Meet the West Midlands man who spent £30K building a canal in his back garden
Stephen Cuddy, 59, purchased a 35ft (10m) long vintage barge off eBay for £5,000 and constructed an accurate reproduction of a Victorian canal lock to house it.
The self-taught architect started by digging out 30-40 tonnes of soil on a small plot of land in the grounds of a hotel he owns in Coleshill, Warkwickshire.
The self-taught architect started by digging out 30-40 tonnes of soil on a small plot of land in the grounds of a hotel he owns in Coleshill, Warkwickshire.
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00:00I wanted to buy a narrowboat first and foremost so when I bought the narrowboat I thought I've
00:10got no way to keep it so I'm just gonna put it here right on some plinths and a certain
00:17person wasn't very happy about it so I thought mmm I'm gonna have to hide it now you try hiding a
00:23narrowboat so my next idea was to build a wall so I didn't want to build just the wall I thought
00:28I might as well build like a little patio area or something and I thought oh what it needs is a lock
00:36and I thought not just a lock it needs company it needs the whole ensemble of cottage tunnel
00:43and obviously as you can see one thing's led to another led to another initially it was like
00:47are you gonna manage to do it is it gonna look right is it gonna be realistic and I thought
00:55all it's made out of is rubber sleepers and then the lock arms themselves are made of
01:01scaffolding boards that I've just simply glued together and to replicate a lock arm
01:08to create this drip effect this waterfall effect behind that is just simply a copper tube
01:15with holes in it with a simple pump it's clearly a very amateurish
01:22unprofessional but it fools everyone