Horse equipment

A display of medicines and equipment needed by canal boat owners back in the days when "horse power" was literally true. At the London Canal Museum.

The London & Birmingham Canal

Looking at a modern canal map you might wonder why Birmingham and Coventry are not linked directly by a canal. You can get from city to city but only by a round-about way using the Birmingham & Fazeley and Coventry Canals. However in 1828 there indeed was a proposal which could have more directly linked the two cities.

The London & Birmingham Canal was an attempt to shorten the distance between the two cities. It was a proposed link from the Oxford Canal at Brinklow, passing through Coventry and then linking up to the Stratford Canal. According to a map of the proposed route (1), the canal would have been 18 miles long and as well as being a shorter distance for freight to travel between the two cities would also have reduced the number of locks that needed to be travelled through from 51 to 15!

This was an important consideration as the existing canal network was not designed with trade between Birmingham and Staffordshire to London in mind (2). The number of locks that needed to be navigated through, especially at the already overloaded Farmer's Bridge Locks between Birmingham city centre and Aston (3), was considered an impediment in trade and progress and could be greatly reduced by the new canal (4). The new canal could also be the same width as the Grand Junction Canal to allow for the transport of larger goods.

The map unfortunately does not say exactly where the new canal would have joined the Stratford however it would have linked up to the canal at it's summit (5) so somewhere before Lapworth. The new canal would have passed the Grand Junction (now Union) near Knowle (but not had a link to the canal though that would presumably have been added at a later stage) which perhaps indicates the link to the Stratford Canal would have been at somewhere such as Dickens Heath. (If you know exactly where please let me know!)

The proposed canal project was rejected by investors as it was found to have little substance behind it (6). What killed the project off were objections from a land owner whose land the canal would have traveled though (7). A number of other proposals for a canal along this route for example one by Thomas Telford were considered but all came to nothing, probably because the age of canal building was ending. By 1828 the canals were coming under competition from the railways which were the "sexy" new technology which people were desperate to invest in (and often lose their investment), it may have been that if the canal had been proposed a couple of decades earlier the land owners' objections could have been overcome.

One interesting byproduct of the project was that although it came to nothing it did benefit the Stratford Canal. At the time they were being charged high coal tolls by the Warwick Canal for through traffic but the project was sufficiently threatening to the Warwick Canal company to push them to reduce the coal tolls (8).

Its a shame the canal was not built as the canal would have been a very useful link-up between canals in that area of the midlands.

Stratford Canal near Kings Norton

1) Stratford Birthplace Trust Record Office (SBTRO) DR 18/16/3
2) Cubitt W., Description of a plan for a central union canal which will lessen the distance and expense of canal navigation between London and Birmingham, etc., 1832, p3
3) Hadfield C. and Norris J., Waterways to Stratford (Newton Abbott:David & Charles, 1968) p99
4) Telford T. Life of Telford v1 Issue 1838 p268
5) Hadfield & Norris p99
6) Ward J.R., The finance of canal building in Eighteenth-century England (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1974), p86
7) Telford p268
8) Hadfield & Norris p84

The case of the Birmingham Ship Canal(s)

Birmingham famously is supposed to have more canals than Venice (albeit over a wider area) but lacks easy access to the sea by larger vessels compared to cities like Manchester and Bristol. In the 1880s there were a number of schemes to enlarge some of the canals linking Birmingham to the major rivers of the country to create a ship canal that could allow vessels up to 200-300 tons (depending on the scheme).

River steamer on the Severn
at Worcester

The scheme which probably came closest to getting the go-ahead was a link to the river Severn above Worcester by enlarging the Worcester & Birmingham Canal(1). The scheme envisaged going through Droitwich so presumably the Droitwich Canal would also have been enlarged. The Birmingham City Council formed a Ship Canal Enquiry Committee to look into the scheme which would have allowed vessels up to 200 tons right into the centre of the city. The cost of the scheme was estimated at £2 million (when of course this was real money).

However in 1888 the Council declined going ahead with the scheme and disbanded the committee, citing that it was outside of their municipal concerns(2). There were also worries that the railways would undercut the canal making it economically unviable.

This wasn't the only scheme however, a number of the city's great and good also proposed a ship canal scheme linking Birmingham to the river Mersey(3). This canal, which would have allowed ships up to 300 tons would have linked Birmingham to the Weaver Navigation Canal and then through to the Mersey, Liverpool and the sea. This canal would have been 60ft wide and 11ft deep and would have passed through South Staffordshire, the Potteries and Cheshire(4). However this scheme (which would have cost a mere £1.6 million) came to naught as did a scheme to link Birmingham to the Thames(5).

By the late 1890s canals were beginning to be seen as old hat as the railway network continued to grow. In many ways it is a shame none of the ship canal schemes came to anything. Ships up to 300 tons would be much larger than anything that usually chugs through the canals at Birmingham's heart. The Edwardian steamer TSS Earnslaw perhaps can give us an idea of the sort of boat we might have expected making it up to Birmingham in the early 1900s (although it would be slightly oversize at 330t) but imagine something like that chugging through Brindley Place today?

The canal schemes came to nothing though may have inspired this song...

Photo (c) trakesht at Wikipedia

(1) Charles Anthony Vince MA, History of the Corporation of Birmingham Vol 3 1885-1899 (Cornish:Birmingham, 1902), p. 365
(2) Vince, p. 368
(3) Birmingham & Liverpool Ship Canal (Pamphlet, 1888), p. 5
(4) Birmingham Daily Gazette 6th July 1888
(5) Birmingham & Liverpool Ship Canal, p. 17

Berwood Bridge

The Birmingham & Fazeley Canal bridge Berwood Bridge, one of the Listed Buildings in Erdington, is one of the last remaining traces of the Berwood sub-manor of Erdington.

Berwood Hall, which once stood where the modern day Farnborough Road is now, dates from the 13th century. The land originally, it is recorded, was given by Hugh de Arderne₁ to the Abbey of St Mary of the Meadows in Leicester for use of a monastic grange. A moated hall is recorded in the 13th century but by the 17th century it had fallen in disrepair. A chapel on the manor (built by the canons in return for the gifts of land to sing masses for the souls of Hugh's descendants) fell into disuse by the early 15th century. The manor remained the possession of the abbey until the dissolution of the monastries and the manor was sold to Thomas Arden in 1540.

It remained owned by the Ardens until a later descendant (Dorothy) married into the Bagot family of Staffordshire₂. The Reverend Walter Bagot was lord of the manor in 1783, his son was also later lord of the manor at nearby Pype Hayes Hall. The Bagot Arms pub still bears their name.

Much of the land was sold in the 1880s by the Bagots to the Birmingham Tame & Rae Drainage Board (a sewage farm is listed as being here in the late 1800s before it was moved to its current location in Minworth) but by then the manor probably no longer existed in any real sense.

December 1945 view of Berwood Bridge (via Google Earth), the bridge can be seen just left of the centre of the image. 

A farmhouse built on the site of the former manor house served as the officers' mess at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome during the First World War₃ though by the Second World War the farmhouse and much of the rest of the Berwood estate had been swallowed up by the airfield. Following the war the Castle Vale estate was built on the site of the old airfield.

A few names survive here and then on new buildings and roads but it is likely the only surviving remnant of the old manor is Berwood Bridge which was built at the end of the 18th century or early 19th to allow Berwood Lane to cross the then-new Birmingham & Fazeley Canal.

1) L. F. Salzman (editor). "Parishes: Curdworth." A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 4: Hemlingford Hundred (1947): 60-67. British History Online. Web. 26 March 2012. <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42656&strquery=berwood>
2) William Fowler. "A history of Erdington: an address to the members of the Erdington Institute... delivered April 27th, 1885 (London:British Library)"
3) William Dargue. "A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames . . . from A to Y" Berwood, Berwood Common <http://billdargue.jimdo.com/placenames-gazetteer-a-to-y/places-b/berwood/>

On dry land

Visiting the Aston Manor Road Transport Museum in Witton this morning i found they had an exhibit from another form of transport that definitely did not run along the roads! A canal barge, though it looks in need of restoration. Full set of photos here.