Foxton Locks offers an excellent learning environment that extends beyond the classroom and helps schools deliver learning opportunities to inspire in a creative and authentic way.
Learning

The English curriculum includes a vast programme of study that can be covered by the canal museum. From reading non fiction narratives to poetry and new vocabulary, we have resources to help across all key stages and just reading for pleasure.


Did you know that there is a Canal laureate, that is a poet appointed by The Poetry Society and Canal & River Trust to write new poems inspired by the canal network. The Canal Laureate project is part of Arts on the Waterways, a wider partnership between the Canal & River Trust and Arts Council England, which aims to attract more visitors to the waterways while surprising and delighting existing communities through exciting art projects.
Canals – a poem for National Poetry Day
by Roy McFarlane
People used to believe there were canals on Mars.
Aliens drawing water from icecaps to preserve
a world drying out.
At least they tried to save their world.
Here in Birmingham, there are loops
found in the canal networks that take you back
in time, the shells of yesterday’s industry,
the ghost of steel on concrete floors,
the cast iron bridges as you enter
into wastelands.
Plato spoke of The City of the Golden Gates
where the Emperor’s Palace and gardens
were found on the top of the hill
and a never-ending stream flowed
into a circular canal which fed four canals
and many waterways across the city of Atlantis.
And in this place of wealth and high society
was a place called ‘The Strangers Home’
where refugees stayed and were treated
as guests of the city. I desire every city
to be filled with canals and a ‘Strangers Home.'
City of thousand trades, were navvies,
some of whom were once strangers
built canals by hand, armed with wheelbarrows,
they picked and shovelled the puddled clay,
walking and stomping along the way.
I pray that aliens from another abode
will peer down upon this place,
imagine loops and lines of waterways
in and around a metropolis are more
than commercial gain and profit.
That a canal lined with a 50-mile orchard
of apple and pear trees threading
through the heart of a city is another Garden of Eden,
where no fruits are forbidden and all are welcomed.


Foxton Locks and the incline plane can offer you a unique setting to inspire creative writing and poetry. We can arrange group visits that include site tours and creative workshops in the canal museum that can explore the links between our industrial history and expressive writing.
A good starting point for reading text about the topic is TLC Rolt's book Narrowboat that started a resurgence of recreation on the old canal network. He recorded his travels on his narrowboat and inspired many others to begin their own travelogue diaries. He describes his visit to Foxton Locks in 1944 as part of his travels on the Grand Union Canal.
'As we journeyed on, the hills became more gentle of contour and covered with woodland, to fall away altogether when we sighted the whitewashed cottage which I knew marked to top of Foxton Locks. The descent of Foxton is greater than the ascent at Watford, there being no less than five pairs of staircase locks having a combined fall of seventy-five feet. So abrupt is the change of level that when we first sighted the summit lock, the long beams with the white painted ends stood out boldly against the open sky until, on closer approach, a wide expanse of the Leicestershire plain came into view below. The paddles of these locks were extremely heavy, and we were assisted on our way down by the lock keeper, who had a windlass with an extra long crank, made especially for the purpose. He was a most kindly and helpful old man, having only on leg. But with the aid of a single crutch, he made his way about the locks with most remarkable agility and speed, balancing himself dextrously on this solitary foot when he wound up the paddles.’

To read more fascinating stories, poems and creative writing contact Foxton Canal Museum: learning@foxtoncanalmuseum.org
