A lengthsman is responsible for the maintenance of a length of canal. Albert Wood worked for the canal company, in 1935 this was the London North Eastern Railway Co. (LNER) who came to own the canal by default in 1923. The picture shows the narrow workboat standing on the bottom of the drained canal. The plank laid on the canal bed is to provide a footpath out of the mud to the work site which was probably a bridge behind the camera. Hareta would have been delivering Albert’s lunch; she would have walked up from Bollington where they lived.