Tipton Green and Toll End Canals

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Tipton Green and Toll End Canals

legend Tame Valley Canal Tame Valley Jn, Ocker Hill Tunnel Jn, Toll End Jn, Walsall Canal Toll End Branch Toll End Locks (7) Horseley Ironworks (original) Tipton Green Branch Stour Valley Railway Factory Jn, to Wolverhampton, Tipton Factory Locks (3),(below, left) Watery Lane Jn, BCN New Main Line (Island Line) (right) Tipton Green Locks (3) Tipton Green Jn, BCN Old Main Line, Tipton Jn. To Birmingham (right) To Dudley Tunnel

A derelict lock on the Tipton Green Canal, closed in the 1960s, now a public walkway.

Watery Lane Junction. Caggy's Boatyard, within the start of the derelict Toll End Communication Canal (left and centre bridges)

The canals of the BCN around Tipton. Tipton Green and Toll End Branches running across the centre

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.

[edit] History

The Tipton Green Branch was completed around 1805 with 3 locks and a length of quarter of a mile.^[1]

The Toll End Branch was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1783 (along with the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, Broadwaters Canal, and several other branches) to provide access to a proposed new coal mine. Work was started from the Broadwaters Canal (now part of the Walsall Canal) but halted in 1784 for eight years, being completed as a closed branch with two locks in 1801.^[2] In 1806 it was decided to extend this branch to the Tipton Green Branch with further locks, and in January 1809 the Toll End Communication Canal was completed ^[2] making the length 1 ³/₈ miles.^[1]

In 1829 Thomas Telford's BCN New Main Line (Island Line)cut across the Tipton Green Canal, forming Watery Lane Junction, and creating a de-facto Tipton Green Locks Branch of three locks and a Toll End Locks Branch of seven locks. From the later 20th Century Caggy's Boatyard occupied the basin at Watery Lane Junction.^[3]

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.

The Tipton Green Branch became disused in the 1960, and the Toll End Branch in 1966.^[4] The locks and canals were filled in during the 1970s.

The brick base of one lock on the Tipton Green canal, however, remains in existence, forming part of a public footpath that follows the course of the canal.

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 totally obliterated.

[edit] Route

[edit] References

• 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