Tomorrow its Tooley's for us

We, or rather Epiphany, goes into dry dock tomorrow

Tooley's Boatyard in Banbury on the South Oxford Canal has been in continual use since 1790. It was established to build and repair wooden horse-drawn narrowboats. Epiphany will be an exhibit in a "scheduled ancient monument" - no comments on that please!

This is our second time in Tooley's; we had Epiphany's bottom blacked in the dock in January 2009 - here are a couple of photos from then

In dockin dry dock

The smithy at the boatyard is also a scheduled ancient monument and is still in regular use. Here is the blacksmith at work - clickety click. The restored workshops, dating from the 1930s, house a  carpenters store, a belt driven machine workshop and a paint store. The steamer for bending the wooden planks for the old narrowboats is still there too - but not in operation! Visitors can take a tour around all this by arrangement.

We have just watched a Video Active video on the South Oxford Canal which includes an interview with one of the previous occupants of the boatyard in the late 1980s. He explains in detail about the restoration of these boats. I am not sure if the new one they have just released includes this though.

Tomorrow I hope to take some photos, so will have some more to put up shortly.

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