The Worcester and Birmingham Canal
The Worcester and Birmingham Canal runs from the River
Severn near Worcester and
finishes in the centre of Birmingham at Gas street Basin, where you will
find the Worcester Bar with an overall length of 29 miles with 58 locks
including the Tardebigge flight, renowned as a sort of badge of honour for
any novice bargee. It was actually intended as a broad canal , but finances
failed and a narrow option was adopted instead.
The canal was originally surveyed by Josiah Cloves 1790
with the Act granting Royal assent passed in 1991. Thomas Cartwright was
appointed engineer. The project soon ran into financial problems and by the
time the second lock had been built at Worcester, the decision to proceed as
a narrow canal had been made, though tunnels and bridges were still built to
a broad width, presumably leaving the option of upgrading the canal at a
later date open.
During the process of construction Engineers changed
frequently as did ideas as to how the project should proceed , with at one
point Benjamin Outram suggesting that it should be completed as a Tramway
and William Jessop when bought in to suggest a solution for the climb at
Tardebigge, he initially favoured a boat lift ( an idea he later went
against ), but a lift was actually constructed, though replaced by locks by
1815 when the canal was opened.
Once constructed the canal linked with the Statford
Canal at Kings Norton, which offered
a link to the Thames, Oxford and London with the Droitwich canal later
offering a link to the Salt trade at Droitwich and the main canal linking to
the canals of central Birmingham, meaning that the options for trade were
plentiful, even if the canal itself was slow and hard work because of all
the locks.
Trade included: coal, salt, limestone, building materials,
wood, chemicals and general merchandise and the canal made a steady if not
abundant income from regular traffic..
Competition predictably came from the railways with the
Gloucester railway opening in 1841 and the salt trade from Stoke Prior
largely lost by 1847, but the canal remained open until nationalisation in
1948, with Cadbury’s still using it to deliver chocolate crumb until the
early 1960’s with coal and porcelain were two other commodities using the
canal into the second half of the 20th Century.
1963 saw the creation of British Waterways and a renewed
public interest in the Inland Waterways with volunteer based restoration and
preservation projects springing up all over the country, beginning a process
that has now realised 2000 miles of waterway as navigable in the UK with
that figure gradually improving year on year. The future of
waterways have also been secured by
the realisation of what they have to offer by way of historical features,
cycling and footpaths and ornamental settings for new developments, not to
mention the fact that they are now a desirable setting for any building
increasing both land value and property income.
Canal