Ferry Festivities
The 20th anniversary celebrations for the Wivenhoe Ferry Trust set sail from the Quay on Saturday lunchtime with many of the original founders reflecting and looking forward.
As high water reached Wivenhoe around 1:15pm, the first sailing carried Madam Mayor and some of the original ferry folk over for a celebration lunch at The Anchor in Rowhedge.
With the Wivenhoe, Fingringhoe and Rowhedge Ferry now so firmly established, it seems strange to think that the revival of the service back in 1992 was viewed with some uncertainty at the time.
Cllr Brian Sinclair, one of the original crew, commented:
“It started off with an idea from Rod Smart. He turned up at the Sailing Club on the Regatta Day and said: I want to talk with somebody about starting the ferry.
I said: Not today…”
Curiosity concerning the original Rowhedge ferry service, and a perceived possible need for a renewed crossing led Rod Smart to pursue his idea. Twenty years almost to the day since the first ferry crossing, Rod recalls:
“It was a Eureka moment. We had lived in Wivenhoe for around six years. We were just sitting on the riverbank opposite Rowhedge at The Anchor. We saw these concrete steps going down, which transpired to be the old steps for the Rowhedge ferry. We wondered if it was still running - and it wasn’t. We thought wouldn’t it be a wonderful idea if it was still running, and it went from there.”
Read your Butler - still THE Bible for all things Wivenhoe based - and you find that the history of a ferry service in Wivenhoe is connected with industry, rather than leisure. The Fingringhoe Ferry stopped sailing in 1953, leading to a High Court case involving Colchester Borough Council.
The Rowhedge service landed at Ferry Marsh until 1961, carrying shipbuilders back and forth between both towns across the Colne.
After his initial doubts in 1992, Brian Sinclair remembers how the current incarnation of the ferry found the momentum to move forward with the service that we now have in the town today:
“Loads of people got together. We did a trial run with a couple of rowing dinghies from the old original hard at the bottom of Bethany Street. We had a queue which was an hour long; we had the WI over in the Fingringhoe landing with a tea urn. We rowed people over the river, gave them a cup of tea and we knew it was going to work.
Quite a few residents use it because they like a trip up the river and a drink. A lot of tourists come down. The Wivenhoe Ferry featured in Time Out magazine. People came in from London on the train and used the ferry as part of the walk.
People said twenty years ago it would never work. And here we are twenty years later, and it still is.”
After the first few celebratory sailings on Saturday lunchtime, queues started to form down at the Quay. It wasn’t the type of weather to provide the smoothest of crossings, but it shows that there is still the demand to carry passengers back and forth across either side of the Colne.
The continued sailings each summer are down to the volunteer Ferry Trust folk, who somehow manage to get the boat ship worthy at the start of each season, and then find the volunteers to skipper the craft each weekend.
Rod Smart reflects:
“We managed to get people involved. Lucky for us, we had the right people involved, which is why twenty years on it is still running.”
Much has changed in that twenty year period; recent planning applications over on the Rowhedge river suggest that this will continue over the next two decades. The industry may have been replaced by residents, but there is still a need to cross the muddy banks of the Colne.
Anchors up.
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