Canals around Coventry

I commute through Brinklow every day, and found out recently the canal there was rerouted in the 1800s and straightened. There are still bits of the original canal route left including an arm that runs into Brinklow (now silted up) and a chunk running parallel to the Rugby Road. Nearby, in Stretton, there's another junction and an arm leading to some old industrial buildings. Fascinating (in a nerdy sort of way).

I remember playing down by the canal at Red Lane. It was the part between Newdigate Road and Swan Lane. It was probably in around 1958-1960. It was a brilliant area, we had the canal, and the hilly area up to the road where we could dig up clay pipes (always white). Someone suggested they were from the navvies who dug the canal. There was also the railway cutting that ran to the Morris Engines I think. Did it go to the Ordnance as well? My elder brother's friends always used to frighten us younger kids with stories of "Mad Sam". They said he patrolled the area and would throw you in the cut if he caught you. Well someone did patrol the area and he didn't look very wholesome. He always had brown dungarees on. One day I was nearly cornered by him and in my panic I wailed "don't chuck me in the cut, Mad Sam". Hardly a greeting to get the best out of him. But I did escape. Sometimes we could cut across the green iron railway bridge that went to Herberts. I think it was Herberts anyway. Down Paradise Walk(?) there were some wind tunnels that fascinated us. You went in one end and they zig-zagged at about 20 inch intervals until it was pitch black. There was a series of them in parallel. Does anyone else recall them?

Yes, a lot of twiddley bits were taken out of the old canal. The Brinklow arm is still there complete with its winding hole. I think it was built for the collection of grain. A big loop was taken out of the canal where it once passed under Deedmore Rd by the Boat pub. Although the canal is some distance from the pub its still called the Boat Inn

The 'Nuneaton, Bedworth, and North Warwickshire Local and Family History Website' has a canal map showing the route from Nuneaton to Rugby in 1821 which includes some canal 'cut offs' around Brinklow and elsewhere. Look under 'images from the archives' and then 'canals'. I am sure that there were several more improvements in later years.

There is an interesting 41 page booklet called "Coventry's waterway : a civic amenity". I think it was published in about 1972. Has some nice pictures and history of the canal. There is a copy on ebay at the moment at £4.99

Not Local, thank you. Yes that is a very good map of the original canal. Flapdoodle would find the answers to how they straightened it out a little. The picture on 208 shows the cutting they cut through the bank, and built the high bridge, and the soil was brought along across the field to make the bank. About one hundred yards before the picture there was an aqueduct that the farm track went through, but in recent years they have had to build an entrance to the farm from the other side, because the fire tenders cannot get through the aqueduct. About 500yds before the picture the original canal cut across this straighter section, did an s across the fields and came back round through Brinklow. But gradually the old pieces are getting filled in, this one by a golf course.

Thanks Kaga, I hoped you would be along to add your knowledge and experience to the lines on the map.

Not Local, That's my dad inspecting the work on post 208, and that's him near the cabin on 207.

Kaga, can you put a date to post 207 of the men clearing the junk?

NormK, the nearest I can go is 1957 or thereabouts.

Thanks for that Kaga. The reason I asked was a gun was found in the cut maybe before your photo. In those days it wasn't easy to get rid of unwanted objects and it was common to lob it in the cut, out of sight out of mind.

Between Longford Basin (at the Longford Bridge) and the Grange Road Bridge there was a sandy inlet that I thought sea-like (for all that I could readily see the other side of the water, which was not the case when I visited Blackpool many years later). Beside what we all called the Beach was a sizeable tree, attached to which was a rope enabling canal dippers to swing over the canal and cannonball (that probably was not the term then) into the water from what seemed to be a height of significance). A story was told then (early- to mid-50s) of a boy who did his rope swing and cannonball into the water and landed directly onto a metal (metal not specified) spike that impaled him, tore him asunder, or some such thing. Any road, as we used to say in Longford, the spike caused him to "die instantly", which is just what happened to the lad who jumped from the Grange Road Bridge circa 1935/36 and landed on "old iron rubbish". Shades of the apocryphal here, Kaga. Shades of the urban myth. Of course, whatever I may think today, there was no way on this Earth that I would have essayed a swing and drop into the canal in those day, if for no other reason than my mother's being most upset at my being late for tea on account of my death by canal spike (metal unknown). Late on account of being late? I don't think so.

Hi LL and all forumites. Yes there many urban myths about pointy stuff impaling unfortunate swimmers, I know of two. It's a wonder that any of us survived. Kaga's photograph of the Nettle Hill bridge shows a large amount of junk being lifted from the canal, and this is in a rural situation, heaven only knows how it got there.

I get the impression some folk have an annual shed clearance. It's usually shopping trolleys these days!

Hi Dreamtime, and anyone else. I have been close to where you live, Freemantle. I cannot recall if you have canals around your way. The world is divided into two main groups, those that throw trolleys in the canal and those that don't. I am in the latter.