IWA’s Leicestershire Branch, in partnership with the Canal & River Trust, The Old Union Canal Society, Harborough District Council & Foxton Museum, is holding a waterways festival at Foxton on June 7/8.
The event will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 1950 IWA Festival of Boats and Arts held in Market Harborough.
There will be a cavalcade of boats to Market Harborough on the Saturday. The event will feature historic and private boats, floating traders, land-based stalls, food, ice cream, music and much more.
IWA was formed in 1946, but it was not until the 1950 Festival of Boats and Arts, held in Market Harborough, that the campaign to save the inland waterways really became established as a national crusade. The festival is generally thought to be the tipping point of the waterways revival, triggering the mass participation on a volunteering spirit which is still unique in the world.
The 1950 festival was held at Union Wharf, Market Harborough, a location chosen as being central to the waterways system and accessible to all shapes and sizes of inland waterways craft. The rally would bring together a variety of different craft owned by members of the association, encouraging them to travel along the many diverse routes to Market Harborough. The initial aims of the rally were to inspire new members to join and focus attention on the dire state of the waterways, aims that are still relevant 75 years later.
This year’s event will be at Foxton, with land trading stalls, food, music and canal societies all in the event field next to the main line and Bridge 60.
