[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Martin L wrote... > > Not what you'd call 'definite evidence', and it depends on > > what you mean by 'relatively modern', but I think I've heard > > that the term 'Arm end' was in use by working boatmen to mean > > Gayton Junction, implying that they referred to the branch to > > Northampton as an arm. > Indeed - to be strictly accurate it's Blisworth Arm End - quite why when > it's Gayton Junction is a mystery! > With the exception of the Leicester Section all the other localish GU bits > (Northampton, Old Stratford, Buckingham, Aylesbury & Wendover) seem to be > called Arms now. My recollection is that Newport Pagnell was a Branch. > Newport Pagnell was built as an independent canal by a separate company. It was officially called the Newport Pagnell Canal, I think. Whether that makes any difference to what it was generally called by the boaters who used it, I don't know.
Alternatively, maybe it went out of use in the days when they were all still referred to as branches? Incidentally, if you look carefully at the coping stones (from a boat) when you pass where it used to join the GU main line, you can still make out that one of them appears to be engraved with NPCC or something like that. I guess this stone must at one time have marked the boundary or something like that. Martin L
