Opinions differ as to whether it was in fact Robert Browning or Lord Byron who coined the name “Little Venice” for this area of London, where the Grand Union and Regent’s Canals meet. It was possibly sarcastic, for John Nash’s fine Regency terraces are hardly San Marco, nor the Horse Bridge a second Rialto, but at least you don’t get as stung buying a beer at the Warwick Castle as you might do at Harry’s Bar.
Briefly, these were an important freight route through the capital, before the railways came and speeded things up, signal failures allowing, but the 30,000 visitors to the cavalcade wanted to show support for a slower form of transport, honour its heritage and appreciate the benefits that the regeneration of these once-faded water highways has brought to their local community.
I had come for the Canalway Cavalcade, an annual celebration of London’s waterways that is now more than 40 years old. One route from here heads south to Paddington and a long way west, via Wormwood Scrubs and Wembley, to join the canal to Birmingham, while another cuts north and east, past Lord’s cricket ground, the zoo and Camden, before reaching the Thames at Limehouse.
Some had dressed up. You saw men wearing tweed waistcoats, flat caps and neckerchiefs in the fashion of old bargees, often walking dogs decked the same way. On the roof of their boat, Caroline Moore and her daughter Emily, who have been coming to this festival for 16 years, were wearing Victorian shawls. Caroline had a black bonnet to show her respect for the late Prince Albert, who died only 163 years ago.
Bank holiday weekend and Browning’s Pool was awash with colour. Dozens of barges and canal boats, festooned with flags and bunting, honked horns and people cheered as a procession of vessels passed under the Horse Bridge and into the small lagoon named after the 19th-century poet.
Many boat-owners proudly invited visitors aboard to show off the cramped wooden interiors they had carefully polished and painted in the old floral style, the foldaway beds and tables, the small iron stove on which they make their tea and the brass bedknobs screwed to the wall to remind them of home comforts.
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Others have married old with new, such as solar panels on the roof of a 1930s barge or the boat that had been converted into a floating podcast studio. David Leppard’s boat has been in the water for only five years and is a hybrid, powered by an electric motor attached to a diesel engine. The fittings are thoroughly modern with Corian sides, a washer-dryer and a gas-fired combustion toilet that turns waste into ash. “It’s been designed in my mind over 30 years,” he said. The only thing ancient was his foghorn, salvaged from a 1908 racing yacht.
The biggest cheer, and a loud honking salvo, came for the smallest vessel as Major Mick rowed his 6ft “Tintanic” into the pool. Mick Stanley, a former officer in the Scots Guards, built his tiddly dinghy during lockdown from two sheets of corrugated iron and assorted bits of scrap.
“It cost me the princely sum of £40,” he said. “The stern post came off the beach in West Wittering and I made a seat from my old dog’s bed.” Two buoys attached to a length of shelving gave ballast, while the most important object on board was a rusty tin can that he sometimes had to use to bale out water. “It doesn’t leak but it does breathe,” he said.
Stanley has rowed the Tintanic almost 500 miles, up to the top of Scotland, down the Seine and across the Solent, in aid of charity, raising £90,000 or more for Alzheimer’s research, a Ukrainian orphanage and a local hospice. “For me the real reward is talking to people and having a laugh,” he said.
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Little Venice and Maida Vale, named after another Italian town, where Napoleon was defeated in 1806, have improved dramatically since the cavalcade began in 1983. When Robert Bruce moved to the area in 1979 it had been quite depressed for years. “The council would offer a housing improvement grant to paint your house, put a new roof on it, anything to make it look a bit nicer,” he said. “There was even a proposal to fill in much of the pool and make it a car park.”
John Zealley, chairman of the Paddington Waterways and Maida Vale Society, said the development of the canal side through what had been goods sidings for Paddington has brought a big benefit. “When I moved here, it was a toxic post-industrial wasteland but it has become a great living environment for our community and a source of employment,” he said.
He worries, though, that the increased use of the towpath has brought with it more litter and the need for maintenance and it is not clear who has the direct responsibility for their upkeep. “No one’s quite taking ownership for how you cope with success,” he said. “Everyone’s saying it’s someone else’s responsibility.”
Mike Wills, chairman of the Inland Waterways Association, said the canals have been transformed from their mid-20th-century nadir. “We’ve restored over 500 miles of canals that were not open,” he said. Maintaining them is expensive, though, and Richard Parry, chief executive of the Canal and River Trust, warned that a 40 per cent cut in funding is due after 2027. “Canals offer great economic and social value,” he said. “They help flood alleviation, utilities run underneath them and they are a green corridor, bringing nature into cities.”
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Paul Rodgers, the festival director, observed that for many locals who live in flats, the canal is their back garden and it had been important to improve this area as an amenity. He praised Westminster’s plan to develop Rembrandt Gardens on the east side of the pool to make it into a more attractive and safe public space.
Over the bank holiday it was bustling, though some boats couldn’t join after the Maida Hill tunnel was closed last week because of a fire at a substation. There were games and puppet shows for children, jazz bands, an illuminated procession at night and what Bruce described as “dressage for canal boats”, in which skippers were judged on maneouving a 72ft vessel. It had the feel of a village fête, but just a few hundred yards from the vast concrete Westway flyover.
“It is such a colourful event that really brings the community together,” said Libby Bradshaw, who has been involved as a volunteer since the first cavalcade. “We are all here with the same aim: to keep our waterways open.”
