The Birmingham Canal

Following the financial success of the Bridgewater Canal which took coal to Manchester, its engineer was invited to survey a route for an artificial waterway be-tween the Black Country mines and Birmingham. So James Brindley, self-taught genius, was to be seen in the Spring of 1767, riding over heath and Park, making his 'occi-lar survey' of possible routes : his proposed line was approved, and the enabling Act was passed a year later.

The immediate attraction of the canal was the cheap-ening of coal and iron in Birmingham, because transport was the chief item in their cost :a single horse pulling thirty tons on water would replace up to 300 packhorses. In addition, an extension of the canal to link up with Brindley's Staffs & Worcs. Canal at Autherley would give Birmingham access by water to the ports via the 'Silver Cross' : this was Brindley's grand design for canals which would link the estuaries of Thames, Severn, Mersey, and Humber.

The first boat-load of Wednesbury coal reached a temporary terminus near the modern 'Longboat' Inn in November 1769, amid great and justified rejoicing. Two termini were open three years later, one off Newhall Street for timber and merchan-dise, the other off Broad Street for coal. The company offices, looking like an overgrown tollhouse, were on Suffolk Street opposite Paradise Street. The canal crossed the Birmingham ridge in a cutting, then turned westward. To maintain the 453-foot level as far as Smethwick, Brindley was obliged to take a most circuit-ous route because of the Hockley Brook tributaries which crossed the direct line. He made loops towards the heads of the Newhall, Ladywood, Winson Green, and Shireland Brooks, notably a ¾-mile hairpin along the sides of the Ladywood Brook valley. Water for the canal was taken from each of these streams.

At Merry Hill, Smethwick, Brindley first planned a tunnel but construction dif-ficulties obliged him to take the canal over the high ground. A cutting reduced the summit level from 520 feet to 491 feet, and this was reached by six narrow locks on each side.

In 1772 the extension to Autherley or Aldersley was opened, giving Birmingham water access to Liverpool and Bristol. By 1790 the 'Cross' was complete and there were waterways to London and the Humber. The routes to Severn and Thames were in direct, and three other canals later provided shorter ones. The Worcester Canal was begun in 1791. Its northern reaches were soon in use, but the whole was not usable until 24 years later. It joined the Birmingham Canal at the pool just short of the coal wharves (Gas Street Basin), but there was no water junction.

Cargoes had to be transhipped across 'Worcester Bar', a narrow strip of land between the two basins, and tolls were levied. A level lock permitting loaded boats to pass from one canal to the other was not made until 1815. The bar survives, though the lock was removed some years ago.

28.1. Map 9

The Old Wharves were infilled in 1926. Lord Calthorpe, owner of Edgbaston, was loath to have the canal crossing his rural estate, and permitted it only on condition that it went in a cutting without access, and that no wharves, warehouses, or manufactories be built thereby. There are still none today. A tunnel 105 yards long was made under Church Road.

It seems strange now that canals should have been popular for passenger travel, but they were able to provide fast and smooth service. Drawn by teams of horses the half-length 'flyboats' moved at 12 mph and had right of way. Any cargo-boat that failed to lower its tow-rope so that the flyboat might pass had it cut by a scimitar set upright in the latter's bows. After Telford's improvements the steam packet 'Euphrates' was to ply profitably between Birmingham and the Black Country until the railways stole its custom.

The success of the 'cut' soon proved its inadequacy. As more and more com-panies launched boats on it, and more and more branches were made, particularly in the coal-mining zone, traffic grew to and beyond capacity. Water supply was always insufficient : Birmingham's small streams could cope with evaporation and seepage on the level, but the constant drain from the short summit reach down six locks on either side was more than Smethwick Great Reservoir (in the hollow west of Victoria Park) could make good. Titford Pools, supplied by streams from the Rowley Hills, were made about 1775, and water flowed thence in a feeder to the summit.

In '78 a Boulton & Watt engine was installed at the foot of Spon Lane lock flight to pump water back up to the summit, and a year later another began work on the Birmingham side. By '87, so great was the water shortage and the con-gestion of boats at the locks that John Smeaton the mill and lighthouse designer was called in to find a solution. His engineers made a new cut close beside Brind-ley's summit and 12 feet below, then a second 6 feet lower, the intermediate and original channels being infilled. Only three locks were now needed to reach the lowered summit, and those on the east side were duplicated on a short arm, thus doubling the rate at which boats could climb or descend. Men and horses were pro-vided to make their passage quicker.

By 1793 a hundred boats a day were going through the flights. Brindley's winding shallow cut was steadily worsening. The single towpath had never been proper-ly made or shored, and it had become a slippery slope down which horses often slid into the water. Loops made the journey unnecessarily long, and boats often grounded : to avoid unloading it became the custom to carry half-loads or less. Two particularly sharp bends at Sandy Turn near Sheepcote Street were rounded in 1806, but there were no major improvements until Telford's work in the 1820's, which will be described later..