Inspiration
Three Idle Women originally met through the Oxford Canal Heritage Project in 2013, which was a fantastic Heritage Lottery Fund community project. It centred around at the centre of which was a audio heritage trail along the Oxford Canal from the centre of the city out to Dukes Cut, the second junction where the canal joins the river Thames. This project was initiated by the trio’s good friend Kate Saffin, who is passionate about making canal and waterways history visible and connecting it to wider audiences.
As part of the project there were also schools workshops, art competitions and a big musical concert. The organisers of the concert were looking for performers to celebrate the canal in song and, alongside lots of other wonderful performers, Jane, Steph and Charlie were all asked separately to become involved and do a short set together at the concert.
That initial concert was meant to be a one-off event. After performing just three songs together, they didn’t meet again for a while. However, another local canal event soon arose, and they were asked to return. After several more one-off appearances, still with only those original three songs in their repertoire, they decided the experience was too delightful to leave behind. They resolved to learn more songs and establish themselves as a permanent trio.
And so it properly began, three women who were strongly connected through canals and waterways and fascinated, as modern canal people, by the links to our boating history, past canal people and waterway places.
The name Three Idle Women is a homage to the trainee women who worked on the canals during World War Two, helping to keep essential cargos moving around the country. These women were given a badge saying ‘National Service IW’, which stood for Inland Waterways, but after one of the trainee women, Susan Woolfitt, wrote a book about her experiences, her daughter came up with ‘Idle Women’ as the title and this ironic name stuck and so that is name that these women are usually known as now.
First ever performance together
It’s coincidental that, just like the singing Idle Women, these women worked in groups of three, working a motor boat and a butty boat between them.
They came from all walks of life, some were horrified by what was expected of them and left even before their first trip. Others really took to the lifestyle and stayed on boats and within the boating community long after their war work had ended. Many other fabulous people have inspired the trio too.
In her early boating days, still new and inexperienced, Jane was lucky enough to meet Jack and Rose Skinner, retired working boaters who generously shared their skills and knowledge with her. They taught her many practical techniques, but perhaps even more importantly, they told her wonderful stories of their life on the boats. Their stories sparked in Jane a deep fascination with the people connected by the canal network, past and present, and ignited a lifelong desire to learn more about this living heritage.
Three of the original Idle Women
The song Roses and Castles tells the story of Jack, Rose, and Barbara Castle; three inspirational figures connected by their love for the inland waterways.
Barbara Castle, then Minister for Transport, played a vital role at a time when canals were being defunded and abandoned. A passionate narrowboat enthusiast herself, she spent weekends cruising stretches of the Rochdale Canal that remained open.
She believed canals should be “developed into centres of beauty or fun,” and her 1968 Transport Act secured public funding for the restoration and development of the waterways, helping to transform them into the leisure spaces we know today.
Another song was inspired by Barry, a beloved character of the Oxford Canal. Though not a boater, Barry spent most of his time at Wolvercote Lock, where he helped boaters, shared stories, and became a cherished part of the canal community in that place.
Jack and Rose in the 1990s when Jane met them