Wednesbury Oak Loop - History

History

The Wednesbury Oak Loop was one of the loops in the original, meandering Birmingham Canal, later called the BCN Main Line, which was built by James Brindley after the company obtained an Act of Parliament in 1768. A line from coal mines at Wednesbury to central Birmingham was opened in 1769, with both ends built on the 453-foot (138 m) contour, and a summit in the middle, which rose to 491 feet (150 m) to pass over high ground at Smethwick. This created a lucrative coal trade, and the rest of the main line, which passed around the Wednesbury Oak Loop, was started in 1770. This section was built to follow the 473-foot (144 m) contour, leaving the first section half-way up the flight of six locks at Spon Lane. It too faced high ground at Coseley, but in this case, a circuitous route was followed to avoid a change in level and any locks. The line ended with a flight of twenty locks at Wolverhampton, later increased by one, to drop the canal down to meet the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal at Aldersley Junction, and this section of the main line opened on 21 September 1772. There was some suggestion at the time that Brindley had added extra meanders to increase the length of the canal, and therefore the tolls that could be charged, but this was strenuously denied in a newspaper advertisement placed by Brindley on 14 January 1771, where he argued that the winding route was necessary to ensure that the most customers could be served.

In 1824, Thomas Telford was asked to improve the main line, which he did by straightening and widening parts of it, and creating a new main line from Tipton to Smethwick. Telford was one of a later generation of canal engineers, who used cuttings and embankments to allow his canals to follow as direct a route as possible, and the long winding loop around Wednesbury Oak was an obvious target for removal. Some work was done on a cutting between Bloomfield and Deepfields, but work then stopped. With the opening of the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal imminent in 1834, and the prospect of much more trade on the western section of the canal, a new Act of Parliament was obtained in 1835 to authorise a 360-yard (330 m) tunnel through the hill at Coseley. It would have a towpath on both sides of the canal, and opened on 6 November 1837. The route through Wednesbury Oak now became the Wednesbury Oak Loop, as it was considerably longer than the new tunnel and its cut. The loop met the new cut at Deepfields Junction to the north-west of the tunnel, which marks the northern limit of Telford's route change, and Bloomfield Junction to the south-east, which had railway wharves for the Great Western Railway (GWR) and London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Telford's improvements reduced the length of the main line by one third, from 22.5 miles (36.2 km) to 15.5 miles (24.9 km), a large part of the reduction being the bypassing of the Wednesbury Oak Loop.

The Ocker Hill Branch, for which provision was made in the same 1768 Act of Parliament which authorised the Birmingham Canal and Wednesbury Canal, was a branch from the Wednesbury Oak Loop. It was 0.6 miles (0.97 km) long, and opened in 1774. Following the successful installation of Boulton and Watt steam engines to pump water up the Spon Lane locks in 1778 and the Smethwick locks in 1779, a similar installation was planned for the Ocker Hill Branch. Water would be fed through a tunnel from the 408-foot (124 m) Broadwaters Level, which was under construction at the time and later became part of the Walsall Canal. The Ocker Hill Tunnel Branch would end at a sump, from which water would be pumped to feed the 473-foot (144 m) Wolverhampton Level of the Birmingham Canal Navigations. There were five steam engines at the pumping station in 1851. The tunnel needed to be repaired on a number of occasions, as it was affected by mining subsidence, but remained in use until it was designated as 'abandoned' in 1954 and was filled in at the start of the 1960s, with part of the infilled section being developed as the Glebefields housing estate in Tipton.

In 1849 the Bradley Locks Branch opened, connecting the loop with the Walsall Canal. It was one of a number of connecting links made following the amalgamation of the Wyrley and Essington Canal and the Birmingham Canal Navigations in 1840. After it was closed in 1961, most of it was simply covered up, and became part of a linear park. The Birmingham Canal Navigations Society have suggested it as a possible candidate for restoration, since most of the structures are still in situ, and the only significant obstacle would be Tup Street Bridge on the Wednesbury Oak Loop which crosses the canal immediately after the British Waterways depot.

In 1954, along with many other branches and canals in the BCN, much of the Wednesbury Oak Loop was given 'abandoned' status and was subsequently filled in and partly built over. The northern stretch, also sometimes known today as the Bradley Arm (not to be confused with the Bradley Branch or Bradley Locks Branch), remains navigable to the British Waterways workshops built at Bradley in 1960. Next to the British Waterways workshops is the modern Bradley pumping station which draws water from flooded coal mines into the Wolverhampton Level.