Birmingham and Fazeley Canal

Template: Infobox River / GKZ_fehlt

The Birmingham and Fazeley - channel is a Narrowboat canal in the West Midlands region of England. He was a link between the channel system of Birmingham and the Black Country early so that the said industrial area and the south-west England, ie London, planned and built. It is connected to the existing Coventry channel. Via Oxford Canal and the River Thames barges reached, the so-called narrowboats, ultimately London. Their cargo consisted mainly of coal, industrial goods and agricultural commodities.

History

The canal was authorized by an Act of Parliament in 1784. Two years earlier, the private canal company entered into an agreement with the Oxford Canal Company, the Canal route between Oxford and Birmingham, to be completed on the Thames. A further agreement was reached with the Coventry Canal Company concluded that the channel would be extended from Atherstone after Fazeley. When finally got the Coventry Canal Company in economic difficulties, the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal Company undertook to Whittington build their channel on Fazeley out and connect there to the Coventry Canal, to ultimately the Inland Navigation Birmingham - London to complete.

John Smeaton was the responsible sewer construction engineer. He reached the completion in 1790 with all connections to the connected channels. The advantages of cooperation with the other channel companies made ​​rapidly by a high volume of cargo on the route Birmingham - London paid, yes, there was even congestions due to the high volume of traffic in the lock seasons in Birmingham. The problem could be solved only some 50 years later by the opening of an alternative route.

Route

The channel begins at BCN Main Line at the channel crossing " Old Turn Junction " near the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham and ends at the channel crossing Fazeley Junction with the Coventry Canal at Tamworth. It has a length of 24 km and has 38 locks on. The lying behind Fazeley Junction 8.8 km long section by Whittington (see above) is technically still a section of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, although it should belong on the basis of the Parliament Act 1784 the Coventry Canal Company, and today as Coventry Canal is called.

The Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, is part of the Warwickshire ring.

Photo Gallery

Lock No. 9 below Newhall Street in Birmingham. On both sides of the road is in each case a floodgate.

The Drayton Swing Bridge

The endpoint of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal under the Watling Street Bridge at Fazeley

The nutty pedestrian bridge at Drayton Bassett, near Fazeley Junction

Swell

  • Hugh McKnight: The Shell Book of Inland Waterways. 2nd edition. David & Charles PLC, 1981, ISBN 978-0715382394.
  • Michael Pearson Canal Companion - Birmingham Canal Navigation. J. M. Pearson & Associates, ISBN 0-907864 -49- X.
  • Canal in England
  • Midlands
  • Built in the 1790s
  • Building in Birmingham
  • Geography (Staffordshire)
  • Building in Staffordshire
  • Geography (West Midlands Metropolitan County)
  • Building in West Midlands (Metropolitan County)
  • Channel in Europe
West Midlands (Region) Tamworth, Staffordshire
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