Birmingham Canal Navigations E-Book

Phil Clayton

• Herausgeber: The Crowood Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 365

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The Birmingham Canal Navigations comprise the greatest concentration of waterways in Britain. Over the course of a century, from the original Birmingham Canal of 1769, they grew to their greatest extent of almost 160 miles, all within about a 12-mile radius of their geographical centre of Walsall. The network was a major driver of the great industrial development of Birmingham and the Black Country, carrying vast quantities of raw materials and finished goods into the twentieth century. Following decades of decline, the BCN is once more an important player in the regeneration of the region's centres and the growth of leisure. With 140 illustrations, including maps and archive photographs, this book includes: the beginnings and expansion of the network; subsequent improvements to the system; supplying the water; the people who worked the BCN; trials and tribulations, including inclement weather, subsidence, breaches, wartime and accidents; the impact and influence of the railways, and finally its decline and subsequent transition into a New Canal Age.

Leseprobe

BIRMINGHAMCANAL NAVIGATIONS

A HISTORY

Portrait of my bike with ghosts in Galton Cutting by Catharine Kingcome, oil on canvas.

‘This is a painting of my bike in Galton Cutting, Smethwick, a place that grew on me as I began to appreciate its undeniable, albeit sombre, beauty and grandeur. I became fascinated by its history, and felt it must be full of ghosts. It was so busy in its heyday, but now is eerily empty and quiet, apart from announcements drifting down from Galton Bridge Station above. So, as well as my bike, I’ve painted the ghosts of a navvy, a boatwoman leading a horse towing a boat, and a motorboat and boatman. The inspiration for the navvy, horse and boat came from old photos while the motorboat and boatman were inspired by photographer Kev Maslin’s photo of contemporary working boatman Reuben Carter and his boat. The boatwoman is completely imaginary. I deliberately painted the boats monochrome because, in this composition, they are ghosts from the past, contrasting with the present day scene. My purpose was not to create a composition set in the past, but one portraying how the cutting looks now, and how I feel when I am there alone with an almost overpowering sense of history.’

Catharine Kingcome, 2021

First published in 2022 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

[email protected]

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2022

© Phil Clayton 2022

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7998 4020 3

Cover design by Blue Sunflower Creative

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1:‘The Cut of all Cuts’

Chapter 2: The System Grows

Chapter 3: Improving the BCN

Chapter 4: Water Supply

Chapter 5: Traffic

Chapter 6: Working the BCN

Chapter 7: The Railway Connection

Chapter 8: Trials and Tribulations

Chapter 9: Decline

Chapter 10: Into a New Canal Age

Bibliography and References

Index

Dedication

To the BCN Society, which founded, fostered and maintains my interest in the wonderful web of waterways that we call the Birmingham Canal Navigations.

Acknowledgements

Many people, over many years, have contributed to this book. First, and foremost, two great friends of the BCN, Martin O’Keeffe, BCN Society President, and Ray Shill, Historian. During the research period, Ray and Martin have been unfailingly generous in sharing resources and knowledge.

Thanks are due to several archivists: Phil Wild (BCN Society), Mike Skidmore (Dudley Canal & Tunnel Trust), Phil Hughes (Monmouthshire, Brecon & Abergavenny Canals Trust), Ian Gray (Sandwell) and Elaine Nicholson (Dudley).

Other folk have willingly shared information, images and time: Steve Bingham, Mary Bodfish, Bob Bowden, David Brown, Nigel Chapman, Ruth Collins, Carole Cooper, Ron Element, Tony Gregory, Keith Hodgkins, Bob Howells, Cathy Kingcome, Tony Kulik, Andy Lowe, Roy Martin, Barry McGowan, the late Dave Necklen, Sue Necklen, Maria Nicholson, Pamela Paget-Tomlinson, Hugh Potter, Colin Sidaway, the late Vic Smallshire, Sue Swain, Andy Tidy, Joanna Turska, David Walker, Brenda Ward, the late John Whitehouse, Wolverhampton Arts & Heritage, and the Committee of Wolverhampton Boat Club. My apologies to anyone I have missed.

Thanks also to The Crowood Press for advice and encouragement and, as ever, to my wife Dot, for her patience and support. Uncredited images are from the author’s collection. Any errors in this work are entirely the author’s.

Image Credits

Unless otherwise specified, photographs are from the author’s collection.

BCNS, pages 12, 15, 16, 21 (top), 35, 50, 51 (top), 58, 63 (top), 69, 73, 76, 80, 83, 84, 91, 97, 99, 100 (bottom), 101, 104, 109 (top), 118 (right), 126, 132, 136 (bottom), 149, 153, 156 (left and right), 159 (top), 160, 162, 164; Mary Bodfish, page 60; British Waterways, pages 119, 148; David Brown, page 108; Nigel Chapman Collection, page 79; Conurbation, page 155; Carol Cooper, page 146; Dunlop House Magazine, page 86; Ron Element, page 127; A.W. Gregory Collection, pages 122 (photo taken by R Wyndham Shaw), 147; Fred Heritage Collection, page 141; Keith Hodgkins, page 94; Phil Hughes, page 49 (top); T.W. King Collection, Dudley Archives, page 130; Tony Kulik, page 96; Andy Lowe, pages 9, 51 (bottom), 55, 62, 98; RD McMillan Collection, page 81; Roy Martin, page 151; Dave Necklen Collection, pages 56 (bottom), 57, 100 (top), 103 (bottom), 128, 129; Maria Nicholson, page 173; Martin O’Keeffe, pages 20, 45 (top), 48, 77, 87, 103 (top); Pam Paget-Tomlinson, page 121 (top); Hugh Potter, pages 82, 95, 107, 152; Sandwell Archives, page 71; Ray Shill, pages 13, 21 (bottom), 25, 28 (top), 38, 39 (top), 47 (top); Colin Sidaway, pages 109 (bottom), 110; Staffordshire Record Office, page 114; Sue Swain, page 158; Brenda Ward, page 165; Phil Wild, pages 8, 17, 111; Wolverhampton Arts & Heritage, page 102; Wolverhampton Boat Club, page 121 (bottom).

Introduction

A glance at a map shows the Birmingham Canal Navigations to be an extensive complexity of cuts. The original length, between coal pits at Wednesbury and the town of Birmingham, opened in 1769 and through the course of time, by expansion and acquisition, the network grew until almost 160 miles (258km) of narrow canal cobwebbed an area of less than 20 miles (32km) from both north to south and east to west – the greatest concentration of cuts in the country. The canal-building era in the district lasted for just under a century, from the construction of the original Birmingham Canal to the opening of the Cannock Extension Canal to Hednesford, the BCN’s most northerly point, in 1863. When Henry Rodolph de Salis, a director of the premier inland waterways carrying firm of Fellows, Morton and Clayton, produced his guide, Bradshaw’s Canals and Navigable Rivers of England and Wales, in 1904, he was able to say of the BCN that, ‘The system is a very complicated one, owing to many improvements and fresh canals which have been added to it from time to time.’ One or two smaller arms and branches were put in after the Cannock Extension; indeed, the Dudley Canal Trust opened a completely new tunnel as recently as 1989, but to all intents and purposes these dates bracket the era of canal building in the region.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, Birmingham and the area west of the town, the district later to be called the Black Country, were on the cusp of great changes that would turn them into one of the world’s first great industrial regions. Birmingham became the city of a thousand trades and the Black Country’s convulsive industrialization turned it black by day and red by night. Birmingham had long been developing as a manufacturing focus for the surrounding area; poll tax returns from 1379 mention several smiths. Tudor antiquarian John Leland passed through around 1538 on one of his ‘itineraries’, approaching from the south. He came first to outlying Deritend, ‘through a pretty Street …. as I remember, is called Dirtey. In it dwell Smithes and Cutlers ….’ Birmingham itself he described as ‘a good Markett Towne’ stretching for a quarter mile ‘up a meane Hill’. Although he saw only one parish church, he noted, ‘many Smithes in the Towne that use to make Knives and all mannour of cuttinge Tooles, and many Loriners that make Bittes, and a great many Naylors. Soe that a great part of the Towne is maintained by Smithes who have theire Iron and Sea-Cole out of Stafford-shire.’ Birmingham and the neighbouring mineral-producing area were therefore intimately and inextricably linked, but, and it is one of the biggest buts in the West Midlands, never confuse a Brummie with a Black Countryman, or wench!

The climb to Birmingham. A section of Farmer’s Bridge Locks, the ‘Old Thirteen’. This is the steepest part of the thirty-eight lock ascent from Fazeley.

By the 1750s, Birmingham’s range of industries had expanded. Guns and brassware were prominent, as was the production of ‘toys’. A word of uncertain etymology, and sometimes used disparagingly as in ‘Brummagem Toys’, a reference to counterfeit coins, it covered a wide range of small items made from iron, steel, brass and other materials and included goods such as buckles, snuff boxes, trinkets, tweezers, hinges, toothpick cases, watch chains, corkscrews, buttons, tortoiseshell boxes and filigree work. Working practices were developing; specialization was being introduced and local entrepreneurs were there at the beginnings of what would become mass production.

Mere miles to the west, men had delved beneath the area that was to become the Black Country for centuries before it acquired the name and developed into one of the most bizarre landscapes in the United Kingdom. In some places a conjoining of coal seams had led to the formation of the Thick Coal, a 30ft (9m) layer outcropping on the surface or lying shallowly beneath it. This had long been picked at for domestic fuel together with iron ore, which, smelted using charcoal, could be hammered into shape by hand, and later by using water-powered tilt hammers on the many headwaters of Rivers Stour and Tame. Clay and limestone, metaphorically as well as literally the Black Country’s building blocks, were also abundant and readily accessible.

Towards the end of the 1750s, the great Ironmaster John Wilkinson had set up a new ironworks at Bradley near Bilston in what would be the heart of the Black Country, applying Abraham Darby’s development of the use of coke for smelting ore rather than the charcoal that had so denuded the region’s woodlands. By 1766, Matthew Boulton had opened his great new Manufactory at Soho, a mile and a half north of Birmingham, just over the Staffordshire border from the town, and James Watt had visited in March 1767. Late the following summer, he stayed at Soho for a fortnight. The entrepreneur and the inventor struck up an immediate liking for each other. Early in 1769, Watt was in London, taking out the patent on his separate condenser, an invention that would increase the efficiency of the steam engine to a point where it would become industry’s driving force. Eventually Boulton, the extrovert entrepreneur who would soon sell the power that all the world desired to have, persuaded Watt, the introvert engineer described by Samuel Smiles as ‘timid, desponding, painfully anxious and easily cast down by failure’, to move to Birmingham. The Soho Manufactory, where the Brummie pioneered mass production, and the later Foundry where the Scotsman’s engines were developed, became world leaders, as well as, for a while, tourist attractions for the wealthy. Iron making in the Black Country and iron using in Birmingham were both developing quickly, and the stage was set for a tremendous spurt in growth.

The brake to development was transport. No navigable rivers flowed through the area, the nearest being the Trent and Severn, and although attempts were made in the latter part of the seventeenth century to develop the Severn-bound Stour for navigation, these, through floods and local opposition, eventually came to nothing. As in the rest of the country, contemporary roads were not up to the task of transporting heavy, bulky loads. Nearly a century before, naturalist and antiquarian Robert Plot had commented in his Natural History of Staffordshire that although the county’s roads were generally good, those around Wednesbury, Sedgley and Dudley were ‘uncessantly worn with the carriage of coale’. In 1726, John Ward, of the Dudley family, whose future fortunes were to be closely linked with canals, was called before a Parliamentary Committee to describe the state of the 10-mile (16km) stretch of road between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It was, he said:

in the Winter Season, in a very ruinous condition, and in some places almost impassable, and this very great decay of the Road has been by the great number of Carriages constantly passing, laden with Iron and Iron wares from Wolverhampton and thereabouts … and by carrying great quantities of Coal for the use of the Town of Birmingham.

As a result of this and similar petitions, improvements had been made to the local road system, with the establishment of Turnpike Trusts, and Birmingham was linked with Wolverhampton via West Bromwich and Wednesbury in 1727. By 1760, an alternative route between the two towns through Smethwick and Dudley had been turnpiked, but the roads were still not strong enough to withstand the sheer weight and pressure of the heavy traffic using them. A fresh solution was needed, and local merchants and manufacturers turned their thoughts northwards towards Manchester where work on the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal was already progressing in the first years of the decade.

A fossil canal. Izons Old Turn, a bend on the original Birmingham Canal, was cut off in the 1820s and abandoned in 1954. Its long-infilled course can still be conjectured curving between Pudding Green Junction and the distant bend.

More than any other traveller, the boater gains an early and very physical understanding of the region’s topography. To reach Birmingham and the Black Country involves climbing locks; this is not the Midland Plain. To reach the centre of Wolverhampton from my home alongside the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal takes about twenty minutes by bus. If I take my boat, it is usually between three and four hours, climbing through twenty-one locks. The same applies whichever way you approach the area by water. From Fazeley on the Coventry Canal, 15 miles (24km) to the north, there are thirty-eight locks. The Stratford-upon-Avon Canal climbs through fifty-four locks on its approach from the river in Stratford to its junction with the Worcester & Birmingham Canal at Kings Norton, 5 miles (8km) south of the city centre, while the latter cut has fifty-eight between its termini. From Stourbridge to the south-west, there are twenty-five. As well as the sheer number of locks, the variety of different approaches to the BCN is a tribute to its centrality and importance.

Geography had another part to play. Although it stands astride the Severn–Trent watershed, no large rivers flow through the region. Maintaining an adequate water supply for the canals was a constant problem. The multiplicity of headstreams of Tame and Stour had been utilized for centuries by millers who were naturally jealous of their water and loath to lose it to a canal. Reservoirs were the early answer, but soon necessity and technology came into play and steam pumping engines were introduced, supplied by Boulton and Watt. Thus began the industrial symbiosis that would characterize the canal, as raw materials from the Black Country were transformed by Birmingham industry. The town was already growing, but, used as we are to seeing the canal in an urban setting, we should remember that when opened, it terminated on the very edge of Birmingham, in an area still largely of fields and orchards. The Black Country, yet to earn its name, was also still mainly countryside, with hamlets, villages and market towns such as Dudley scattered across an agriculturally poor landscape populated by craftsman-farmers who might have worked a nail shop alongside a smallholding. Local placenames – Cradley Heath, Withymoor, Woodside, Primrose Hill, Windmill End – paint a pre-industrial picture.

The Birmingham Canal Navigations developed into a large and prosperous concern, secure in its traffic and trade throughout the nineteenth century. Unlike many canal companies, the BCN, through its close relationship with the London and North Western Railway, suffered less from rail competition and its decline rather mirrored that of the railways themselves. Some stretches closed early, being lost to subsidence triggered by the very mining that had encouraged their spread in the first place. The mid-twentieth century saw most losses, when the canals had largely lost their reason for existence and were generally perceived by many as little more than linear rubbish dumps or death traps for children. From the early 1960s, a growing awareness of local canals and their place in the area’s heritage led to the formation and growth of voluntary groups with a common aim of preserving what was being lost, often in the face of hostility from the authorities in charge of the very waterways they were attempting to save. The famous ‘Battle of Stourbridge’, just off the BCN, when preservationists flew in the face of the powers that be to reopen a stretch of canal, and the saving of the Dudley Tunnel were two key early events in what has been called the new canal age.

I have boated and walked all the towpaths of the 100 miles (160km) of still extant Birmingham Canal Navigations and have searched for the remains of lost waterways, the other 60 miles (97km) of routes that are no longer in existence. In some cases, these have been completely obliterated, but in other places their remains are still to be found, dried up echoes in the landscape. Several Black Country towns still display inexplicable humps in the road; inexplicable, that is, to passing motorists, but not to anyone who knows something of the history of the place.

CHAPTER 1

‘The Cut of all Cuts’

The later eighteenth century was a time of unprecedented technical advancement in Britain and 1769 was a significant year in that period of spectacular industrial growth. On its fifth day, James Watt had patented his separate condenser: ‘a new method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire-engines’ and arguably the most important invention in the development of efficient steam power. Later that year, on 3 July, Richard Arkwright had also taken out a patent for his water-powered Spinning Frame, a machine that would lead to a transformation in the production of textiles and the growth of the factory system. Josiah Wedgwood had already perfected his ‘black basaltes’, a clay body or mixture, ideal for the classical-style vases that he was to make so fashionable, and in June the potter opened his works at Etruria beside the course of the developing Trent & Mersey Canal.

‘This Day for our New Navigation’

Later that year, on Monday, 6 November, Birmingham celebrated. Streamers played in the air and bonfires blazed while people danced around them. Hammers and files, the workaday tools of the town, were laid aside while the local lads and lasses made their way to the wharf where three boats had arrived laden with coal from the Wednesbury pits. This was the day when the canal opened to the town. The Leeds Intelligencer reported the event a fortnight later, as did papers in places as far apart as Oxford, Kent and Salisbury:

We learn from Birmingham that on Monday the 6th Inst. the Inland Navigation to that Place was so far completed as to admit Boats coming up to the Town, for the first Time, laden with Coals. On this Occasion the Bells rung, and the Banks of the Canal were crouded with Company from Morning till Evening. As a result, the price of coals had fallen from nine pence to four pence halfpenny per hundred; a circumstance of utmost importance to that great manufacturing town, in which consumption of coals is prodigious.

A neat summary of the original canal was published, stating that work had begun on 11 April 1768 and had been carried on with ‘such spirit and dispatch’ that 16 miles (26km) had been cut, twelve locks and thirty-two bridges built as well as several stop gates, while fifteen ‘barges’ had been finished ‘on the company’s account’, besides many other private boats.

John Freeth, Birmingham publican, coffee house proprietor and political ballad writer, had been composing odes and ditties for thirty years and was hardly likely to let this opportunity slip. His Inland Navigation prophesied that the place would become ‘The grand Mechanic Warehouse of the World’ and that its goods would spread ‘from the Tagus to the Ganges’, while another work, Birmingham Lads, boasted ‘of coals we’ve the best in the nation’ and ‘the best of wrought metal is Birmingham ware’. The first three of innumerable coal boats arriving in Birmingham with Black Country coal over the next two centuries were unloaded at the canal’s first, temporary, terminus near the Dudley Turnpike. As befits a place that is constantly reinventing and rebuilding itself, this is now not far from Brindley Place, where the city’s lads and lasses can still be found disporting themselves.

BIRMINGHAM LADS BY JOHN FREETH

This day for our new navigationWe banish all cares and vexation;The sight of the barges each honest heart gladsAnd the merriest of mortals are Birmingham lads.Birmingham lads, jovial blades,And the merriest of mortals are Birmingham lads.

Not Europe can match us for traffic,America, Asia and Afric;Of what we invent each partakes of a share,For the best of wrought metals is Birmingham wareBirmingham ware, none so rareFor the best of wrought metals is Birmingham ware.

Since by the canal navigation,Of coals we’ve the best in the nation;Around the gay circle your bumpers then put,For the cut of all cuts is a Birmingham cut,Birmingham cut, fairly wrought,For the cut of all cuts is a Birmingham cut.

Beginnings

The first mention of Birmingham in relation to a canal scheme had been as the terminus of a branch from a proposed waterway between Wilden Ferry on the Trent to the Weaver at Frodsham Bridge, an idea first mooted in 1758 and which subsequently developed into the Grand Trunk, or Trent & Mersey Canal. Although Matthew Boulton became a subscriber, it seems that few others in the town were as keen, for the branch to Birmingham had been dropped before the Trent and Mersey Bill was passed by Parliament in May 1766. Other schemes were in the air; waterways to link Shugborough (now known, in canal terms, as Haywood) with the Severn, and to strike out from Fradley, near Lichfield, to Coventry and then on to Oxford and, by way of the Thames, to the capital. Birmingham, on its plateau, was to be islanded by these proposals. This could not be allowed to happen by the forward-thinking men of a town of over 30,000 inhabitants and the spark was a short piece published in the local paper.

Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, Monday, 26 January 1767.

This called for a meeting to discuss ‘The Utility of a Navigable Cut from the Wolverhampton Canal, through the Coal Works, to this Town’. The ‘Wolverhampton Canal’ was to become the Staffordshire & Worcestershire, whose seed had been sown a year earlier and which had already been started. An earlier letter in the Gazette had pointed out the benefits that a canal would bring to Birmingham by cutting the price of coal, while the local social conscience was stirred by the fact that the Navigation would also be advantageous to the poor. Gentlemen and inhabitants were invited to discuss the matter and, if the scheme should be approved, appoint a ‘proper person’ to make a survey and prepare an estimate for the works involved. The results were written up in A Journal of the Meetings and Proceedings respecting the Navigation, the Birmingham Canal’s first Minute Book. As well as reiterating the advantages listed earlier, mention was made of the savings to be brought about by reducing the numbers of horses employed on the carriage of coals and other commodities.

Three dozen gentlemen attended and agreed to subscribe towards the expenses, contributing a guinea apiece, except for one Thomas Blockley who pledged 10s 6d. The list was headed by Henry Carver Esq., followed by Dr John Ash. Appropriately enough perhaps, in view of the main cargo the canal was to carry, Francis Coals and Robert Coals also signed up. They were soon followed by a further 130 subscribers, including many of the great men of commerce and industry in contemporary Birmingham: manufacturers Matthew Boulton, Samuel Galton, Samuel Garbett and John Ryland; men of letters such as John Baskerville, Pearson & Aris, Freeth & Sons and historian William Hutton; and Lloyd & Son of the banking family.

Enter James Brindley

On the strength of the interest shown and the money subscribed, James Brindley was appointed to produce a plan and estimates for two different routes. Following his success on the Duke of Bridgewater’s Navigation joining Manchester to his coal mines 7 miles (11km) out of the town at Worsley, the engineer was already in great demand among the burgeoning canal proprietors of the nation. A further meeting was held at the Swan Inn in early June where Brindley presented his survey and estimates. The engineer pronounced the scheme to be ‘very practicable’ and that the ‘Upper Way, or Course’ was the most ‘Eligible’. On the strength of this meeting the newspaper advertisement on the previous page was inserted.

The Swan Inn.

James Brindley. Former pub sign, Birmingham.

A further meeting was quickly called to open a subscription to raise funds towards the cost of obtaining an Act of Parliament, necessary to enable the promoters to purchase the land required and for completing the work. It was deemed that £50,000 would be sufficient for the entire undertaking, including all expenses. Brindley’s plan, estimate and opinion, together with some calculations of the amount of coal likely to be carried, were open for inspection at the offices of Mr Meredith, Attorney at Law. A Committee of Thirty-Nine Gentlemen was appointed and Samuel Garbett, William Bentley, John Kettle and Matthew Boulton were to receive payment for their canal work. William Bentley and George Holloway were to ‘wait upon the respective Land Owners’ and obtain permission to make the canal across their land. Garbett was an astute businessman with wide-ranging interests in the town and further afield. An early supporter, he would, before long, become a fly in the ointment as far as the Company was concerned.

Perhaps realizing that the original Committee of thirty-nine was unwieldy, a General Meeting of the Proprietors on 30 November appointed a Select Committee of nine, of whom five would be accounted a quorum. They could spend any sum up to £1,000 without reference to the full Committee. Drs John Ash and William Small, Henry Carver Esq., Samuel Garbett Esq., John Kettle, William Bentley, Matthew Boulton, Joseph Wilkinson and William Welch were duly appointed. James Brindley was to be approached to fix a day to meet the coal owners and masters and it was stressed that the ‘Primary and Principal Object of this Undertaking was and is to Obtain a Navigation from the Collieries to this Town’.

PATRONAGE

By the time of the meeting on 10 July, £35,400 had been subscribed and Bentley and Holloway were making good progress with the landowners; all thirty approached so far had either signed their consent, or, at the least, were not openly opposed to the canal. Along with John Meredith, they had further approached such local luminaries as the Earls of Denbigh, Dartmouth and Warwick, Lord Craven and Sir Roger Newdigate for their patronage in the undertaking and had met with promises of attention and support.

By 14 August’s meeting, William Bentley and George Holloway had solicited the support and promises of assistance from Lord Gower, Lord Grey, Sir Walter Bagott, Mr Anson and Mr Gilbert. The first was particularly significant as a member of the Leveson-Gower family, major Staffordshire landowners. He was a skilled parliamentarian and already a supporter of Brindley’s Grand Trunk Canal, which would pass through his estate at Trentham. Thomas Anson of Shugborough, hard by the later junction of the Trent & Mersey and the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canals at Haywood, was another parliamentarian, who in 1762 had inherited the vast fortune amassed by his brother, Admiral George Anson. William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth, whose Sandwell estate was on the line of the canal, became a particular advocate for the Company in parliamentary matters. All three families later had branch canals of the BCN named after them.

First Act of Parliament

The Birmingham Canal Act received Royal Assent on 24 February 1768. When printed, it stretched to fifty pages and included ninety-nine clauses covering such areas as finance, constitution, water supply and mining. After setting out the advantages of the scheme, the Proprietors were listed and given the formal name of ‘The Company of Proprietors of the Birmingham Canal Navigation’. One important clause empowered the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Navigation to complete the canal if the Birmingham Company failed to carry out the work within six months of it being opened to the town and to be reimbursed for its costs.

Birmingham Canal Act Introduction.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Assistant Engineer Samuel Simcock is nearly always referred to in the Company Minute Book as ‘Simcox’, while Ryders Green is often Riders and Lapal Tunnel is Lappal, but this is nothing compared to the confusion over the name of the western terminus of the canal. This stems from the first paragraph of the Act where two names are listed: ‘Autherley otherwise Aldersley, in the Parish of Tettenhall, near Wolverhampton’. The first name came from the farm on whose land it was sited, but later, with the opening of the Birmingham & Liverpool Junction Canal in 1835, half a mile (680m) north along the Staffs & Worcs, the name was transferred to the new junction. Aldersley later became the accepted name for the Birmingham Canal junction, but exactly when the official renaming came about is difficult to ascertain. It is ‘Autherley Junction’ in the Company’s early twentieth-century Distance Tables and the location of the canal house at the foot of Wolverhampton Locks was still recorded as at ‘Autherley Jct.’ in the BCN rent journal of 1921. However, a pencil note on the large-scale BCN Deed Plan, where the name AUTHERLEY is scored out and replaced by ALDERSLEY, is dated ‘Nov 1925’ and perhaps records the official change.

First General Assembly

A meeting with James Brindley was fixed for 2 March. Busy with several concurrent schemes, he advised the Committee that a Superintendent or Head Clerk be appointed to conduct the works, together with a deputy or Under-Clerk, and recommended that they attend ‘some one of the Navigations now compleating to acquaint themselves of the Nature of Navigation Business, the better to Qualify themselves for the respective Offices’. The first General Assembly of Proprietors of the Birmingham Canal Navigation met on 25 March 1768. Holding between one and ten shares each, sixty-four attended in person, while a further sixteen were represented by proxy. John Meredith, who had kept the Minutes from the beginning, was appointed Clerk, with John Kettle as Treasurer. Brindley was to be Engineer and Surveyor, along with George Holloway as Clerk of the Works. Brindley was to be paid £120 for the attendance and expenses of himself and his Clerk, Robert Whitworth, in London, while a further £80 was to be laid out for purchasing two pieces of plate to be presented to William Bentley and Joseph Wilkinson in gratitude for their work in furthering the Act.

Robert Whitworth’s plan of the proposed Birmingham Canal, 1767.

It was also resolved that before any part of the work on the Navigation be started, the land should be agreed for and the money paid, or a tender made. A call of 10 per cent on shareholders was made to cover these outlays and a Committee, according to the directions of the Act, was elected. Almost hidden away in the middle of all these resolutions was perhaps the most germane of them all: ‘That the Navigation be immediately begun, and that the Committee pursue Mr Brindley’s Instructions to execute the same and provide the necessary Materials for that purpose.’

Committee Matters

The Committee met for the first time on 30 March, then around another sixty times before the opening of the canal. Some members, such as John Lane and Joseph Wilkinson, barely missed a meeting, while Matthew Boulton, busily engaged on his other enterprises, only managed to attend a quarter of them. The new Committee set to work with a will, their first meeting looking to procure windlasses and gins for work on the tunnel proposed at Smethwick, as well as measuring and laying out land along the proposed line. An advertisement was to be placed in the Birmingham Gazette for ‘proper persons to undertake the execution of the Canal’, stipulating that they should be free of any other engagements. In early April, under the Chairmanship of William Bentley, they were contracting for ‘twenty hundred thousand bricks’ and ordering deals (planks made of fir or pine and used for construction). In early June, a special messenger was sent to require Mr Brindley to meet the Committee ‘with all possible expedition’. The reason was not immediately spelt out, but related to some ‘special matters relative to this undertaking’.

Under or Over?

These ‘special matters’ were problems along the course of the Smethwick Tunnel, where excavations had revealed ‘running sand and other bad materials’. We can imagine the engineer, closely followed by Committee members, as he ‘examined and surveyed the course of the intended Tunnel, and maturely weighed and considered the consequences attendant upon proceeding thereupon’. His conclusion was to abandon tunnelling and to ‘carry the Canal over the Hill by Locks and Fire Engines’. Having retired to the Bull’s Head at West Bromwich, the Committee, swayed by Brindley’s assurance that it would be ‘less expensive and equally beneficial … and will not be attended with more delay than Tunnelling’, not surprisingly supported their engineer’s plan, ordering that the Clerk of the Works should follow Brindley’s instructions.

This change of plan led to problems, most immediately that of the provision of water for the locks. Samuel Simcock, Brindley’s brother-in-law, who, together with Robert Whitworth was one of the engineer’s assistants supervising the work, was dispatched to survey the land around the summit for likely brooks, springs and other supplies. He was to report back to the next meeting with the quantities that each source would provide. Simcock appears to have measured the width and depth of seven streams, multiplying his measurements together to arrive at a total for each source. Having added them all up, he presented his findings: ‘200¾ inch’. This baffled the Committee members, who simply wanted to know how many boats a day the canal would be able to carry through the locks and a letter was sent off to Brindley to find an explanation. A fortnight later, on 5 August, a dozen Committee members returned to the Bull’s Head to visit and examine the works and found that they were being ‘conducted and carried on with regularity’. Stonemasons were sought to work on the locks, with advertisements being inserted in the Gloucester, York and Manchester papers.

Birmingham Canal Seal adopted by the successor BCN.

The Second General Assembly of the Proprietors, held on 30 September 1768, ordered that an engraved seal, produced at the meeting and attached to the resolutions and orders of the day, should be adopted as the Common Seal of the Company.

Having held almost all their meetings, from the initial one of 28 January 1767, at the Swan Inn, the Committee was ordered to acquire a house or office that would be suitable for the Book-keeping Clerk to conduct his business, as a secure place to hold the company’s books, and for the Committee to hold its meetings. It was to be distinguished by the ‘Public mark of “Navigation Offices”’. In view of the continuing progress of the canal – Aris’s Birmingham Gazette had reported in the middle of October that nearly 5 miles (8km) had been completed and that it was expected to be open fully within a year – a call of 10 per cent was made on all Proprietors, to be paid on 3 December. Compared with many other canal completions, the Gazette’s prediction was only slightly optimistic.

Changes

The original plan for a tunnel at Smethwick having been abandoned, there were now to be six locks raising the canal above its level course from Birmingham, followed by a summit pound of about 1 mile (1.6km) and then six locks down to regain the level to the Wednesbury Mines, the Committee’s priority being to ensure a supply of coal into the town. Brindley’s earlier plan had been to take the line to Wolverhampton on the same level as the bulk of the Navigation, but a fresh proposal was now aired, suggesting that by branching off at the third lock on the western side, the canal would have a better water supply and would pass through a greater tract of coal mines. Not only that, the deviation would bring greater benefits for the public, would avoid passing ‘thro’ a deal of dangerous and uncertain land’ and would save money. Brindley’s opinion was again sought, a messenger being dispatched to find the peripatetic engineer. His reply was considered ‘too concise’ in a ‘Matter of such Consequence’, and the Committee waived proceedings until he could give a more explicit account, giving his reasons, an estimate of costs and explanation of the likely benefits.

Another Act

In December 1768, it was found necessary to apply for a second Act of Parliament as a ‘misapprehension’ had occurred in the original Act. The first sentence of that Bill had listed the various places the Navigation would pass through in the ‘respective Counties of Warwick and Stafford’, but no mention was made of ‘Salop’ (Shropshire). This oversight had to be corrected and the Committee further wished to discover whether any part of the canal would pass through Worcestershire. Having discovered this one mistake, the Committee resolved to ensure that no further ones occurred by ordering a plan to be drawn up of the canal and its branches ‘so far as they are already set out’ and that the name of each landowner and the extent of his land to be cut through should be given. It was to be kept up to date each month by ‘some of the surveying Clerks’. At the same time, the Committee decided to employ a number of ‘Inferior Clerks or walking Surveyors’ to make a daily check on the numbers of men working in each gang and take particular notice of whether they were there for the whole day, or only a part of it. A copy of the Petition to the House of Commons was presented to the Committee on 1 February 1769 and to a Special General Meeting two days later. Besides correcting the county omission, it also sought to extend the powers for making reservoirs, necessitated by the change of plan at Smethwick. The Bill became law in April.

Where Will it End?

A Proprietors’ meeting was called in May to determine on the ‘proper place or places for the Termination of the Canal near Birmingham’. This was to become a most contentious issue. Three ‘Tracts from Sheepcote Lane’ had been suggested and the Proprietors almost unanimously decided to proceed on the course into Charles Colmore’s land as far as Friday Street where a temporary wharf was to be established. Deciding on the further continuation or termination of the cut was to be deferred until the next General Assembly. In the meantime, plans were to be drawn up, under the inspection of Mr Brindley, showing the land suitable for wharves and warehouses between the Dudley Road and Colmore’s Newhall Ring, and at land in and near the Brickiln Piece owned by Sir Thomas Gooch.

As the first stage of the construction of the Navigation entered its conclusive phase, there was a need for more finance. At the end of June, following Holloway’s report that a considerable sum of money, ‘not less than £3,000’, would be needed over the next three months and Treasurer Kettle’s reply that only £2,100 was available, it was resolved that the Committee would borrow the sum of £3,000 at 5 per cent interest for six months and in July a further call of 10 per cent on the Proprietors was made. The Committee also expressed concern about its engineer for, ‘observing that Mr Brindley hath frequently pass’d by and sometimes come into Town without giving them an opportunity to confer with him upon the progress of this undertaking’, they expressed their dissatisfaction at not being able to see him and asked that, in future, he would give them notice so that they might have the opportunity to consult him on matters ‘respecting the execution of the works that may appear to them necessary’.

As well as works at the Birmingham end, cutting was also progressing on the line towards Wolverhampton, the Committee noting that the bridge at Tividale was awaiting stone for its completion. The last day of July and the first one of August saw two Committee meetings, ‘by particular appointment’, as Brindley was in attendance. He had resurveyed the proposed terminations of the canal in Birmingham and the routes to access them and, having calculated the respective costs ‘which had not been before minutely done by Mr Simcock’, he made his recommendation. This was to end the canal at Brickiln Piece rather than Newhall Ring as stated in the Act. It was to prove rather more difficult than that.

The same meetings discussed less weighty but no less important matters as the design of a cart for delivering coal around town and the acquisition of a weighing machine for use at the ‘Temporary Wharfs’. The fourth General Assembly, held in late September, ordered that the Committee, augmented by seventeen other Proprietors, should prepare a list of rules and bye-laws for the Company. By the middle of October, the Company was looking for a ‘proper person to be advertised for to superintend and conduct the Wharf at the termination of the Canal near Birmingham’ and Mr Bentley was to look out for ‘proper persons to attend at the Locks’. Notices from the Navigation Office were seeking carts and horses for the delivery of coals, warning felons of the dire consequences of damaging or destroying ‘Banks or other Works’ – transportation for seven years – and, the first of many such, complaining about people trespassing on their land and causing problems by taking dogs with them and ‘throwing Sticks and other Things into the Canal’.

A report of ‘considerable Damage’ by some ‘malicious Person or Persons’ induced the Committee to further action, offering a reward of twenty guineas for their discovery. A special Committee meeting about this ‘accident to the canal at the temporary wharf’ was called on 1 November when Bentley was able to report that despite the misfortune ‘it will be possible to navigate near the Town in a few days’ and was therefore requested to give the ‘necessary directions that Coals may be brought near the Town as early as possible. Two days later the Committee was ordering six ‘Centry Boxes, sufficient to contain One Man each’ as well as a ‘capacious one … for the use of Mr Brookes’, and was then adjourned for a fortnight, until after the canal’s opening.

On to Wolverhampton