CANALS

Meanwhile James Brindley had built the first local canal, 1768-72, to bring Wednes-bury coal to the town. Despite its cost the 'cut' was profitable to proprietors and user alike. One narrow boat pulled by one horse could move the same load as 200 packhorses. Users provided their own boats, paying toll as on a turnpike, and traffic boomed. To avoid delay and expense Brindley kept his canal at the 453-foot level by making great loops round valleys - most notably that which followed both sides of Ladywood Brook - leading to lock flights at Smethwick. The brooks supplied water, and a small reservoir was made near Winson Green.

In 1801 was completed the Birmingham Heath (Soho) Branch Canal, which went under Lodge Road to a wharf on the edge of Hockley Brook valley, off Park Road. This was cut chiefly for the use of Matthew Boulton's Soho Works. Other short branches were made from what had become the Birmingham Canal Navigation, BCN for short. The Brindley Cut soon proved to be inadequate for its growing traffic. There was no tow-path, the unshored banks crumbled : sharp turns and low water caused frequent grounding of even half-loaded boats. There were endless delays, especially at Smethwick summit.

John Smeaton lowered Brindley's summit, removing three locks and doubling the other three. The worst dogleg at Crown (Sheepcote) Street was straightened. But these measures and the installation of Watt-engined pumping stations were not enough. Thomas Telford's drastic solution was a new canal 40 feet wide and straight, which cut across Brindley's loops leaving them as feeders to the many factories on their banks, and went right through the Smethwick summit in a 70-foot gorge, so requiring no locks. Banks were shored and there were twin towpaths.

Dudley Road was carried over the Telford Cut on the fine skew bricked Lee Bridge (1826). Rotton Park or Ladywood Reservoir, which is half in Birmingham and half in Edgbaston, was created by damming Ladywood Brook below the confluence in Roach Pool, so that three streams fed it. In 1835-7 the earthen dam was bricked and rai-sed, and the larger lake (80+ acres) was topped up by a feeder from Titford Pools, Oldbury which came by tunnel and aqueduct to the sluice off Gillott Road. Two wheel-operated valves on the dam walk supply water to the Ladywood Loop below, and there is a spillway at the dam's south end. The keeper's house, like a two-storey tollhouse, still stands. A gauging station on a boat-shaped island was built near Winson Green Junction.

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