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A Canal Question

johnedward

johnedward

master brummie
BIRMINGHAM CANALS

HI
CAN SOMEONE OUT THERE CONFIRM A STATEMENT I MADE THE OTHER DAY THAT THERE ARE MORE CANALS AROUND B'HAM THAN AROUND VENICE OR DID I IMAGINE I HAD HEARD THIS SOMEWHERE
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE
JOHN
 
Re: BIRMINGHAM CANALS

Hi. John,
There is a large topic on here about canals. Just type canals in the search box and you will find it. There is a lot of milage of canals around Birmingham but more than that the UK as a whole is well connected in this department. You can travel by canal across the country and from sea to channel. Much of the system is still in use. Probably more so now than ever. Recreational boating now, not horse drawn. Click on this fine sight for more info but beware it is absorbing https://www.mike-stevens.co.uk/maps/. You can also see much of the system, certainly around Birmingham, on Google Earth.
Regards
 
Re: BIRMINGHAM CANALS

John, it is the proud boast of Birmingham that we do have more canals than Venice, next time you are in Birmingham you must have a look round the canal system around Brindley Place and Gas Street Basin, they have been restored wonderfully.
 
Re: BIRMINGHAM CANALS

HI THANKS
THANKS I WILL I HAVEN'T BEEN BACK FOR ABOUT 15 YEARS SINCE I LOST MY MOTHER. WHAT I REMEMBER OF GAS STREET BASIN WAS IN MY PRIME ?? YOUNGER DAYS WAS THE STEERING WHEEL CLUB OH HAPPY HOURS THEN AROUND TO THE RUM RUNNER AND MANY OF THE OTHERS MENTIONED IN THE PUB POSTS .
DAYS GONE NEVER TO RETURN
JOHN
 
Re: BIRMINGHAM CANALS

Hi John,
just a reminder of how brindley Canal looks these days,
it's certainly been tidied up,in fact it's a fantastic place to see
 
Re: BIRMINGHAM CANALS

Liked the first one lots Dennis. It's very good and made me laugh. Great picture.
 
Re: BIRMINGHAM CANALS

Dennis, your inbox is full, I cant send a PM..I'm off on holiday in 2/3 weeks..
Want the usual brought back?
 
Birmingham Canals

Hi, I know this is an old thread, but thought I'd add my two penneth. A year or two ago I watched a programme, I think it may have been one of the evening news like Midlands today. They were talking about this and if I remember correctly, there was a chap on involved with or from the tourist information who said that it had been measured (don't ask me how!) and it was not correct , Venice has more miles of canal, but not by much and that he believed it was a promotional line somebody had thought up for Brum. I am an expatriate Brummie living in Twilight Tamworth so I would love it to be true, but unfortunately it ain't.

It is probably going to be one of those 'mythical facts' that will never be resolved. No Brummie is going to measure it in case they get the wrong answer! And I suppose nobody else really is bothered!
 
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TV

I'm sure I saw a similar explanation on one of the early evening local news magazine programmes a few years ago now Paul.

I'm also exiled in Tamworth :p
 
Paul, Consider the canal system as a whole. There is still 2000 miles of it in use as I understand it, mostly interconnected. I dont believe there is anything like it in the world.
 
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during the general strike in the 1930s my father used to go diving in the walsal canal tp pick up coal that had dropped of the barges so we could have a fire
 
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Birmingham

"Birmingham is at the hub of the country's canal network. There are 35 miles (60 km) of canals within the city, of which most are navigable. Birmingham is often described as having more miles of canal than Venice. This is technically correct (Venice has 26 miles). However, Birmingham is far larger than Venice, so the latter has a far higher concentration of canals; and the type of waterway is very different."
 
I've always believed that, but I went to Venice this year and believe me there is a lot of water there.
 
Don't get picky lads lets leave it as it is.

Villa is a better team than Blues, leave it as that

This Forum is the best anywhere

I just like it like that:D

I'll go and have a rest now
 
Alf said:
Don't get picky lads lets leave it as it is.

Villa is a better team than Blues, leave it as that

This Forum is the best anywhere

I just like it like that:D

I'll go and have a rest now
Click to expand...
What was all that about Alf?:rolleyes:
 
Saturday Bridge was built 20 years after Friday Bridge, but it took another 55 years until Sunday Bridge was built.
Friday Bridge was at the top of Summer Row, only 200 yards from Great Charles Street, and Saturday Bridge further down the hill - the one which is still standing. You can see the name from the towpath.

The question is: where is Sunday Bridge? The name appears on some old maps, but I don't think it's been used for years. As a clue it's away from the centre of Brum, just outside the city boundary in fact.
Peter
 
There used to be a Saint Sunday's Bridge at Leicester, but I don't suppose you mean that far outside the boundary, Peter!
 
Peter thats very interesting. There is a lovely memorial at Key Hill Cemetery for a Thomas Breidenbach the information is he was a foreign merchant of Friday Bridge. I never knew what this mean't, I do now thank you Peter. The monument to Thomas is by 'Fedi' of Florence and states it is greatly admired as a work of exqisite beauty. He died on April 9th 1845 aged 71.
 
A few years ago I heard that Birmingham has more trees than any other City. I've never seen this in any publicity material however. Can anybody confirm having heard this? The canals one is often trotted out but I'm beginning to think I might have dreamed up the trees tale!

Bob
 
Glaciermint, every time I revisit Brum I'm put off by the number of trees you see everywhere, not that I dislike trees (quite the reverse), but they really have taken over compared with fifty-odd years ago, when I lived there. As a kid I found the outer suburbs where I lived boring, mainly because the the trees were scrappy, being less than ten years old, and often planted on immense grass verges to decorate the City Engineer's new roads. There were some trees in Handsworth where I was born and where my grandparents lived, but almost nothing in places like Aston, Hockley, Nechells and Spring Hill, all of which I got to know quite well.
I may be a bit cynical, but I do regret that so many decent buildings were knocked down and replaced by grass and oddly sited trees. Trees just didn't belong there.
By comparison, I was walking round Southwark in London this morning, (a bit like Bordesley or Camp Hill in Brum), and was really charmed by the way so many tenement blocks have been either weeded out or refurbished, leaving a few open spaces, which often have huge old plane trees. I think the one saving grace of the London inner city is that roads were not allowed to take over.
But I am a confessed anti-road lobbyist.
Peter
 
I doubt if anyone is too concerned, but my question about Sunday Bridge was a non-starter, because I have now discovered that Sunday Bridge was not over the canal as I thought, but over the river Tame itself, at Newton Road, Great Barr. The 1834 OS map does not show the Tame Valley Canal at all, as it wasn't opened until 1844, and Sunday Bridge is clearly markede over the river, further down the hill. My apologies for such carelessness.
The canal bridge there, incidentally, as I remember is quite a deep one, as the canal is in a cutting here.
Yours with a red face,
Peter
 
Dave M said:
Peter this is the Canal Bridge Dave
Click to expand...

Well, that picture of High Bridges/Scott bridge brought back memories. It must have been taken from Green Lane Bridge, a single track width bridge. I walked the parapet of both of those bridges as a lad, in fact all of canal bridges of the Tame Valley canal from Perry Barr locks up to Stone Cross. The most dangerous of all was the aqueduct where the Canal crosses the River Tame, the edge of the bridge was unguarded and set into the steep embankment it sends a shiver down my back even thinking about some of the daring (foolish) deeds we got up to.
Most of us lived to tell the tale.
 
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