In this edition Andy Tidy
explores the course of the 1843 Bentley Canal, a route which connected the Wolverhampton
Level via the Wyrley and Essington Canal at Wednesfield Junction to the Anson
Arm on the Walsall Canal, before it was progressively abandoned in the 1960’s.
This is quite an extensive
route at 3.5 miles long and therefore represents a significant walk. I
completed the route by bicycle one frosty morning when the ground was hard, but
an alternative would be to use two cars and position one at the far end.
A good place to start is at
Wednesfield Junction which retains its neat iron roving bridge and a small
basin next to the Nickleodeon Pub which ends with the entrance to the top lock. Looking at it today it’s hard to believe that
this was the entrance to a bustling canal which descended through 10 locks to
reach the Walsall Canal.
Only 20 years ago a walk on
the route would have revealed crumbling lock chambers and a reedy channel, but
a massive retail regeneration scheme in the 1990’s swept the top four locks
away, locks which were navigable into the 1960’s. With a bit of searching the
Neachells Road Bridge can still be found, still carrying the road over a dry
canal channel. Press on a bit further,
crossing the sites two more infilled locks, and you arrive at Neachells Branch
Junction, built to serve the Neachells and Merrils Hall Collieries. The half
mile line of the Neachells Arm can be traced as a winding band of open space,
and half way along the channel is apparent with a drainage stream cut into its
base.
The site of the junction is
close to the Tata Steel plant and if you ask the security guard nicely they
will let you look into the grounds where you will find a perfectly restored
classic hump backed canal bridge. The Bentley Canal was almost dead straight
and this very tangible remains provides a pointer to the canal bed which can be
found continuing in the undergrowth of Fibbersley Nature Reserve to the site of
Fly Bridge.
Generally the line of the
Bentley Canal remains visible and is easy to follow on well made cycle tracks,
but you have to be careful not to be misled by the abandoned railways which
cross the area. These can easily be mistaken for canals and you find yourself
on an incline or an impossibly narrow embankment trying hard to convince
yourself that it is a plausible canal route. Built remains are few and far
between, but with linear open public areas to follow and humps in the roads
where the road bridges used to be there is plenty to see. Sometimes, you are
even rewarded by an isolated road bridge or a pipe bridge lurking furtively at
the side of a car park.
The route can be identified
by a linear strip of open grassland as it crosses the sites of Dingle Lane
Bridge and Monmer Bridge. The canal is then lost beneath lorry parks and
industry for three quarters of a mile and a diversion through Ashmore Lake
Industrial Park is needed before the line is reacquired at Springbank Bridge,
which still carries Sharesacre Street over the infilled channel.
From now on the channel plays
hide and seek, mostly hidden but emerging at the road crossings at Sandbeds
Bridge which carried Charles St and Clarke’s Lane Bridge, a stretch which used
to contain two locks. The next three quarters of a mile is open land but runs
through cuttings and can be a bit boggy. The section includes collapsed bridges
at Farm Bridge, Wolverhampton Road Bridge and finally the still standing
parapet of Hopyard Bridge. The line of the canal is then buried beneath the
grounds of County Bridge Primary School before it is completely severed by
the new cutting containing the Black
Country Spine Road.
The tail end of the Bentley
Canal ends with more a whimper than a flourish. The canal bed had been turned
into allotments behind Wrexham Avenue, at the end of which is a path leading to
the Rea Aqueduct. This provides access to the Anson Arm and so to the reeded up
junction of the Bentley Canal, still spanned by a lonely pipe bridge behind the
Walsall Showcase Cinema at J10 of the M6.
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