The ground floor of the museum houses large colourful exhibits from the canal age, and offers access to the canalside where
our tug boat Bantam 4 is usually moored. Learn about the start of the canal age in the UK, learn about how a large population of
canal boat people lived and worked afloat, admire the traditional painting style of "roses and castles".
The ground floor is an atmospheric gallery of large exhibits on the two themes of the museum, the canals and the ice trade
The 1960 Wickham tractor is a rare survivor of a what was a common sight in the 1960s in London. Miniature tractors like
this took over from horses to tow unpowered barges around the capital.
The narrowboat Coronis is the colourful exhibit that dominates the ground floor. Go inside!
The cabin of Coronis is a must-visit experience. Imagine living in a tiny cabin with the whole family! Thousands lived with no other home for over a century. In
the cabin hear an audio track of a dramatised family conversation. In cabins like this people were born, cooked, ate, slept and died. There
are other audio exhibits around the museum too, that enable you to listen to memories collected by the museum in oral history recordings.
The two ice wells under the building are the only commercial ice wells that you can see in the UK. There are others, covered over. The second ice
well can be inspected using a virtual tour, or viewed live on your phone or computer.
Click for sound clip. If
you are unable to listen to sounds there is a transcript
of the sound clip.
The tug Bantam 4 is normally moored outside. Bantam 4 is a "pusher" tug designed to push rather than pull an unpowered barge,
which is more fuel-efficient. This type of tug was mostly used for canal maintenance work. It was built in London, at Brentford.
The canal basin is nowadays home to a mixture of residential and leisure moorings for private boats.
The canal age was an age of hard labour and poverty for the workers, but their lives were brightened by the tradition of "roses and castles"
decoration. The boats and all sort of utensils were decorated in this colourful style and you can see some good examples of this craft in
the museum, alsong with a display of so-called Measham pottery and the decorated lace-plates that were often found in the cabins.
The ice trade exhibition tells the story of Carlo Gatti, who came to London from Switzerland to make his fortune, and succeeded! He was one of the
biggest importers of Norwegian ice in the 19th Century, and it was Gatti who built the museum building in around 1863.
Explore the first floor
