One grand old boat…
one ‘slow adventure’ along the English inland waterways.
I’ve been very fortunate, as pretty much all my adult life I’ve owned a boat. I love boats and the boat life!
In Summer 2011, a few years after the sale of ‘The Onward’, my previous boat, I began searching for something characterful; a project boat that’d keep me busy for the foreseeable future.
I found my ‘boat with soul’ in The Eileen built in 1903. A boat identified as “meriting inclusion in the National Register of Historic Vessels of the United Kingdom”
The Eileen is an English narrow boat; more specifically she’s a conversion of a former Birmingham Canal Navigation (BCN) 'open iron day boat'. She's 62' long and just 7' wide. What I’m planning is certainly not a full restoration; after all a strict restoration of a BCN day boat would involve stripping out the engine, ripping off much of the steel work above the gunnels and purchasing a tug or a horse! No, what I envisage is much more a long-term renovation project. One that acknowledges The Eileen’s long and varied history and will keep her afloat a while longer. Above all I’m hoping to create a ‘living’ boat and a ‘floating studio’. It’s a conversion that will respect tradition but not in a dogmatic, rivet-counting kind of way.
A friend once said: ‘Souls travel at walking pace, and in our modern high-speed world, we run the risk of our bodies getting ahead of themselves...’. He thought slow journeying by narrow boat might be one way to ensure that our bodies and souls reconnect – it seemed an admirable idea to me.
Owning The Eileen has helped nurture in me a particular, contained and focused mindset which encourages a drilling down into specificity rather than 'heading off' towards some distant wide horizon. It's a mindset that could be characterised by curiosity, receptivity and an open-minded paying-attention-to. Over the years the boat has become a 'vessel' able to contain my thinking in the same way that the paintings do, and boat life is providing a sustained impetus for a remarkably vivid internal journey...
It's through owning boats, and travelling at walking pace along the Midland canals, that I've become increasingly aware of a particular affinity I have for the ‘water road’; one that draws me close to the gangers, boatmen, fishmongers and publicans of The Boat Inn in Cromford, Derbyshire who litter the census record of the Allen side of my family over the last two hundred years. People such as my great, great grandfather John Allen (highlighted in these two photos below…) who lived and worked at Cromford Wharf, the terminus of the Cromford Canal.
When I'm on the water I feel comfortable in my own skin, and steering The Eileen - in a tangible way - bridges a temporal gap and brings me closer to long-dead relations, to this part of the Derbyshire Dales and my urgent need to record, retain, mark and make.
I wouldn't claim that every journey undertaken on The Eileen directly feeds into paintings; often it's enough to simply enjoy the Great Outdoors. However, I do feel that she's become an integral part of the texture of my art practice; part of the ensemble, the backdrop and back-story that explains, in some way, why I feel the compulsion to paint.
My paintings are essentially a remnant of a life journey of discovery and I'd like to think it's a journey that I'm taking, when possible, aboard The Eileen.
Latest News
2023, The Eileen’s 120th year, was a significant one in terms of her renovation, with a focus on the exterior.
The main or ‘long’ cabin was cut back and a new front deck space created under canvas. The boat was successfully surveyed (her iron & steel hull is in remarkable condition given her age…) and she was rubbed down to bare metal and repainted, with new signwriting giving her a fresh new look.
In 2024 I’ll start work on a redesigned interior, which will preserve the 50 year old traditional back cabin and create a comfortable studio base for inland journeying.
The first priority will be to build a workshop and bunk room from which I’ll then fit-out the rest of the interior. Oh, and I’ve tentative plans to get the electrics upgraded in Winter ‘24 too, to bring 240V power to the boat for the first time and upgrade her solar capacity. Exciting times ahead!