Our Mission
The Kilsby Boat Project will breathe new life into a ramshackle, 1913 narrowboat, turning her into a unique and inspirational floating theatre and community resource on the Oxford Canal.
Volunteers will be involved in every stage of the hands-on restoration. As the project unfolds, they will learn about the history of our waterways and life and livelihoods on the Oxford Canal.
We hope this adventure will enrich and enthral our local community by including artists, musicians, schoolchildren and many others. The experience itself is just as important as the finished boat, uniting both water and land communities in unique and creative ways.
When ready, Kilsby will take pride of place on the Oxford Canal in Jericho: a beautifully preserved icon of the past, rebuilt by today’s community and enjoyed by generations of Kilsby fans to come.
The Kilsby Boat Project will forge mutual respect and friendships, inform people about local history and, we hope, bring them closer together.
A floating stage on the Oxford Canal, Kilsby will also leave a year-round legacy of The Oxford Canal Festival - a biennial celebration which entertains, educates and inspires people to enjoy their local waterways.
Kilsby in the dry dock 2020, Artist’s impression by Rosie Taylor @rosietaylor.art
Kilsby was dilapidated and in sore need of repair. She was leaking, rotting and uninhabitable - but certainly not beyond hope.. Kilsby has a history (she's more than a century old) and with your help, a future. We want to save Kilsby for the community.
(For more detail on Kilsby’s origins CLICK HERE to visit our chronology page)
Prior to the nationalisation of the waterways in 1948, Fellows, Morton and Clayton (FMC) was the largest and best known of the canal carriers. In 1912, FMC commissioned Braithwaite and Kirk of West Bromwich to build 24 iron composite butties (unpowered narrowboats with iron sides and elm bottoms to be pulled by a horse and later behind a boat with an engine) at £190 each - Kilsby was one of these commissions. Here she is, in 1923, nestled next to her partner boat, Japan.
In the 1930s Kilsby was still operating in the Birmingham area, now with partner boat, Pilot. For a period of time (perhaps 1940s) she was re-named ‘Helsby’ and used as a mud boat (MB No 4) on the Bridgewater Dept of the Manchester Ship Canal. Mud boats carry away the spoil dug out by dredgers.
In the 1970s she belonged to Clayton Brothers, who seem likely to have installed the residential wooden cabin. Kilsby came to Oxford in the early 1980s, and was part of a celebrated struggle to create permanent residential moorings along the city centre final ‘arm’ of the canal. Kilsby’s previous owner, Helen McGregor, bought her in 1993 and enjoyed almost three decades on her beloved Kilsby. Helen is an actor, writer and Kilsby’s biggest fan; she will be actively involved in her re-invention as a theatre.
In 1992 Helen wrote Feme Sole, a ‘narrowboat shaped’ poem that was published in 1995, achieving her lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet. Click on the link below to read the poem and bask in Helen’s account of her first days of life afloat.
Helen, who kindly donated Kilsby to Jericho Living Heritage Trust.
Next steps…
Kilsby has been safely delivered to Banbury and the cabin stripped bare, with the hard work of the Kilsby volunteer team and Tooley’s historic boatyard (read all about it via the blog tab, or check out the photos in the gallery). Her beautiful hull is ready and waiting for a new lease of life.
Kilsby in the dry dock at Tooley’s boatyard, April 2021
An artist’s impression of the Kilsby’s future, with the traditional design and livery restored.
By Rosie Taylor @taylor_rosiealice