Tipton Green and Toll End Canals
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The Tipton Green Branch and Toll End Branch (or Toll End Communication Canal) were narrow canals comprising part of the Birmingham Canal Navigations near Tipton (formerly in Staffordshire), West Midlands, England. These canals no longer exist.
History
The Tipton Green Branch was completed around 1805 with 3 locks and a length of quarter of a mile.[1]
The
In 1829
The Horseley Ironworks operated their first foundry from a site between the two branches where many iron bridges, including the Engine Arm Aqueduct (1825), two roving bridges at Smethwick Junction (1828) and Galton Bridge, were cast.
Having suffered from a century or more of declining traffic due to the advent of trains and then motor vehicles, the Tipton Green Branch became disused in 1960, and the Toll End Branch in 1966, after some of the locks along the canal became immovable.[4] The locks and canals were infilled in 1968. The Tipton Green locks were lined with houses which were built around the mid 19th century, but these were demolished around the time of the canal's closure.
The brick base of one lock on the Tipton Green canal, however, remains in existence, forming part of a public footpath that followed the course of the canal and was opened in about 1975.
One part of the Toll End canal has since been occupied by the car park of a factory in Toll End Road. There is also an "open" drain along the route of the canal at the back of Tipton Cemetery, but apart from this the canal has been almost obliterated. Almost all of the bridges are still in existence, apart from the bridge on Bridge Road which carried the road under the Toll End Canal. This bridge was replaced with a flat road several years after the canal was filled in.
Route
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 0-7153-4660-1.
- ^ ISBN 0-7509-2077-7.
- ISBN 0-907864-49-X.
- ISBN 0-947712-08-9
- Ordnance Survey Six Inch Series (1:10,560), Map SO99SE, 1955
- Historical Map of the Birmingham Canals, Richard Dean, M. & M. Baldwin, 1989, ISBN 0-947712-08-9