History

The canals which seam through Birmingham and the Black Country are a part of the weft drawing together the fabric of our area’s history. 

Netherton Tunnel

A murky weft maybe, and one which is now broken in places, but still a thread which we can follow back to discover something of our past as well as letting it lead us through the present. 

The canal building era in our area lasted just under a century from the construction of the Birmingham Canal, begun in 1768, to the opening of the Cannock Extension in 1863. 

In its heyday the Birmingham Canal Navigations stretched for a hundred and sixty miles and were largely squeezed into an area of a little more than sixteen miles by fourteen. 

Phil Clayton

This, the greatest concentration of canals in the country, was a labyrinth of cuts, short cuts, arms, basins and branches.

Canals crossed canals on aqueducts, tunnels burrowed through hills and over 200 locks joined the various levels together.

Hundreds of boats plied their trade linking mines, furnaces and factories.

Pelsall Junction

Even after closures and abandonments a hundred miles of these liquid timelines remain to be explored.  It still is exploration, for the system is changing all the time - just look at the middle of Birmingham. 

Mind, you don’t need a boat to explore the BCN,  I made all my early discoveries on foot or by bike.  In fact I’ve still got my old Birmingham A – Z with all the canals coloured in – you don’t need to do it with the new editions, they’re already in blue!

Stewart Aqueduct

WALKING THE CANALS

Thirty five years ago I arrived in the Black Country and started walking the canals of the BCN. 

I have vivid memories of night time walks through Round Oak Steelworks with glimpses of hot metal and fiery furnaces, of legging an old open day boat with a tilley lamp on one of its beams into Dudley Tunnel. Of digging out the towpath along the arm in what was to become the Black Country Museum. 

Other interests intervened but I was always drawn back to that magical network of waterways. In the late eighties I acquired a boat and in the early nineties I discovered the BCN Society. 

I found that they were a most welcoming group of people, so welcoming that I was soon on the Committee and editing the Society Journal Boundary Post. 

Cleaning up Walsall Canal

THE BCN SOCIETY

I learned that the BCN Society had been founded in 1968 at a time when our local canals were under threat.  Commercial carrying had finished and the leisure industry was in its infancy. 

Few visitors wanted to cruise canals which were generally perceived to be full of rubbish and semi-derelict. From its earliest days the BCN Society has been actively involved in schemes to preserve and restore stretches of canal under threat
of closure through neglect and under-use.  

A notable early success was the saving of the Oldbury Lock flight, a massive rescue undertaking which reached fruition in 1973.

Stalls at a BCNS rally

During the next couple of decades the Society set out to place signposts at all the major junctions of this complex system of waterways to guide walkers, cyclists and boaters and there are now more than thirty signs around the BCN. 

In 1997, with the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant the BCNS acquired its workboat, Phoenix, and in the summer of 2002 the Society moved into its own headquarters in the restored Titford Pumphouse at the top of Oldbury Locks; a fitting tribute to those early supporters who fought to save the lock flight.

Stewart Aqueduct

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE PLACES

Canals bring the countryside into the towns. Choose a day in May to stand at the foot of the twenty one locks which take the canal up into Wolverhampton or take a Spring walk through the Galton Valley in Sandwell; it’s sometimes hard to realise you’re in a massive conurbation.

Less than a mile away from the greenery of Galton Valley is one of my favourite places on the BCN. A secretive, out of the way spot which is passed unknowingly by thousands every day on the main line railway and motorway.

At the Stewart Aqueduct Thomas Telford’s canal of 1829 burrows under James Brindley’s earlier navigation while the Birmingham – Wolverhampton railway runs alongside and the M5 motorway crosses them all. Two centuries of transport history compressed into a hundred vertical feet. The Birmingham Canal Navigations are full of surprises like this.  

The BCNS in action

THERE'S WORK TO BE DONE

Many parts of the BCN have been transformed. The canal is very much at the heart of developments around Brindley Place in Birmingham and other local centres like Walsall and Wolverhampton are following suit.

The Waterfront at Merry Hill is another area unrecognisable from the canal scene of thirty years ago.  Other stretches remain underused and unappreciated and the BCN Society, in co operation with other voluntary groups and British Waterways, works to
improve them. 

Pulling shopping trolleys, old bike wheels, sofas and empty gas bottles out of the canal is often more fun than it sounds ! 

A day out on Phoenix is always a worthwhile experience whether it’s cleaning up a stretch of waterway or, as we did before Christmas, chugging around the middle of Birmingham in the city’s Light Boat Parade. If you were there, we were the ones
with the fireworks and 'Steptoe & Son' !

Windmill End, Dudley

CONSERVE, IMPROVE, ENCOURAGE

Now in its fourth decade the BCN Society still continues to pursue the aims it was originally founded for.

We aim to conserve, improve and encourage a wide range of interests in the 100 mile network of canals around Birmingham and the Black Country, known as the Birmingham Canal Navigations.

So that, many years in the future, we can still have a canal network to be proud of.

MORE INFORMATION

The BCN Society welcomes new members. Please see our website www.bcn-society.co.uk for more information, or contact Phil.
E-mail: phillipclayton@blueyonder.co.uk, or phone 01902 780920.