44132
The Birmingham Main Line Canal as it heads away from Gas Street Basin, in the Westside of the city centre of Birmingham, West Midlands.
In 1767, several prominent Birmingham businessmen, including Matthew Boulton and others from the Lunar Society, held a public meeting to consider the possibility of building a canal from Birmingham to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal near Wolverhampton, taking in the coalfields of the Black Country. They commissioned the canal engineer James Brindley to propose a route. Brindley came back with a largely level route via Smethwick, Oldbury, Tipton, Bilston and Wolverhampton to Aldersley.
An Act of Parliament was passed to allow the building of the canal, with branches at Ocker Hill and Wednesbury where there were coal mines. The first phase of building was to Wednesbury whereupon the price of coal sold to domestic households in Birmingham halved overnight.
By 6 November 1769, 10 miles (16 km) had been completed to Hill Top collieries in West Bromwich, with a one-mile summit pound at Smethwick. Brindley had tried to dig a cutting through the hill at Smethwick but had encountered ground too soft to cope with.
On 21 September 1772, the canal was joined with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal at Aldersley Junction, however Brindley died a few days later.
Over the next thirty years, as more canals and branches were built or connected it became necessary to review the long, winding, narrow Old Main Line. With a single towpath boats passing in opposite directions had to negotiate their horses and ropes.
In 1824 Thomas Telford was commissioned to examine alternatives. Telford proposed major changes to the section between Birmingham and Smethwick, widening and straightening the canal, providing towpaths on each side, and cutting through Smethwick Summit to bypass the locks, allowing lock-free passage from Birmingham to Tipton.
By 1827 the New Main Line passed straight through, and linked to, the loops of the Old Main Line, creating Oozells Loop, Icknield Port Loop, Soho Loop, Cape Loop and Soho Foundry Loop, allowing continued access to the existing factories and wharves.
A year earlier he had built an improved Rotton Park Reservoir (Edgbaston Reservoir) on the site of an existing fish pool, bringing its capacity to 300 million imperial gallons (1,400,000 m3). A canal feeder took water to, and along, a raised embankment on the south side of the New Main Line to his new Engine Arm branch canal and across an elegant cast iron aqueduct to top up the higher Wolverhampton Level at Smethwick Summit.
The Smethwick Summit was bypassed by 71 ft cutting through Lunar Society member, Samuel Galton's land, creating the Galton Valley, 70 feet deep and 150 feet wide, running parallel to the Old Main Line. Telford's changes here were completed in 1829.
By 1838 the New Main Line was complete: 22⅝ miles of slow canal reduced to 15⅝; between Birmingham and Tipton, a lock-free dual carriageway.
Information Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCN_Main_Line
44132
The Birmingham Main Line Canal as it heads away from Gas Street Basin, in the Westside of the city centre of Birmingham, West Midlands.
In 1767, several prominent Birmingham businessmen, including Matthew Boulton and others from the Lunar Society, held a public meeting to consider the possibility of building a canal from Birmingham to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal near Wolverhampton, taking in the coalfields of the Black Country. They commissioned the canal engineer James Brindley to propose a route. Brindley came back with a largely level route via Smethwick, Oldbury, Tipton, Bilston and Wolverhampton to Aldersley.
An Act of Parliament was passed to allow the building of the canal, with branches at Ocker Hill and Wednesbury where there were coal mines. The first phase of building was to Wednesbury whereupon the price of coal sold to domestic households in Birmingham halved overnight.
By 6 November 1769, 10 miles (16 km) had been completed to Hill Top collieries in West Bromwich, with a one-mile summit pound at Smethwick. Brindley had tried to dig a cutting through the hill at Smethwick but had encountered ground too soft to cope with.
On 21 September 1772, the canal was joined with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal at Aldersley Junction, however Brindley died a few days later.
Over the next thirty years, as more canals and branches were built or connected it became necessary to review the long, winding, narrow Old Main Line. With a single towpath boats passing in opposite directions had to negotiate their horses and ropes.
In 1824 Thomas Telford was commissioned to examine alternatives. Telford proposed major changes to the section between Birmingham and Smethwick, widening and straightening the canal, providing towpaths on each side, and cutting through Smethwick Summit to bypass the locks, allowing lock-free passage from Birmingham to Tipton.
By 1827 the New Main Line passed straight through, and linked to, the loops of the Old Main Line, creating Oozells Loop, Icknield Port Loop, Soho Loop, Cape Loop and Soho Foundry Loop, allowing continued access to the existing factories and wharves.
A year earlier he had built an improved Rotton Park Reservoir (Edgbaston Reservoir) on the site of an existing fish pool, bringing its capacity to 300 million imperial gallons (1,400,000 m3). A canal feeder took water to, and along, a raised embankment on the south side of the New Main Line to his new Engine Arm branch canal and across an elegant cast iron aqueduct to top up the higher Wolverhampton Level at Smethwick Summit.
The Smethwick Summit was bypassed by 71 ft cutting through Lunar Society member, Samuel Galton's land, creating the Galton Valley, 70 feet deep and 150 feet wide, running parallel to the Old Main Line. Telford's changes here were completed in 1829.
By 1838 the New Main Line was complete: 22⅝ miles of slow canal reduced to 15⅝; between Birmingham and Tipton, a lock-free dual carriageway.
Information Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCN_Main_Line