The picture-perfect life of Harry Arnold

Harry was born in 1937, spending his formative years in Stockton Heath, just a stone’s throw from the Bridgwater Canal. With a grandfather who helped build the Manchester Ship Canal and a great-grandfather who was skipper of a Mersey flat, boating was in his blood.

At school, Harry discovered a love of photography and natural flair for composition, a passion that became an integral part of his life's work in photojournalism and as a waterways historian. After completing his national service, he trained as a draughtsman and started work in the canal holiday business at Norbury Junction, on the Shropshire Union Canal. It was here, as the family waited for a lock cottage to be renovated, that Julie, a toddler at the time, got her first taste of living aboard.

“Initially we lived on an old working boat, Star,” Julie recalls. “The boatyard also operated a horse-drawn narrowboat, the Iona; I remember riding the horse up from the fields, bareback, to get her ready for the trips. A lot of Dad’s colleagues had young children too, so the whole place was alive with kids, running around and playing by the water.”

It was around this time, in the mid-1960s, that Harry became involved in the canal restoration movement, a passion that would drive him for the rest of his life, leaving an indelible mark on our waterways.

Over the next few years, he spent much of his free time helping to rescue, restore, and reclaim our canals and rivers, working closely with groups like the Shropshire Union Canal Society and the Waterway Recovery Group as the campaign to save the Montgomery Canal began with the “Big Dig” at Welshpool, documenting it all with his trusty camera.

In the early 1970s, he was a founder member of our National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, along with close friend, renowned canal artist and fellow campaigner, Tony Lewery. “If you visit the museum, you’ll find a milepost outside the entrance to the main building,” says Julie. “Its plaque bears the names of all the founder members, including Dad and Tony. Sadly, Tony’s the last one on that list that’s still with us.”

Tony, Harry and lifelong school friend Eddie Frangleton also established the Shropshire Union Fly-Boat Restoration Society to renovate Saturn and sister ship, Symbol, the last two of their kind in the country. Unfortunately, Symbol was beyond repair, but today, Saturn can be seen travelling our network, fully restored and operational, helping to teach the next generation about the rich history of narrowboats, horse-boating, and our precious canal system.

Never one to rest on his laurels, in 1972, Harry used his considerable knowledge and photography skills to set up Waterways World, now the longest-running and best-selling inland waterways magazine in the country.

“Dad started the magazine from home,” she says. “He’d been selling a few of his photos and writing a column for a motorboating and yachting publication when the idea hit him. It was a wonderful time, with so many happy memories. He’d take us on boat tests and boating holidays and write about it all in the magazine.”

Throughout the 1980s, Harry continued to champion our canals and rivers, lending his weight to numerous causes, such as the restoration of Anderton Boat Lift. And he never lost his love of photography.

“He also did a lot of work for British Waterways over the years,” says Julie, “capturing amazing images, like the dismantling of Anderton Boat Lift. And when Harecastle Tunnel was being rebuilt, Dad went in and took preparatory shots, complete with his full set-up of cameras and flash, to record all the details for the engineers.”

In 2010, Harry was awarded an MBE for his outstanding contribution to the waterways, and a few years later, our chief executive, Richard Parry, presented him with the Living Waterways Lifetime Achievement Award, acknowledging Harry's unerring dedication, adding that there could be few worthier recipients.

For more than half a century, Harry chronicled our changing waterways, capturing stirring images for posterity, while campaigning tirelessly to restore and preserve our canal heritage. Harry sadly passed in 2018, but his legacy lives on through his timeless photos, his immeasurable contribution to our network, and, of course, his friends and family.

Julie keeps up the family tradition, building a boat with her husband and living aboard for a time, as well as volunteering for a number of waterways charities.  She told also told us about her brother who was born in 1966:

“While she was pregnant, our mother Beryl fell into the canal. Now, he’s a certified scuba diver and an expert photographer in his own right, working as a scenes of crime officer plus filming the underwater environment. It’s funny how things turn out!”

Harry Arnold lived a remarkable life; he was a photographer, author, campaigner, and entrepreneur. But to Julie, he’ll always be ‘Dad’, a loving father and family man, who dedicated his life to promoting, preserving, and chronicling his beloved canals.