters and boiling summers. Pay was 22 – 23 shillings a week, and work was secure and continuous though hard labour.
In the 1960s, the engineering difficulties that created the jobs for the Whixall Moss Gang were solved. The end was nigh for the Whixall Moss Gang, all were made redundant. The country’s longest serving and only surviving navvies had disappeared.
Crown Copyright: RCAHMW, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales
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