Adjacent Canals to the south and east

Adjacent waters to the south east

December 2022

By a quirk of history not all canals in Birmingham and the Black Country fall within the scope of the Birmingham Canal Navigations.

The original remit of the first Birmingham Canal was to connect the city (or town as it was then) with a good supply of coal in West Bromwich. That meant that the initial direction was to build a canal to the north, and then to extend it still further to the north at Wolverhampton to join up with the nearest element of James Brindley's grand cross - The Staffs and Worcester Canal.

The BCN network expanded from that start, partly by construction and partly by acquisition but apart from the construction of the "Bottom Road" ie the Birmingham and Fazeley, the BCN never extended far to the south or east. This meant that the later connections were achieved by other canal companies including the Worcester Birmingham, the Stratford and the Warwick and Birmingham Canal (later to become the Grand Union).

The hunt for archive photos of the BCN started with the missing 60 miles, and this remains its main focus, but over time the collection has grown to include many images of the surviving sections, showing how they used to look in the past. But even this expansion of remit became limiting and so I have added this homepage to link to other posts which capture images on the various neighbouring waterways and so builds a more complete photographic record of the region as a whole.

1. Grand Union - Camp Hill area

2. Grand Union - Digbeth Area

3. Grand Union - Saltey Cut

4. Worcester Birmingham Canal

5. North Stratford Canal

6. Birmingham and Fazeley

7. Tame Valley