Although best known as a prominent figure in the revival and preservation of horseboating on the waterways in recent years, Sue Day was also an influential member of the committee of IWA Manchester Branch for many years.  She was a frequent sight at IWA events for thirty years, with her last outing at IWA’s Festival of Water at Worcester in 2021.  Sue was considered by many as the greatest horseboating campaigner of her time, and her efforts played a significant role in promoting canal heritage and horse-drawn boats.

Sue Day became involved with horse-drawn boating in the early 1980s and even then was known for her passions for horses and the inland waterways. She raised funds through canal events, working from her home at Mossley, near Manchester, and travelled to various canal events across the waterways, not infrequently on foot with one of her horses towing a boat.

[The photo shows Sue Day in later years, demonstrating horseboating techniques at a festival.]

By 2015, Sue was spending a large part of her time looking after he elderly mother in Suffolk, usually three weeks away and one week at home each month, and the Horse Boating Society’s affairs suffered as a result.  Her visit to the Worcester Festival of Water was with her mother in a wheelchair, with Sue energetically pushing her around the site.  Sue’s mother died in 2022 aged nearly 100, and Sue had devoted the latter part of her life to her mother’s care, becoming ever more detached from her horse and waterway passions and friends.  Shortly after her mother’s death, sue was diagnosed with cancer and died on 22^nd October 2023, at the tragically young age of 69.  Her funeral, at Beccles Crematorium was, of course, with a horse drawn hearse.

[Photos: (left) Sue Day visits IWA’s then Head Office at Rickmansworth – by Neil Edwards, and (below) Sue’s horse-drawn funeral carriage – by Kate Fletcher]