Derrick and Mary Awcock, who both died in October 2023, aged 88 and 87 respectively, were key figures in IWA Shrewsbury District & North Wales Branch for over 25 years.

The 1980s and 1990s were busy days for the Branch and the Montgomery Canal restoration, when the millions of Levelling-Up Fund were but a dream ( – actually the cost of restoring the whole canal then was less than today’s Levelling-Up grant!).

In the earliest days of the branch, IWA had looked at restoration of the ‘Four Miles’ – so called – from Frankton Junction.  Consultants were engaged and came up with improbable – and certainly not used – ideas of piling through the peat.  The start was the restoration of Frankton Locks by WRG between 1979 and 1987.

[The photo, left, shows the branch sales stand in 1986 with, from left, Derrick Awcock, Barbara Reid, John Ward, Mary Awcock and John Dickin].

In Wales bridges were opened to extend the canal from Welshpool, but not before the first Dinghy Dawdle which Mary and Derrick initiated.   Restoration was driven forward by councillors and officials from the County Councils and other statutory bodies who met volunteers at regular meetings of the Montgomery Waterway Restoration Trust, chaired by Charles Quant and later John Cotterill.  As well as being branch chairman, Mary was a Trustee of MWRT and regularly attended these meetings.

When the IWA celebrated its Fiftieth Anniversary in 1996 the National Trailboat Festival at Welshpool received one of the branch’s two pieces of a large jigsaw that went on to Birmingham by boat: the finished jigsaw was over twenty feet high, assembled with pieces brought by boat from IWA branches all over the country.

Beyond the Montgomery Canal, the branch had an active sales stand which was taken to events round the area and was a regular feature at Shrewsbury Flower Show.  Mary and Derrick were valued members of the branch team at all these events.  As if all this was not enough, both were key members of the Council of the Shropshire Union Canal Society which at that time restored locks at Carreghofa (opened by Baroness White in 1986) and then Burgedin.

In later years Derrick and Mary moved to Teignmouth in Devon fore retirement and gradually withdrew from waterway activities.  Mary and Derrick contributed so much to the branch and to the canals of the area, especially the Montgomery.

[The photo, left, shows an early Dinghy Dawdle event at Bank Lock, Montgomery Canal, June 1988  –  by John Draddy]