Birmingham and Smethwick area homepage

Birmingham and Smethwick area homepage

Birmingham was the original destination of Brindley's 1769 Birmingham Canal, the destination for all that coal dug out in the West Bromwich area.

Birmingham Old Wharf

Even today, the Birmingham Canal scene presents as a jumble of arms, branches, loops and basins but 'back in the day' the scene was even more chaotic. The canals fed into the new area of town, built on higher ground and the area was soon riddled with waterways with a density which came close to what we see in Venice today. Thats as far as I will be drawn on the Birmingham / Venice comparison....

What we see today is only a part of what used to exit and the links below take you to individual posts which contain archive photos of the area's waterways which have been swept away in the repeated reinventions of the Birmingham metropolis.

Listed broadly from south to north:

1. Cape Arm

2. Avery Loop

3. Smethwick summit and locks

4. Sandwell coal chutes

5. Chance's Basin

6. Bromford Iron Works Basin

7. Union Arm and Izon Old Turn

8. The Engine Arm

9. New Main Line at Smethwick

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A Canal Hunter video exploring the lost loops of canal can be found by clicking here.

A Canal Hunter video exploring the lost summit at Smethwick can be found by clicking here.

The above photos have been assembled from various sources, including those freely found on the internet. My thanks go to the many photographers alive and dead who have contributed to this collection and in so doing, are keeping the memory of these lost canals alive. These images are reproduced for ease of research are are not necessarily the property of this blog, and as such should not be used for commercial gain without the explicit permission of the owner (whoever that may be).