A few changes to the blog

A few changes to the blog
April 2020

With no boat travel possible in the immediate future and my fingers stuck in a lot of other waterways related pies, my blog posts have become sporadic to say the least, and mostly consist of links to other canal related material.

So where does this leave the long running Capt Ahab blog?

You could argue that my move into video via the increasingly popular Canal Hunter YouTube series has replaced blogging, but in reality they are very different mediums. The weekly 20 minute videos are a great way to bring current and archive material together into one easily accessible place, but not so good for referencing. 

One of the spin offs from the videos is the increasing number of archive photos which find their way to me. Whilst I have added many to my old "Other 60 Miles" exploration posts, this approach is rather haphazard and unstructured. What I really want is to have a resource where all the old images are freely available for viewing in a format which can be followed in a logical way, and rediscovered at will.

I guess that in reality a dedicated website would be an option, but we are where we are and  I don't want to cast aside the masses of information I have built up within the blog over the years.

So I have come to a decision which, as a first step, has seen me rationalise the tabs on the blog (did you even notice they were there?). i have dropped some which have become redundant over the years and instead crested a new one dedicated to archive photographs on the lost sections of the BCN. This sits alongside the well established "Other 60 Miles" tab and will be searchable in the same way.

1. Click on the Tab to find a page containing links to each lost canal.

2. The individual canal "home page" will have a short history of the waterway plus maps and most importantly, links to other pages containing the sequenced photos broken down into manageable chunks.

3. Individual pages will include links either to lake you back to the canal home page, or to further posts on the same line.

I am very aware that although my knowledge of the lost sections of the BCN has grown a lot over the years, it is by no means complete, which is where you come in. As time permits I will publish strings of individual posts on specific waterways and, where known, I will add locations and dates. If there are details missing or the descriptions are inaccurate I would love to receive your feedback via the comments function, thus expanding our collective bank of knowledge.

I am not going to rush this process as I want to enjoy its evolution, and its my hope that you will come along for the ride and feel free to engage where you can. 

Hatherton Branch Canal

Hatherton Branch Canal (aka The Churchbridge Branch)
Feb 2020

The following links will take to you to two videos exploring the Hatherton Branch Canal.

The first follows the historic route before it was abandoned in the 1950's:

And the second explores the planned route of the restored canal:

Exploring the Cannock Extension Canal

Cannock Extension Canal rediscovered
Feb 2020

I published three YouTube videos on the long lost Cannock Extension Canal last month, collating loads of old photos I have found into the sequence in which they would have been encountered had you traveled the canal 60 years ago.

This is an obscure lost canal sitting out on the extreme northern edge of the BCN, and ne which was totally lost to opencast coal mining in the 1960's.

Cannock Extension Canal - part one

Cannock Extension Canal - part two

Churchbridge Locks

Wrapping up series two of Canal Hunter

Wrapping up series two of Canal Hunter
April 2019

For the readers who don't subscribe to Canal Hunter on YouTube, but like to follow my exploration of lost canals, here are all the links to the second series.

The second series follows the extended Birmingham Canal out to Wolverhampton and the Staffs and Worcester Canal at Aldersley, exploring the lost sections which attach to it.

1. Titford branches including Tat Bank, Causeway Green and Portway Branches.

2. Oldbury Loop plus the Chemical Arm and Rattlechain Lagoon

3. Toll End Communication Canal and the Haines Branch

4. Wednesbury Oak Loop to Bradley

5. Bradley Locks and Gospel Oak Branches

6. Basins of Wolverhampton

7. Around the Wolverhampton 21 Locks\

Whilst not on the BCN, I also made a short video in Manchester looking for the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal

With the trees coming back into leaf and the undergrowth obscuring the remains on the ground, that brings my hunt for lost canals to an end for the season. However, I suspect that my enthusiasm for canal linked history will result in a few more videos over the summer! 

Happy Hunting.

Canal Hunter series two is back

Canal Hunter Series Two
February 2019

Well, we are back from our month of travels on the far side of the world and in some ways it's a return to business as usual.

Titford Reservoir taken from the Causeway Green Branch

I hope you enjoyed the photos from our month long camper van trip which circled South Island and traversed North Island of New Zealand. In some ways camper vanning was similar to boating but with less comfortable beds! It was am amazing experience but fear not, we are not about to ditch our boats of favour if a van.

Way back in late December 2018 I started work on a second series of Canal Hunter videos for my You Tube channel and picked up the hunt by following the line of the Birmingham Canal as it was extended from Smethwick to the wider world at Wolverhampton.

Canal Hunter series two, episode one - the lost canals in Titford.

The fist episode looks at looks lost bits of canal in the Titford area, but one word of warning. The wrap up section was shot in a particularly bleak and windswept spot under Portway Hill resulting in a lot of wind noise. It does emphasise the exposed nature of the place but please stick with that bit!

I have had lots of positive comment from the first series, along with some production tips which I have tried to factor in. Lots of people want longer to look at the maps, so I have tended to stretch them to 10 seconds but, if thats just not long enough, pause the video as you watch and get yourself orientated. Better still, find the side by side map service at the National Library of Scotland and go to the Titford area and follow my explorations in a separate window, zooming and pausing to your hearts content!

It has also been lovely seeing so many posts on social media sites of viewers who have indeed "got out there" and had a look for themselves - even exploring the tunnel under Chance's glass works.

This series will use the old line of the Birmingham Canal as a hanger to explore the lost sections attached to it in six episodes, which I will get completed before we start our 2019 cruising season. Oh, and then there is the small task of making the ever popular Wild Garlic Chutney - I had better get cracking......

Feel free to share this series around to any canal enthusiasts you know - there is such a wealth of history attached to the Birmingham Canal Navigationsand it deserves more a bit more recognition.

Happy Hunting (and watching).

Cemlyn Canal

Cemlyn Canal
February 2016

The Cemlyn Canal.... Cemlyn Canal, I am not sure I have heard of that one I hear you cry.

Well, as an enthusiast of obscure derelict waterways my ears pricked up when my brother mentioned his discovery of an abandoned waterways near the western end of the Welsh Highland Railway.

Cemlyn Canal terminus

This fascinating discovery was tucked away in my memory and filed for exploration when we visit friends at their holiday home in Criccieth. A weekend visit rolled around and much to my pleasure I realised that our route in took us right past the canal remains.

Cemlyn Canal bridge

This short tidal waterways extended the navigable extent of the Afon Dwyryd to a loading wharf at Maentwrog,  312 yards upstream from a sharp bend inthe river. There were no locks, one bridge, two wharf's and only navigable at high tide.

The canal was cut in 1823 to pick up slate from the local quarries in the Ffestiniog area and operated for just 35 years before sliding back into obscurity reverting to its original activity as a drainage ditch. 

The canal was really one long quayside known as Parry's Wharf from which slate was loaded and dispatched to markets via the river estuary. The channel was an excavation of an established stream and even in its heyday it was too narrow for boats to turn or pass.

To get a feel for the maximum dimensions of the craft using the canal you only have to look at the solitary access bridge which remains in situ in its original format, and under which boats had to pass with their masts lowered. Its safe to say that this canal was a waterway for small craft only, but looking at the depth downstream in the Afon Dwyryd Navigation it was only ever capable of carrying shallow drafted boats.

 Cemlyn Canal Junction

Afon Dwyryd Navigation

Historical records indicate that boats on the Dwyryd were operated by two men and carries an estimated six tons per boat, which was little more than the diminutive tub boats (20ft x 6ft) used in the Coalbrookdate area. A typical month would have seen maybe 43 boat movements from the wharf representing over half the boat traffic on the river.

The main motive power would have been the ebb and flood of the tide, supplemented by sail whenever wind conditions permitted. The boats would have grouped waiting for the tide and then been swept down the river navigation to coastal craft waiting out at the mouth.

As with most canals, the construction of the Ffestiniog Railway killed the canal trade with the monthly canal volume contained in just 120 wagons. This move to rail was driven by simple economics with boats charging 15 shillings per ton vs six shillings on the tracks pre steam and falling to 2s 6d per ton when hauled by the new locos in 1864.

Lapal Canal - Leasowes

Lapal Canal
Leasowes
July 2015

Tracking down the western portal of the Lapal Tunnel is very tricky All trace has been covered but the maps suggest it exited just west of Lapal Lane South, close to the fishponds of St Marys Abbey. 

Map of western end of Lapal Canal - courtesy of Waterways Routes

Fishpond dams with manhole cover

There is a footpath from Lapal Lane to the fishponds which offers a great view of the remains of St Mary's. There appears to be a vent / manhole cover in one pf the fishpond dams which clearly is not medieval and may be a tunnel vent inserted after closure.

Canal at Mucklow Hill

The canal swung north at this point and crossed what is now the A456 just below the  Black Horse Pub, an old boatman's pub.

From here the canal track becomes obvious heading north just to the west of Cloister Drive with the towpath turned into a cinder footpath. The canal bed is full of weed cut clearly visible as it contours round the hill eventually reaching a narrows which was reconstructed in the 1990's. 

Then suddenly the canal is in water as it crosses Leasowes Park on one of the biggest embankments have ever seen. I had been wondering where all the tunnel spoil went and I guess the embankment offers a likely solution to its absence from the fields around the western end.

The canal is largely empty over the embankment with just a foot or so of rainwater offering a canal like appearance but it offers a great circular walk right up to Mucklow Hill and then back again on the other side, the path flanked by the remains of a minature railway track with amazing views over the trees surrounding Breaches Pool in Leasowes Park. A spectacular sight even in the pouring rain!

Lapal Canal - Selly Oak to the Lapal Tunnel

Lapal Canal

Selly Oak Park to the Lapal Tunnel

July 2015

It has to be said that the exploration of the BCN's lost canals can often lead me to the dark and dingy back end of the Black Country but this walk turns out to be quite a delight, jumping from public park yo open space and linked by  a nearly continous thread of an long lost canal. If ever there is a route worth walking its this one.

Footpath on the Lapal Canal Route

You dont need fancy maps apart from something to help you find the locations of the two tunnel portals which are not immediately apparent.

Lapal Canal western end - courtesy of Waterways Routes

The route out of Selly Oak Park is clear with the canal infilled but its bed remains as a path which proceeds in a straight line alongside Reservoir Road as far as Bourn Brook and then alongside Swinford Road to the now buried portal at California.

Somery Lane Bridge

Along the way the track runs under a tunnel of trees. Mostly its a pleasant walk but here and there it lapses into a tip with burnt matresses and abandoned motorcycles in the verges. 

At the California end the lad starts to rise and the canal used to run in a deep cutting. Today Somery Lane Bridge remains the cutting filled to the brim and the line beyond built on by an industrial site.

Beyond Somery Lane

At  the very end, where the tunnel dug under the hill, the portal was buried long ago. Today the entrance area is public open ground, built on a landfill site with just the stubs of old ventilation pipes to show its boundaries. There is just one telltale built fragment remaining - a wall which was a bridge parapet over the tunnel portal which isn't recognisable as such unless you know what to look for.

Bridge parapet over tunnel entrance

1. Same place in the 1950's

Lapal Canal - Selly Oak

Lapal Canal

Selly Oak

July 2015

Posts in this series:
1. Selly Oak - this post
2. Selly Oak Park to Lapal Tunnel
3. Lapal Tunnel to Leasowes Park

At last, after a long break I have been back on the trail of the lonesome canal.

Lapal Canal courtesy of Waterways Routes

The prospect of "family church" was not an enticing so in spite of a very suspect weather forecast I was up and out by 6.30am, initially visiting Kings Norton to pick up a bagful of Himalayan Balsam flowers to try out their potential for a jelly, a vinegar and a cordial and then on to take a look at what is now referred to as the Lapal Canal.

Hamalayan Balsam in Kings Norton Park

Now lets get this right. What I am actually talking about is the abandoned section between Hawne Basin and Selly Oak which includes and infamous Lapal Tunnel with its tendency to collapse.Technically this is part of the Dudley No 2 Canal that went all the way to Blowers Green where it met up with the Dudley No1 Canal but the Lapal Canal has a nice ring to it..

Junction with the Dudley No2 Canal

This six mile stretch is the last significant chunk of the abandoned BCN which I have yet to explore and afterwards there is just an assortment of odds and ends so this was something of a landmark walk.

Lapal Canal - Battery Park site under construction August 2015

I started at the Selly Oak end, parking at the Park and Ride but as an alternative there is a good car park in front of the Scout Hut in Selly Oak Park. This starting point offers a good vantage point to view the old canal junction where the Dudley No2 joined the Worcester Birmingham Canal, now visible as just a rise in the towpath.

Harborne Lane Bridge in Selly Oak

The canal route behind the new Homebase store is not accessible but its route emerges beneath the new Harborne Lane bridge which was built with a navigable channel beneath. 

However, the canal route become much more apparent as it enters Selly Oak Park. 

Selly Oak Park Bridge

There has been a lot of time spent of this section, through to the extant Selly Oak Park Bridge which still stands astride a dry channel.

Stourbridge Extenston Canal Part 3 - to Standhills

Stourbridge Extension Canal

Part 3 - Bromley Bridge to Standhills

September 2014

The Stourbridge Extension Canal has near legendary status in the annals of lost waterway hunting.  From Bromley Lane Bridge north the pickings get increasingly thin.

Standhills Branch from 1902 OS - Godfrey

For a start they inconveniently built a housing estate in the canal line in the early 1980's, so rather that clambering through one hundred back gardens I opted for the more socially acceptable proxy of walking the adjoining abandoned railway track of which one set of rails is still in place. There was something slightly surreal about walking between the platforms of a long abandoned station (the ones you can see on the picture with the canal to the left.). 

 North of Bromley Bridge 1955

The same area in 2014

It was also very remote with no access point for 1/2 a mile. Having met a very strange chap at Bromley Junction I was glad not to run into any undesirables on this  lonely section.

Eventually you can feel as much as see the railway bending to the right, cutting a corner where the canal drifts away a couple of hundred feet. Its here the Standhills Branch left and obligingly there is an access path into Tunstall Road, which lies on the path of the canal.

Canal Bed at Standhills Branch Junction

The 3/4 mile Standhills Branch snaked north west to within 100 yards of the Western Boundary Fault, being built in 1840 when there was no pre existing industrial activity along its route. 

The course of the canal is ill defined, with the entire area being regraded before the estate was built. To track its course you really need a copy of the 1903 OS map and overlay this on the modern A-Z using the few reference points available to you. As far as I can tell it crossed open space between Lapwood Avenue and Vernier Avenue, went beneath Alder Road and then commenced a sweeping 90 degree clockwise arc under the sports field of The Crestwood School. It exited at the north west corner, passing under a bridge which used to carry an extended Ketley Road at Standhills House

Crestwood School sports field - canal exited top right

The bridge was removed to the BCLM for safe keeping,but photos remain with a constriction date on 1838 cast into the side and it has since been re erected on the Stourbridge Town Arm near the Bonded Warehouse.

The now demolished bridge on Ketley Lane

It was from here on that I expected I would find a couple of hundred yards of well preserved channel as it wound round the back of the Ketley Brick Works. Sadly, whilst it was there when Langford did his exploration in 1992, and still present on the current Google Earth images, I seem to be a year too late! The Brickworks area has just been flattened with an impenetrable fence erected round its perimeter.

The final few hundred yards!

I walked round to Green Lane / Ketley Road and found what appeared to be the canal crossing point. There were even some bricks in the ground which may nave been part of the canal edging but beyond its just featureless public open space with no trace of the terminal basin. its wharves or lime kilns, all submerged in waste from the Horton Colliery in the first few years of the 20th century. I guess it means its all under there somewhere.

As was the case at Bromley, the mines were closed by 1880, with Standhills Colliery being briefly reopened during WW2, but by then the canal was long gone.

Ketley Brickworks occupied a busy site at the far end of the canal and latterly the factory element was removed to allow access to the Old Hill (Etruria) Marl which was trucked for processing at the extant brickworks on Dreadnought Road, Tansey Green a little further along the old line of the canal. The site is now being leveled and presumably restored to agriculture and or housing.

With about 2/3rd of the canal line explored you would be forgiven for expecting another couple of posts as we track the route to Stallings  at Gornalwood. Sadly, the fate meted out to the end of the Standhills Branch is repeated along the rest of the course. The once mighty Corbyn's Hall Ironworks and Shutt End Ironworks both died a death and were completely redeveloped at the Pensnett Trading Estate. I could show you photos of First Avenue which lies over the course of the canal, but its all rather depressing and dull with the final basin sitting beneath what is now the Ibstock Brickyard. 

I guess its some compensation that the brick industry which used coal from the canal has survived and thrived, with modern technology managing to dig ever bigger holes  in the ground for clay. What's the guessing that in years to come fuel will be in such short supply that coal shafts are sunk way beyond the Western Boundary Fault, or maybe the area is ripe for a spot of fracking.....

Well, that's it for the Stourbridge Extension.

Stourbridge Extension Canal Part 2 - Bromley Branch

Stourbridge Extension Canal

Part 2 - Bromley Branch

September 2014

The three furlong Bromley Branch canal opened in 1841, a year after the main line and was built, specifically to tap into the surface coalfields which existed right up to the Western Boundary Fault. Up to this point the Thick Coal (30 ft) was about 500 feet below the surface and well within the reach of contemporary mining techniques but beyond the fault line it dips to about 1500ft.

Bromley Branch Canal - OS 1903 - Godfrey Edition

This close to the fault line the strata is confused and broken so the coal measures were unpredictable and prone to running out. This clearly had an impact on the associated collieries which were in some cases quite short lived. 

Canal Trench at Bromley Junction

A note about the Western Boundary Fault. If you have any interest in geology: it runs generally north / south and represents the western edge of the thick coal seam on which this the region built it's prosperity. The absence of accessible coal beyond this line, which extends up to Cannock Chase, resulted in little mining activity along the line of the Staffs and Worcester, and the consequent survival of most of the original built canal structures. By contrast, come up the Stourbridge Canal and review the area between locks 4 and 5 of the Stourbridge16. Higher up there is much evidence of lock sides and bridges being built up to compensate for subsidence, but none lower down.

Canal Wall opposite Bromley Junction

But back to the Bromley Branch. It exited the main line to the west, just above the Stop Lock with a brick roving bridge. There are no remains of the bridge but some well built canal wall is evident opposite. Furthermore, the saucer shaped channel is visible and represents a marked depression as you walk the towpath to Bromley Bridge.

The short waterway served a cluster of collieries including Slaters Hall, Little Meadow, and Coal Leasowes, but all had closed by 1882 by which time the arm had been drained. Coal Leasowes was briefly re opened in the first two decades of the 20th century and the reopened canal is clearly marked in the 1903 OS map of the area (above).

Cinder path following the towpath (canal was on the left)

Unusually for the Stourbridge Extension, the track of the canal is completely accessible with a cinder path pretty much following the line of the towpath. The canal channel occupied the linear space to the north of the path, with the back of the gardens being the far side of the route. A concrete pad extends over the route and was presumably to offer foot access to The Lays Iron Foundry site.

Bromley Branch terminus at Crab Lane

From there the route continues on twisting north at the far end and terminating at Crab Lane with the charmingly named Dingle Primary School occupying the site of Burrows Colliery, the last colliery before reaching the fault line.

 The weeded line heading north from Bromley Junction

The canal channel beneath Bromley Lane Bridge

The canal between the Bromley Junction and Bromley Bridge was in water till the 1960's and is still a weed filled ditch with the canal passing through the western arch of the Bromley Lane bridge (The Kingswinford Branch of the Railway used the other one).