Is traditional wooden boat building an endangered craft?
Senior conservation boatbuilder Stephen Beresford from Windermere Jetty Museum in the Lake District will be one of the invited speakers discussing whether wooden boat building skills are at risk at the Traditional Wooden Boat Building Skills Symposium taking place on 8 October 2022 in Bristol.
The UK has a long history of preserving a wide range of heritage craft skills – from weaving to woodturning, lace making to pottery and slate riving. A rich maritime tradition has created a vibrant community of craftspeople building many types of boats. However, many of these specialist skills are in the hands of people who are ageing and there has been no provision made to pass them on to the next generation.
Stephen Beresford comments, ‘At Windermere Jetty Museum we are committed to reflecting the rich heritage of wooden boat building inspired by the lake and the landscape around us. As a ‘living’ museum we float and operate historic boats as well as exhibiting on land and in galleries. Our boat collection exemplifies the skills employed by boat builders and engineers from as early as 1780, right through to 1983. This diversifies the range of skills required to care for the boats today and highlights the skills that may be endangered. Our conservation programme is set up to conserve this range of skills as well as the boats, and to pass these skills on via workshops, training, and apprenticeships.’
Heritage Crafts and the Wooden Boat Builders Trade Association are bringing a group of experts and stakeholders together in October to ask if these skills are at risk and to consider the case for traditional wooden boat building being added to the Red List of Endangered Crafts.
Speakers at the symposium to be held at the Bristol Create Centre include traditional wooden boat builder Gail McGarva, Eivind Falk Director of Håndverksinstituttet the Norwegian Crafts Institute, boat builder and Chair of the Wooden Boat Builders Trade Association Colin Henwood, Will Reed the Principal of the Boat Building Academy Lyme Regis and Stephen Beresford Senior Conservator and boat builder at Windermere Jetty Museum.
If you are interested in learning more about the craft and process of heritage boat conservation there are daily Conservation Conversations at 11:30am at Windermere Jetty Museum. These are drop-in and included in the price of admission which also offers 12 months access to the museum. Now is a particularly interesting time to come along because the team are actively working on replacing the wooden deck on Steam Barge Raven to make it weather-tight and successfully stabilised for many years to come.
