The River Severn and linking canals built in the 18th and 19th centuries provided vital trade routes between the Midlands and the wider world.

Shallow draught barges carried goods between the up-river towns and Bristol, and narrow canal boats worked between Gloucester and the industrial area around Birmingham.

The Quay at Tewkesbury, as at other riverside towns, had associated warehouses and open yards where goods carried on the river were handled and stored.

For many years, the main traffic on the river was coal, which can be seen in the foreground being transferred from the barge to horse-drawn wagons for local delivery. Other goods were handled by general carriers.

General carriers, based in the main towns, used the river to take local products to the great port of Bristol and return with imported luxuries.

The leading carrier in the 19th century was Danks Venn & Co, based at Stourport and having links with other carriers around the country.

Before the creation of a proper towpath, vessels were towed by gangs of men known as bowhauliers, using a rope attached to the top of a vessel's mast.

Sometimes the men had to bend almost to the ground while pulling on the line, and it is not surprising that the bowhauliers had a reputation for being frequent visitors to the riverside pubs

Detail from A View of the Iron Bridge, Coalbrookdale, by Thomas Burney

As traffic on the river increased, a proper towpath was constructed for use by horses, and mile markers were set up at regular intervals.

The costs of constructing and maintaining the path were recovered by charging users a toll which depended on the distance traversed.

The navigation of the natural river was often impeded by shallows in the summer, and so in the 1840s locks and weirs were built at Diglis (near Worcester) and at three sites further up river.

This improvement was motivated by competition from the new railways that were beginning to take traffic away from the established waterways. In later years, additional locks were built near Tewkesbury and Gloucester.

From the 1850s, vessel movements on the river were aided by steam-powered tugs which could tow several barges and narrow canal boats.

These tugs reduced the time from Gloucester to Stourport to less than half that taken with horse towing, which helped to keep the waterway route to the Midlands viable in competition with the railways.

A new development in the 1930s was the use of motor barges, such as the Severn Trader, that could operate between the Bristol Channel ports and Stourport.

These motor barges were introduced by the Severn & Canal Carrying Co (successors to Danks Venn & Co) to improve the waterways route in competition with the railways. Other companies introduced tanker barges to supply Gloucester and the Midlands with petroleum products.

The waterways route to the Midlands continued in use into the 1960s when it featured in a television documentary showing how barges loaded from big ships at Avonmouth were towed up the River Severn to Worcester.

However, commercial traffic on the river rapidly declined during the 1960s due to the spread of motorways, the growing use of containers and the transport of petroleum products by rail and pipelines.