BCN Main Line
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Wolverhampton to Birmingham
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The BCN Main Line, or Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line is the evolving route of the Birmingham Canal between Birmingham and Wolverhampton in England.
The name Main Line was used to distinguish the main Birmingham to Wolverhampton route from the many other canals and branches built or acquired by the Birmingham Canal Navigations company.
BCN Old Main Line
On 24 January 1767, a number of prominent Birmingham businessmen, including
On 24 February 1768, an
By 6 November 1769, 10 miles (16 km)
In 1770 work started towards Wolverhampton, from above the third Spon Lane lock at what is now the
Water shortage
The original Birmingham Canal was extremely successful but there was a problem with supplying sufficient water to the Smethwick Summit. Matthew Boulton's partner,
In 1784, after two years of counter-productive attempts at legislation, the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal Company (created to propose a competitive canal from the coal fields to Birmingham and also a link to the Coventry Canal at Fazeley) merged with the Birmingham Canal Company[3] (ten years later the name of the merged company was changed to the Birmingham Canal Navigations Company) and the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal was started. This created an even greater need for water to supply the thirteen locks at Farmer's Bridge and eleven at Aston, all running downhill and taking water out of the Birmingham system.
Smeaton's improvements
There were problems of congestion at Smethwick caused by the time taken to traverse the locks and with supplying sufficient water to the summit level.
Other changes
The Act allowed for branches to extend from the main line, and for private wharves and basins. In May 1821 the loop of the main line around Oldbury was bypassed by a straight cut, shortening the route between Birmingham and Wolverhampton.[7]
BCN New Main Line
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. As traffic grew the locks at Smethwick Summit were still a constriction.
In 1824 Thomas Telford was commissioned to examine alternatives.[1] He famously travelled the route of the Old Line and reported the existing canal as:[2]
"... little more than a crooked ditch, with scarcely the appearance of a towing path, the horses frequently sliding and staggering in the water, the hauling lines sweeping the gravel into the canal, and the entanglement at the meeting of boats being incessant; whilst at the locks at each end of the short summit at Smethwick, crowds of boatmen were always quarrelling, or offering premiums for the preference of passage; the mine owners injured by the delay, were loud in their just complaints."
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. Telford's proposals were swayed by the threat of a new Birmingham to Liverpool railway.[1] His suggestions were accepted and he was appointed chief engineer on 28 June 1824.
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 reservoir also fed water to the Birmingham Level at the adjacent Icknield Port Loop.
The Smethwick Summit was bypassed by 71 ft (22 m) cutting
Telford designed a cast iron bridge, the
In 1837, after Telford's death, a new section of his planned canal was opened together with the 360 yard Coseley Tunnel, complete with double towpath,[1] cutting out the long detour around Coseley and Wednesbury Oak, and therefore relegating it as the Wednesbury Oak Loop. As with many of the branch canals on the BCN, most of the Wednesbury Oak Loop became officially abandoned from 1954, but the northern stretch remains navigable to the British Waterways workshops at Bradley.[8]
By 1838 the New Main Line was complete: 22+5⁄8 miles (36.4 km) of slow canal reduced to 15+5⁄8 miles (25.1 km);[1] between Birmingham and Tipton, it was a lock-free dual carriageway. It was also called the Island Line as it was cut straight through the hill at Smethwick known as the Island.[1]
Later
In 1892 the Smethwick Engine was replaced by a new pumping house between the old and new canals, just north of Brasshouse Lane Bridge in Smethwick.
Late in the 20th century, a pair of concrete tunnels near Galton Bridge were built to carry the Telford Way road.
Ryland Aqueduct, built in 1836 carrying the canal over the main
The Smethwick Summit - Galton Valley Conservation Area[13] protects the Old and New lines between the Birmingham city boundary and Spon Lane locks.[14]
Features
Junctions
Other features
Gallery
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Bridge over Old Main Line in downtown Birmingham
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Twotoll islandat Winson Green Junction.
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Recently constructed octagonal BCN Toll house at Smethwick top lock.
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The Engine Arm Aqueduct.
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The New Smethwick Pumping Station (restored).
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Galton Bridge and tunnel.
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Stewart Aqueduct — Motorway (M5) over rail over canal over canal.
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Bromford Junction - Spon Lane bottom lock visible through one of the Horseley Ironworks bridges.
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Dudley Port, Tipton, on the Old Main Line
See also
- Canals of the United Kingdom
- History of the British canal system
- Water levels of the Birmingham Canal Navigations
- Waterscape
References
- ^ ISBN 1-84306-207-0.
- ^ a b c d e Smethwick and the BCN, Malcolm D. Freeman, 2003, Sandwell MBC and Smethwick Heritage Centre Trust
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hadfield, Charles. Canals of the West Midlands. Newton Abbott: David & Charles.
- ISBN 0-7509-2077-7.
- ^ "Birmingham's Canal Network - In Brindley's Footsteps". Culture 24. Retrieved 3 August 2019.
- ISBN 0-907864-53-8.
- ISBN 0-7509-2031-9.
- ISBN 0-907864-49-X.
- ^ "£700,000 aqueduct scheme". Birmingham Daily Post. England. 11 October 1966. Retrieved 30 August 2022 – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
- ^ "In memory of a monument". Birmingham Daily Post. England. 1 September 1967. Retrieved 30 August 2022 – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ "Frieze Launch". Sandwell Evening Mail. England. 31 August 1991. Retrieved 30 August 2022 – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ Sandwell MBC conservation areas Archived 12 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Galton Valley Conservation Area - Review of boundaries Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Historic England. "Smethwick New Pumping House (1077154)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 23 April 2015.