Fleet lists

Thomas Clayton (Oldbury) Ltd

The name of Thomas Clayton is probably best known in canal carrying circles for the colourful fleet of narrowboats that were some of the last to trade on a regular basis around the Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN). The business also had a major involvement at the southern end of the Grand Union Canal and at one time its boats traded widely over many other parts of the inland waterways network.

In Issue 1 - Spring 2006 Alan Faulkner marked the 40th anniversary of Clayton's ceasing carrying with a 12-page feature, from which this fleet list is taken. It has been amended to include the additional information provided by Chris Jones in the Letters pages of the Summer Issue of Narrowboat.

The fleet list can be sorted by clicking on the column headings. A "00" entry indicates that the exact date is not known

(b) - wide boat or barge

(m) - motor narrowboat

An asterisk after the registration number indicates that details relate to the previous owner. (The early Uxbridge registers have not survived.)

As boats were replaced in the fleet, their names were regularly re-used, sometimes with the same fleet number, but sometimes with a different number.