John Baylis BEM

John Baylis BEM

From Neil Edwards. John Baylis, who has died aged 82 on 7th July, was possibly the most influential character in the East Midlands waterways over a period spanning near half a century. He was an IWA trustee for thirty years, a deputy national chairman, and one of the most hardworking committee chairmen in IWA’s history during his eleven year stint as chairman of IWA’s Navigation, Technical and Amenity Committee. The hand of John Baylis was behind the early days of virtually every waterway restoration scheme in the East Midlands. He was one of Graham Palmer’s trusted friends from the early days of WRG. He served as a director on WRG’s board for forty years, and was WRG deputy chairman for most of that period. John was born in Mansfield in 1940 and educated at Brunts Grammar School.

From John himself (2011). Mike Briggs and I joined the IWA in 1969, and that winter with our wives attended the Annual Dinner of the then Sheffield Branch. From memory the speaker could well have been Robert Aickman. John Booth, the Chairman, spied our new faces and asked if we would join his struggling committee. This we did, Mike becoming Working Party Organiser while I took over Sales. Mike really got the working party off the ground with away trips to the Peak Forest, Ashton and Caldon canals and to the river Avon and Yorkshire Derwent. In addition he managed to get large groups for the “Big Digs” on the Ashton and Droitwich canals. Following IWA re-organisation in 1974, Mike became Chairman of the new East Midlands Region and a member of Council. Also on Council at that time was Graham Palmer, the founder of Navvies. Interest in canal restoration was growing and Navvies became the Waterway Recovery Group, looking at all canal restorations and providing user-operable plant. Following the completion of the Ashton and Peak Forest canals the Manchester volunteers changed to a mobile operation as WRG North West and Mike talked to Graham about forming WRG East Midlands. In those days the Erewash, Grantham and Cromford canals had restoration societies, but Mike saw the need to get a winding hole on the Chesterfield Canal above Worksop; the most obvious way being the re-building of

Morse Lock and winding in the Lady Lea Arm. As a member of IWA and the Retford and Worksop Boat Club I formed the Morse Lock Action Group and started negotiations with British Waterways. Mike Oxley donated a Benford belt-drive dumper and we received support from the local landowner. And from that time WRG East Midlands was formed as a somewhat loose organisation of interested workers from other groups. However, BW was not looking at restoring Morse Lock and was not prepared to talk. I took the dumper to Ironville to work with Mick Golds and the Erewash Canal Preservation and Development Association on the Cromford Canal locks, which were threatened by the proposed BW work on Codnor Park Reservoir, under the 1975 Reservoir Act. I worked at Boots in Nottingham at that time, and one of my colleagues, the late Dr. John Marshall, received an occasional legacy which had to be spent on charitable aims. John purchased an old JCB 3C for work on the Cromford and then hopefully on the Grantham Canal.

Soon after, John also bought us a Ruston Bucyrus 3RB tracked excavator which was based for convenience at Langley Mill and worked on the building of Jubilee Dry Dock. IWA planned the 1977 Campaign Rally at Worksop to celebrate the bi-centenary of the Chesterfield Canal. I called a meeting in Worksop in 1976, the outcome of which was the formation of the Chesterfield Canal Society. BW built the new piled winding hole below Morse Lock. The work at Ironville petered out due to the lack of active support from Derbyshire County Council. The JCB suffered

from engine trouble and spent some time having the engine rebuilt by Mike Harrison and any work was at Langley Mill, where I helped the Langley Mill Boat Company on building the Jubilee Dry Dock. The 3RB was moved to Trowell for a few months to work for John Marshall’s colleague Clive Gerrard and the Nottingham Canal Society on culverting a collapsed embankment section of the canal by the M1 motorway.

I continued to go with Mark Tiddy and the Sheffield IWA working parties, some of which were on the Montgomery Canal. After a poorly organised weekend, where Mick Golds and the ECP&DA were short of brick-laying materials and the correct preparation, Graham Palmer asked me to look after the Frankton Locks restoration until he could find a suitable local person. I organised preparation work by WRG North West and Sheffield IWA and re-building by the ECP&DA on some locks, and with Pat Osborne and the Trent and Mersey Canal Society on patching and other re-building works. What originally started as a short term project lasted for seven years until the completion of Frankton Locks in 1987.

There had never been many volunteers directly in WRG East Midlands. It was largely co-ordination and some visiting work by Mick Golds’ and Mark Tiddy’s groups. We had a weekend at Deep Cut Dig on the Basingstoke. I worked at the Stratford Blitzes, and after Frankton we went to work on Aston Locks at Queen’s Head on the Montgomery, and Mick Golds organised works on the Slea Navigation. The Ruston 3RB continued to find work at Langley Mill and for a few months went to the Fellows, Morton and Clayton Arm in Nottingham to do some dredging for the Grantham Canal Restoration Society. This was the closest the 3RB got to the Grantham Canal, despite John Marshall’s hopes, and the JCB 3C was retired to the scrap heap.

After the work at Ironville in 1976 the Benford dumper was left in Jack Brown’s transport yard for nearly three years when Mick Golds decided we should have it at

the Erewash Canal Bicentenary Rally in 1979. We managed to move the dumper on a trailer to the rally at Ilkeston but found that the engine was seized up. However a boater who was early to the rally offered to try and get it going. After removing the cylinder head he managed to move the piston by the judicious use of a sledge hammer and a block of wood, and following polishing of the bore with emery paper the engine ran again. It was moved back to Langley Mill and was used regularly for 26 years until Mick decided to do up the somewhat tired engine and rebuild the dumper in 2006.

After the initial re-opening of Langley Bridge Lock in 1973 and the Dry Dock in 1977, Mick Golds was looking at consolidating the area around the Great Northern Basin. The ECP&DA purchased from Vic Hallam the derelict building which had reputedly been a mortuary and/or a pig sty. The walls were rebuilt, the roof replaced with vintage tiles and electricity installed. This became the joint ECP&DA/WRG EM Workshop. I still worked at Boots, and during times of change in its engineering departments acquired some machine tools such as a large electric hacksaw, a pillar drill and a hydraulic bending press. These, along with other tools and welding equipment, became the mainstay of the workshop tools.

In these early years Waterway Recovery Group had to become WRG Ltd., a subsidiary part of IWA, to satisfy the accountants and the Charity Commission. I ran the WRG EM accounts along with the late Fred Webster from Nottingham Branch. Much of the early WRG work was for Frankton or Aston, and included making a cement grouting pump which is currently on the Grantham Canal, and the oak buffers for the head of the locks below the top gates. We also had a Transit van for a short time and I purchased two air compressors, both of which are still in use on the Derby Canal and at Langley Mill. I also bought several compressed air drills and equipment for Frankton, most of which is still in occasional use.

With the demise of the Sheffield (later South Yorks and Dukeries) Branch working parties, and a growing personal aversion to sleeping on hall floors over the weekend, I started looking at engineering work which we could do cheaper than buying professionally. The ECP&DA had already made a good start by the use of ex National Coal Board welders to re-build the swing bridge and other work on moving north along the Cromford Canal. With Ken George, I was involved in designing and making security gear for the ECP&DA Lock Cottage at Sandiacre, and we rebuilt the old cast-iron range in the cottage kitchen. We also built the steel work used in the shuttering and piling on the extension of the Cromford Canal at Langley Mill. Then later when Ernie Boddy retired from BW and came to do the welding, he re-sheathed the five foot dredging bucket for the Ruston Bucyrus 3RB excavator with a 10mm thick steel scroll.

Some early WRG work was making mooring rings and fitting them, but I soon found that it was cheaper and more profitable to buy them ready made and galvanised and only charge for fitting. WRG EM has fixed nearly a hundred mooring rings on the Embankment in front of County Hall for Nottingham City Council;

sold some to British Waterways and canal societies; and also fitted rings in Boston on the Witham Navigable Drains. Whilst at Boston we also offered the Witham Fourth District Internal Drainage Board a better fender solution for the guillotine gate at Cowbridge Lock. However they preferred to do the actual work themselves, but to our design. A regular item of production is grappling hooks, which we have made for both BW and WRG nationally amongst others.

Since I took over as Quartermaster for IWA Festivals, looking after the Tardis, the forty foot trailer in which the equipment is stored, we have made steel stillages for timber posts; modified the back ramp and fitted handrails; and made under-floor panniers for railway sleepers and scaffolding tubes.

About four years ago, when BW said they were going to re-gate Langley Bridge Lock, I designed and, with the help of ECP&DA members, made the new 3:1 reduction Grand Union type ground paddles and spring paddle locks. Since then BW have used my design for Custom Engineering to make spring loaded locks for the Erewash Canal. These are currently being fitted on the Erewash, and Leicester section of the Grand Union.

Over the last year the ECP&DA has fitted three phase electricity in the workshop so that we can now use a larger, and more reliable, welder; and built a new, separate wood working workshop. Last year Alan Woodhouse made the stand for the Tom Rolt Centenary Cruise, and this year has made a stand for the ECP&DA dinghy at the Burton-on-Trent Waterways Festival. Recently we have started to make some piling tieback fittings for the IWA Inglesham Lock restoration.

Without the help and support of Mick Golds and the ECP&DA working parties the work we have done would not have been possible. I helped Mick write the Method Statements and Risk Assessments for BW, so that the ECP&DA is now a “self-supervising” group, which works every Friday on maintenance at Langley Mill or manufacture of items for other canal societies.

From John Reeve, Recollections.

Our first meeting was at Frankton Locks on the morning following the opening of the restored locks. As spectators, we were invited to board one of the boats for a descent of the locks. Later I saw a lone figure in a red WRG shirt dismantling the temporary platform just above top lock. I offered to help. I recognised him as the Skipper of the lead boat down the locks. After introductions I helped dismantle and stack the poles and planks. We chatted about our IWA activities before going our separate ways. Several years later I was Chair of Northumbria Branch and later Region Chairman. As such, I was invited to the Head Office, in London, to attend a series of monthly National Committee meetings. The Secretary invited me to join “Navigation Technical and Amenity” committee as an observer, and John was in the chair, and invited me to join the Committee. After a lunch in a nearby café, I joined John and others at the Council Meeting. There I was welcomed by National Chairman Ken Goodwin. The proceedings were a bit confusing as I had no prior knowledge of the agenda. However I did realise I was confirmed as a Regional member and my membership of NTA approved. Eventually I joined the WRG joiner team for Festivals while John had become the quartermaster based in the Tardis, the “carry-everything” trailer. As well as running the store in the Tardis, there was the fuel run for the generators and diesel plant. Then there were sales of LPG to boaters and those attending in a caravan. Plus the large bottles for the WRG field kitchen. Could I help ease the load next time? So began our close association as Joint Quartermaster. He did the fuelling and delivering gas bottles and heavy supplies. I sold the gas and spent the most we shared time on Tardis duty. We both had hosting duty at the opening ceremony and lunch. It worked well and we became a team. A change in the IWA Constitution came into force. The new rule was, a term was to be 3 years and one person could only serve 2 consecutive terms without a significant break. I had served 23 years and John nearly as many. So we both stood down from the Board. and so our long collaboration ended.