Exploring the History and Legacy of the Berry Canal

Few waves on a canal, apart from the chop following the passage of a boat. Decommissioned in 1955, almost no longer navigated since, the Berry Canal can therefore be considered the kingdom of stagnant waters… where there are still some.

However, in its reaches as on its banks, vast sections of history can still be seen as long as we know how to look. The magnificent exhibition presented at the Cher departmental archives

tells us all this, effortlessly, as if during a stroll along a towpath.

Because today, on sunny days and until the end of autumn, we jostle along the canal, on foot or by bike. Often ignoring that we have sailed there for a long time, and worked hard, very hard.

Thirty-two years of construction, 320 km, 96 locks, 209 bridges…

The construction (from 1808 to 1840) of this 320 km long waterway (punctuated by 96 locks, 209 bridges including seven canal bridges) is already a saga in itself, which the exhibition documents very clearly.

The Berry Canal, from decommissioning to renewal

Competing projects from rival engineers, financial “arrangements”, appalling working conditions (Spanish prisoners, in particular, were exhausted by the task), variations in the route (ultimately with three branches) inspired by the network of British canals, which boosted at the same time the Industrial Revolution, recurring problems with water supply (still today, more than ever)… Everything is explained using a large selection of period plans and drawings, all splendid.

A “toy canal” Of course, the canal is small, mainly to reduce construction costs. “A toy canal”, marvels Georges Simenon who navigated it, in 1928, on a modest but valiant little canoe, the Ginette

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New “brown signs” on the southern part of the A71 in Cher

But the industrial and economic challenges were, for the time, colossal. In Berry and Bourbonnais, factories operate day and night along the canal: coal is extracted in Commentry, iron around Montluçon, which must then be transported to the North. In the Cher, the industrial basins of Bourges, Vierzon, Saint-Amand-Montrond, La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois are experiencing their golden age. And everywhere there is a need for building materials, wood, bricks, cement.

Until 1920, a thousand barges per year The Berry Canal provided this until 1945. Its sustained economic activity reached its peak between 1873 and 1920, with an annual traffic of some 1,000 barges (narrow and short,flutes orBerry

27.50 m by 2.60 m) and more than 570,000 tonnes transported each year. [infographie]

The Berry canal finally has its map!

The exhibition also tells the story of the daily life of the boatmen and their families, the haulage people (with donkeys and mules, rarely horses since the boats are without engines), the lock keepers, and many others according to the seasons, floods, frozen reaches. It also presents the landscapes still inscribed in our countryside, the welcome shade of summer, and the lines of flight of poplars, walnuts, elms… Stroll along these alleys, lazy, like Maigret in the Carter of Providence

(1931), where he investigated along the canal lateral to the Marne. Our canal, the one of yesteryear and what it has become, is still there, so well evoked that we can hear the murmur of the water at the locks, and the leaves of the poplar trees rustling in the wind.

Emmanuel Letreulle The Berry Canal, history of heritage through the archives , until February 11, 2024 at the Cher departmental archives. Free admission. And conferences, November 24 (6:30 p.m.): Canals and engineers of the 18th and 19th centuries: from the European ambitions of Napoleon I to the works of the Berry Canal; then on December 7 (6:30 p.m.):

the Canal de Berry today and to come .(**) In Sailors for laughs, sailors all the same: Simenon on a boat the 2013 pocket book. Georges Simenon will then discuss the Berry canal in the Widow Couderc(1942), located between Saint-Amand and Montluçon, then in the evening of his life in several passages of his famous Dictations. To extend these explorations, see Paul Mercier,