Canals

The cost of coal in Georgian Birmingham was high because of the way it had to be brought from the Black Country mines : 73,000 tons of it came to the town every year, all of it in horse-panniers. One packhorse could carry two hundredweights at best. One narrow boat on a canal carried 30 tons, and one pulling horse could replace 300 carrying panniers. This simple arithmetic explains the local enthusiasm for canals despite their initial cost. An artificial waterway would halve the cost of coal, and its extension to the Staffs. & Worcs. Canal would give access to the Severn and Bristol for the town's manufactures. James Brindley was engaged to plan and construct a canal: work went ahead fast, and in November 1769 the first boat-load of coal came from Spon Lane Oldbury to a wharf near Summer Row. Within three years two terminal basins had been made, at Newhall Ring (near Telephone House) and at Brick-kiln Piece (ATV Centre site), and the cut had been extended to a junc-tion with the S. & W. Canal. By '77 the Trent & Mersey had been completed, giving access to Liverpool and Humber, and by '90 the Fazeley Canal linked Birmingham to the Coventry Canal, Oxford, and London. That year Digbeth Branch of the Birmingham Canal was opened from the Fazeley at Aston Road to a basin in the Rea valley. No part of Georgian Birmingham was thereafter more than half a mile from a canal wharf.

Three other canals completed the radial system. The Worcester was made from the Brindley Cut at what is now called Gas Street Basin to the Severn between 1791 and 1815. The Stratford Canal began at Kings Norton on the Worcester Canal in 1793 and reached the Avon Navigation at Stratford in 1816. The Warwick Cana1 started from near the Digbeth Basin in 1793 and joined the Oxford Canal (providing a shorter route to London) in '99. Later cuts were the Dudley Branch to the Worcester at Selly Oak (1798), the two which permitted boats to bypass the congestion at the locks in Birmingham, (Tame Valley and the Birmingham & Warwick Junction, both 1844), and the great work of Thomas Telford. Between 1824 and 29 he constructed a wide twin-towpathed canal which crossed the Brindley loops and cut through the Smethwick summit, reducing the distance to Wolverhampton by a third and ending the delays on the Old Canal. He also created Ladywood Reservoir to feed the system.

At greatest extent, including many short branches and private basins, the arti-ficial waterways of Birmingham (1974 boundaries) totalled about 38 miles. Book after book claims that Birmingham has more canals than Venice : this is hardly surprising, as Venice has no canals. It has 26 miles of sea channels (cana1i) amid 117 islands covering 4½ square miles: with the infilling of the Dudley Branch and many short arms, Birmingham now has 34 miles of man-made ditch in an area of 102 square miles.

Shortage of wharfage in the town necessitated the building of the New Wharves off Broad Street in 1812: Gibson's Arm and Baskerville Basin (Baskerville House and Hall of Memory Garden) were reached by tunnel from the New-hall Branch. Factories proliferated beside the canals throughout the C19th. Gas works received waterborne coal: at Corporation wharves road-metal was unloaded, refuse was loaded for delivery to suburban tips, and night-soil to local farms.

3.1. Map 3