CANALS

By 1772 Birmingham had indirect links by artificial waterway with Severn, Mersey, and Humber. The Fazeley Canal Company was set up a few years later to make a cut to join the Coventry Canal then being built; this would give at its northern end a shorter route to the Trent and Mersey Canal, and to the Oxford Canal (and thereby to the Thames and London) at its south end. In 1783 the Birmingham and Fazeley Companies amalgamated, and work began on a cut from James Brindley's Canal at the west end of the town (Cambrian Wharf). It descended 151 feet to the Tame by way of 13 locks to Aston Road, following the Newhall Brook valley and 11 locks to Salford on the Aston side of the Aston Brook valley. Each of the single-gated narrow locks has a side-pound to permit the passing of boats going up and down, and excess water falls over semi-circular weirs to the pounds below.

A feeder near Thimble Mill tapped the brook. At Mill Street the Digbeth Branch Canal was cut across the south Duddeston ridge to a terminal basin in the Rea valley (off Fazeley Street), descending 36 feet by the Ashted Flight of 6 locks, with a short tunnel under Ashted Row and Great Brook Street. Digbeth Basin and Easy Hill Wharves (off Suffolk Street) were less than a mile apart, so that thenceforward nowhere in the small town was far from a canal.

The Digbeth Branch and the Fazeley Canal with its fine brick-and-stone aqueduct over the Tame were completed in 1790; many short branches were made into Duddeston and Nechells during the next century, notably the Park Arm leading to Cast Iron Basin (just north of Ashted Row). Ashted Engine was installed to pump water from the foot of the locks back to the top pound. In the 1840s four Gas Wharves were cut to supply coal to the Works off Windsor Street, brought via the new Tame Valley Canal. Later Bloomsbury Wharf was built on an arm that crossed beneath Plume Street, and another arm was added nearby.

In 1844 the Birmingham & Warwick Junction Canal was completed, a joint venture by two linked Companies which would permit through-traffic to avoid the lockage and congestion of the town cuts. It left the Warwick Canal in Bordesley, curved north on the east side of the Rea, and crossed into Nechells north of Aston Church Road en route for the junction at Salford with the Fazeley and Tame Valley Canals. Its embankment closely paralleled the headrace channel to Nechells Park Mill and skirted the millpool. Five locks were built in Bordesley and Saltley; a few inches difference in levels necessitated the provision of a shallow lock (Salford Bridge Lock) off Argyle Street. A canal reservoir was then made in Crane Moor, Saltley, and the Rea being diverted into a straight channel beside it.

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