Nearly one hundred years ago, nine year old Leeds schoolboy George Southern, during his school holidays, used to help his dad, waterman Joseph Southern, on his canal barge Sultan, fetching huge loads of coal from West Yorkshire collieries to the coal yards of Leeds. These trips made a lasting impression on young George who in later life was able to recall many of the sights, sounds and smells associated with working a barge on the Aire and Calder Navigation. He tells us about the apprehension he felt when experiencing the dark, enclosed canal locks and the wobbling horse-ferry as it carried man and horse across the River Aire. Helping us to understand his schoolboy life at that time  he takes us on trips to Roundhay Park, Leeds and swimming in the River Wharfe at Otley. He remembers with particular fondness his visits to the variety theatre in Leeds with his mum. 

Days on a Horse Drawn Working Barge was published in ten parts in The Wakefield Kinsman, the quarterly journal of Wakefield and District Family History Society, who have kindly given permission for us to share George’s story with a new audience. The colourised photographs, not part of the previously published text, have been added from our photograph library to illustrate the points referenced by George in his narrative.