Liz Lane <Spinney12@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Please excuse ignorance - what is a Bantock Butty please?
>
> Thanks
>
> Liz

Usually a misnomer!  Bantock's were a boat-builder who built a lot of
boats for use on the BCN.  There are quite a few of them surviving, some
of which were built in the 1890s.  These older ones were built as
horse-drawn boats, because that's the only sort of boat there was then.
But they often get called "butties", on the mistaken assumption that if
a boat's not a motor boat it must be a butty, which ain't the case.
Actually the word "butty" describes how a boat is being used, towed by
another boat.  In later years the towing boat would have been a motor,
but the practice of "buttying" goes back to horse-boating days, when one
horse would sometimes pull two boats (certainly on the Grand Junction  -
I'm not sure about elsewhere).

In the days of motor-boating, some boats were built with the intention
of using them as butties  -  the GUCCCo butties for example.  But other
boats would work sometimes as butties and sometimes as horse-boats.  For
example the FMC steamers would often work with a butty from London to
Braunston, where the broad locks used to finish.  From there on the
erstwhile butty would become a horse-boat.

--
Mike Stevens, narrowboat Felis Catus II
Web site www.mike-stevens.co.uk
No man is an island.  So is Man.