Latest news

 

Portfolio of Evidence presented to Fiona Bruce MP

On June 19th /20th 2010, the IWA Stoke-on-Trent Branch had a sales stand at the Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival. Meanwhile, the Trent & Mersey Canal Society were doing a ‘Lock Wind’ at the Big Lock. The previous day, whilst finalising the petition, we discovered that we were about 100 short of a thousand signatures, so the T&M team were tasked with making good the shortfall, which they did during Saturday. On Sunday morning, these were added to the petition spreadsheet so that the whole Portfolio of Evidence could be presented to Fiona Bruce MP after she had attended the Church Service in the marquee. Alison Smedley MBE (IWA Stoke Branch Secretary) accompanied Fiona to the Branch Stand where she was presented with the Portfolio in one of the branch Friendship Bags.

Waterway Community May Day at Church Lawton

The Stoke on Trent branch of the Inland Waterways Association (IWA) invite you to a WATERWAY COMMUNITY DAY at Church Lawton on Saturday 1 May 2010, from 10.00 to 5.00pm

Find us by Lock 51, Trent & Mersey Canal, Church Lawton: East of where the A50 crosses the canal at bridge 138. Cherry Tree Avenue is parallel to the locks; the public footpath from outside the old school leads to Lock 51.  (Postcode: ST7 3EL) (Grid Reference: SJ 814 562)

Waterway Recovery Group visit Lock 47

A team from Waterway Recovery Group visited the derelict offside Lock 47 between 22-26th April 2010 to investigate the condition of the lock and carry out a range of tasks. A full report will appear here shortly but in the mean time there are a number of photos available on this page.

News update November 2009

It is now just over six months since we launched the campaign at the Middlewich Folk & Boat Show. Since then, we have made considerable progress.

Thanks to a campaign of distributing leaflets to members, boaters and the public attending boat shows and via the web site, we now have over 640 signatures on the campaign data base. The greatest single number was as a result of the efforts of the Trent & Mersey Canal Society Team at the IWA National Festival at Redhill on the River Soar, where 296 people signed the petition asking for the locks to be reopened.

Chairman's Report - April 2009

The following report first appeared in the IWA Stoke-on-Trent Branch magazine "Knobsticks"

In February, I had the opportunity to take Chisbury down part of the Cheshire Locks with a rather special crew. How many of you can say you have had the Manager of British Waterways Wales and Border Counties Unit, Julie Sharman, and her Customer Operations Manager, David Baldacchino, acting as your crew? Add to this committee members Steve Wood, Gillian Watson and Julie Arnold as well as the Chairman of the Trent & Mersey Canal Society, Malcolm Turner, and you will realise what a distinguished occasion it was. The cruise was the outcome of discussions at which Julie and David thought it would be a good idea to have “hands on” personal experience of the flight, after we had drawn a number of matters of concern to their attention.