See full version: Viscountess bury pleasure boat where is it now
Paul Rogers, one time owner of the Boathouse Restaurant at Ely and now living abroad was one of the merry band of volunteers who had operated the Viscountess in the 80s. He was determined to solve the mystery. On a hunch, he decided to widen the search to other boatyards in Lowestoft .
It is not clear when the rails were altered but the difference can cause confusion when trying to authenticate photos.
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In 1910 she was purchased by Mr H. C. Banham, a Cambridge boat-builder, and she would set out on her epic 300 mile voyage through London, down to the Thames Estuary and round the East coast en-route for Banham's Cambridge base.
The Viscountess Bury was one of the star attractions amongst a great variety of boats, old and new, moored at the club for the 3-day event.
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In 1972, after her 62 years work on the Cam as a public trip boat, a floating restaurant and a private charter vessel, Banhams had treated the Viscountess to an extensive refit. It cost �2,000. The hull was repainted white; she was given new canopies and awnings plus a 50 hp. diesel engine originally from a council dustcart. here
In July 1968 the Cam Conservator’s Engineer reported that Messrs. Banham’s launch, Viscountess Bury, was making an average of five late night trips each week through Baitsbite Lock after normal closing time of 9 p.m. This meant that the Lock Keeper had to be available for excessively long hours. An ‘out of hours’ arrangement previously agreed with Banham’s was for occasional use only. The Conservators responded by limiting the facility to just a single late voyage each week with the latest time for opening the lock to be 11 p.m. The Conservators also decided to negotiate an increased fee from Banham’s for the facility and to investigate the possibility of paying the Lock Keeper more for opening the lock after 9 p.m. (*Thanks to Jed Ramsay, the Conservators' River Manager for this snippet from the archives.)
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His arrival and departure caused a minor riot. Crowds besieged his car, seeking autographs. here
The toll house on the Chatteris to Somersham road stands on the site of an ancient river called the West Water where a ferry existed until it dried up about 1765. [links]
Marks and Spencer's on Sidney Street in the 1960s. here
It is needed as the university has embarked on a scheme for an extension of research in scientific and technical fields but existing colleges are already beyond their maximum size. more
If the debris continues to increase in bulk, both town and gown are likely to have a right merry time.
“In 1888 a syndicate was entered into by Viscount Bury and Moritz Immisch to build various electrically powered equipment, including boats, using Immisch’s ‘patent electric motors’. Messrs Sargeant & Co., boatbuilders of Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick, were commissioned by this enterprise to convert an old barge into a floating charging station. William Samuel Sargeant had already been responsible for the design of the first of these electric river launches named ‘Malden’. With a length of 30′ 6″ she was built by Maynards who also had a yard at Chiswick, the Devonshire Boathouse, but the electrical installation was apparently carried out by William Sargeant. The name ‘Malden’ appears to have been chosen for this boat after the address of Immisch’s electrical business, ‘The Malden Works’ at Malden Crescent, Camden NW1. more
Viscountess Bury at Oulton Broad c1910
Back in February 2012 I wrote an article about the Leo Robinson motor cruiser Enchantress in which I quoted from the history given for her on the steamboat association website. It stated that the Thames built, former electric launch had been moved to Oulton Broad in 1910 where she had operated as a passenger pleasure boat called Viscountess Bury, before being converted to a hire cruiser by Leo Robinson and renamed Enchantress. I included an old postcard showing the Viscountess Bury at Oulton Broad, however, new information has come to light which shows that this was not the boat which became known as Enchantress after all.
A sorry end to the story of the Viscountess Bury, but it doesn’t bring us any closer to discovering the origins of Enchantress and whether she did undergo a brief change of name to Viscountess Bury or not. I wondered whether Henry Miller may have given her the name to cash in on the popularity of the original Viscountess of Bury as a trip boat at Oulton Broad? Tim Sargeant had this to say on the subject: “I did have some correspondence about this with Edward Hawthorne in the 1990s prior to publication of his book, “Electric Boats on the Thames 1889 – 1914”. However we were not able to find out why or when the ‘Enchantress’ was re-named. My own thoughts were that there must have been some sort of ‘fiddle’ going on to confuse the identity of one or other of these boats. You may well note if looking at period photographs that the genuine ‘Viscountess Bury’ is always shown with her figurehead. ‘Enchantress’ never carried a figurehead. Also, there was some later confusion about the identity of ‘Enchantress’ and another electric boat called ‘Ray Mead’. ‘Enchantress’ seems to have been built circa 1895 either by William Sargeant or by Kerbey Bowen who had built ‘Ray Mead’ earlier.“ here
There were two vessels which carried the name Viscountess of Bury and both spent some time at Oulton Broad during the early years of the 20th century. In the first article, The Enchantress and the mystery of Viscountess Bury, published in February 2012, I wrote about the ex Thames passenger launch which was eventually converted into the motor cruiser Enchantress by Leo Robinson in the early 1920s having previously been used for a while to run pleasure trips from Oulton Broad. I was contacted around 18 months later by Tim Sargeant who added a new twist to that story as one of the Oulton Broad postcards I had posted was actually of a different passenger launch bearing the same name. This was the original Viscountess Bury, designed at built at William Sargeant’s boatyard at Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick in 1888. This Viscountess had been bought by H.C. Banham c1910 with the intention of running her as a passenger cruiser from his boatyard in Ely, Cambridgeshire. Banham also had a yard at Horning and it seems that his Viscountess spent a season or two at Oulton Broad before being moved round the coast and entering the Great Ouse at Kings Lynn and thence on to Ely where she was used for many years. more
I’m going to try and tie up a few loose ends over the next week or so with some updates to previous articles on the Broadland Memories blog. The first concerns the passenger launch Viscountess Bury which featured in two previous posts.
A couple of months ago I received yet another piece of the story in the form of a photograph which was sent to me by Peter Larter. It shows Sargeant’s Viscountess of Bury at an unknown location c1910. It was found amongst a batch of negatives featuring Norwich and was originally thought to have been one of the passenger launches which operated from Foundry Bridge during that era. The name Viscountess Bury is clearly visible on the name plate at the rear of the boat and an internet search lead Peter to my posts about her. I don’t think it looks right to be Norwich, but does this photograph actually show her at Oulton Broad? There is a tantalizing glimpse of the edge of a sign on the boatshed to the left. Sadly, not enough to be able to attribute a name to the yard, but can anyone provide a positive identification from this small clue? One would assume that the chap with the beard and his hand on the rail is either the owner of skipper of the Viscountess at this time.
Please do get in touch if you can provide any more information and my thanks to Peter for allowing me to share the photograph on here. here