George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces: The Luxury Narrowboat

WORDS George Clark and Jane Field-Lewis PHOTOS Richard Maxted

Buying a run-down property can be a daunting prospect for the uninitiated, or those of us without the necessary sources of knowledge or support. But brothers Matt and Rob Carter went one step further and bought a burnt-out and rusty boat. Moreover, though there was enthusiasm, there were no building or DIY experts in their network of family and friends, so the challenge was for them to complete.

THE BOAT

The boat they found was 18m (58ft) long by 2m (6ft 6 in) wide and was in a pretty frightening condition. Badly damaged in a fire, which had been extinguished, it had sunk to the bottom of the canal before being craned out, its ballast removed and then transported by road to a boat repair yard. The back section was entirely burnt out and it was a mess, but despite this the boat was relatively young (built in 2007), the hull was good and it had a good head height. It had potential even though there was a lot of work to do in rebuilding it.

Like many of us contemplating a big spend, the boys were apprehensive and they spent two weeks deliberating about the purchase. They weighed up the pros and cons and considered from every conceivable angle whether it was a good idea. Their final decision to go for it was made one evening in the pub, although they cheerfully admit that it was based more on gut instinct than as a result of reasoned thought. When they took possession of the rusty and flooded wreck their only salvation was that the purchase price included some of the essential restoration work. The engine would be serviced, the exterior, steelwork and some of the portholes repaired, a work floor installed and the boat painted. That was substantial progress but there was considerably more that had to be achieved in order to make the boat into anything vaguely habitable or even desirable.

THE DESIGN

One of the key challenges when designing the interior of a narrowboat is the obvious one: by definition the boat is extremely narrow in relation to its length. These boats were designed for a life on the canals and first built during the Industrial Revolution, but they are blessed with good light from windows along both sides, and they open up at each end and often in the middle, too. The boys wanted to create a modern, open-plan living space and avoid dividing it into smaller rooms linked by a corridor. This would maximise the light and space available inside the boat. Only the bathroom would be a separate room. The boat was to be a communal, homely space where family members and friends could gather, so the main living area had to feel spacious but still include enough seating to make everyone feel comfortable and relaxed.

Rob and Matt have an architect friend who kindly did some scale drawings for them; this helped them to work their way through various ideas – on napkins and scraps of paper – for the interior layout.

THE WORK

Neither Matt nor Rob possessed any carpentry skills or DIY knowledge whatsoever and they had to learn fast. They asked lots of questions, looked information up online and their friends came to help. The main job for the boys was fixing the interior plywood to the wooden battening; and as Matt says, “We didn’t really know what we were doing.” They borrowed tools and bravely had a go, learning that different thicknesses of plywood were required for different tasks – 18mm for strength in the lower panels, 9mm in the upper panels, and a thinner 6mm ply in the ceiling to bend it around the curve of the roof.

The ballast (“a great big pile of bricks”) that was used to keep the boat at the right height in the water had to be reinstated and this task was physically very hard. Painting the exterior was less demanding, but first they had to decide on a colour, which was more of a collegiate decision. Rob wanted teal whereas Matt favoured orange; in the end they decided to go with both and to avoid the traditional decorative paintwork seen on many canal boats. Theirs was going to be a modern, sleek version rather than a conventional folk-inspired boat.

The windows were all replaced with new ones – squarer windows at the front and portholes at the back – all of which were bought from the manufacturer of the original windows. However, they couldn’t do everything themselves and there were some jobs that required professional expertise. They commissioned electricians to install the electrics and the rooftop solar panels that charge up the batteries in the back of the boat. The bathroom is accessed via a small set of wooden steps leading down from the back of the boat, while a cleverly conceived curved wall increases the sense of space and avoids any awkward corners. The other bathroom wall functions as the rear wall of the bed area. At the front end of the boat a simple kitchen and breakfast bar were installed, with a shallow metal trough sink on the opposite wall. And, as a finishing touch, a wood-burning stove was placed on a slate hearth to heat the boat and make it cosy in the winter.

This is an excerpt from George Clarke’s More Amazing Spaces by George Clarke and Jane Field-Lewis (published by Quadrille Publishing, distributed by Pan Macmillan South Africa). Catch season 2 of George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces on BBC Lifestyle (DStv channel 174). For more information about the show, visit channel4.com. The book is available at all leading bookstores.