The end of the Anderton fleet

Mrs Leah Tolley on the butty Keppel, at Preston Brook. The motor boat on the outside is the Mountbatten. These boats were worked by Mrs Tolley and her husband Jack for several years until the demise of canal carrying on the northern Trent and Mersey Canal in 1970/71 when the Anderton Canal Carrying Company boats were laid up at Preston Brook and operations transferred to road vehicles whilst the warehousing side of the business continued. The Tolleys moved the boats to Barnton where they continued to live on them until British Waterways repossessed Keppel and Mountbatten was sold to Ivor Batchelor.

This is an early photo from the Tarboat collection and was taken using a small camera that I had borrowed from a friend. I walked from Preston Brook to Anderton on a gloomy February day and all the photos were badly underexposed due to my inexperience and the limitations of the camera and film. This is the only one I have so far been able to salvage from the mess.