Just a quick heads up as the great Canal Hunter Andy Tidy has posted some new episodes of a great canal history series on YouTube that I have plugged before about lost local canals – this time covering coal transport from Cannock to various locations near here, via Chasewater, Aldridge and Pelsall.
Andy Tidy is of course the proprietor of the wonderful Jam Butty, a boat selling preserves that will be recognised by anyone attending a local canal event.
The new episodes are a great study of how our still extant canals acted as trunk routes moving coal and freight to the industries that consumed them, and how they linked the lost canals that Andy has told us about in the past.
Andy has created a wonderful series that I adore, and You can subscribe here – there are already a lot of great episodes, including one on the lost Slough Arm in Brownhills and all about the Black Cock Bridge which I featured previously here. He’s also covered the Ogley Locks in a fascinating series of videos you can begin to explore here and it continues here.
My congratulations to Andy for a lovely, beautifully produced and informative series of films. I commend you to subscribe.
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Quite an amazing series, i take my hat off to Andy for putting this incredible history of ours into a series of videos for everyone to see. Thanks Andy.
In October 1962 the Walsall Observer reports on the proposed closure of the 107 year old Cannock Extension Canal from Pelsall Junction to the Hednesford Basin. It was believed that the waterway, which was one of the last to open in the country, will be drained to facilitate further opencast mining in the Churchbridge area…
…It says the canal has been used to carry coal from the Chase pits to the Black Country, Birmingham, South Warwickshire and Oxfordshire. The Hednesford Basin had been barred to traffic in 1961 due to the closure of several local collieries. It was believed that the Grove Colliery Basin would be closed next year and all remaining traffic transferred to the Anglesey Basin Brownhills….
…Mr. A. Yates for Yates Bros Ltd, of Norton Comes, who have been building boats since 1852, said that when the Churchbridge locks were blasted several years ago without notification, it sounded the death knell to his industry…