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The Stourbridge Canal

The Stourbridge Canal is found in the West Midlands providing a link between the Staffordshire and Worcester and the Dudley Canal. The Stour bridge Town Arm serving  Stourbridge itself, where  a basin was provided for the interchange between Railway and Canal.

The Stourbridge and Dudley canals were originally conceived as a single canal, but in the end they were authorised and built separately. Apart from providing a useful link to the BCN it also served several local collieries and now serves as part of the popular Stourport  Ring. The canal remained in use and profitable until after the first World War, though significant commercial traffic had come to an end by the time the canal was nationalised in 1948.

The earliest attempts to make the River Stour Navigable go back to about 1662, with coal being carried to Kidderminster and the Severn in 1667, though the locks used were primitive ( probably timber “Flash Locks” ) and destroyed by flooding in 1670.

The start of major canal building around the Midlands in the mid 18^th Century left Stourbridge isolated, but with the realistic prospect of restoring the navigation formerly constructed along the river Stour, the idea being taken up about 1775 with a link proposed from the Staffordshire and Worcester canal to Stourbridge and the Brierly hill area, with a further extension on to Dudley with Acts being passed separately for the Stourbridge and Dudley canals in 1776 and 1779 respectively.

The Stourbridge Canal Company met with considerable success carrying coal, steel, bricks and other general cargo until after the first World War and still Navigable and in use in 1948 at the time of nationalisation, though by the 1950s it had fallen into disuse and disrepair, which would have  threatened complete closure if it was not for the Intervention of the Inland Waterways Association and teams of volunteers who first of all made the case for preserving the canal and then provided much of the means to do it. In July 1964 an agreement was reached between British Waterways and the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal Society and by May 1967 16 locks had been restored using voluntary labour.