Canals around Coventry

Possibly the closest image I have seen yet of the Canal Offices at the top of Bishop Street -

NeilsYard. Yes, good photo, would think about the sixties. It was still there in the fifties when it was a plumbers warehouse. Past posts, the building was a house and offices at the start, forget the name of the man put in charge (for the moment). Helen. Looking at the topic again I now believe you were right on post 77. I would now put it late forties. I hear they have a statue in the basin - is it Brindley?

Yes, Kaga, it's Brindley

Some interesting photos of the Basin here - you need to add Coventry Basin in the search box.

Midland Red, thank you for your reply and excellent photos of James Brindley. The Coventry Canal Company, the only one company to have the temerity to sack the great but intensely irritating Brindley. The company appointed Brindley as Engineer and Surveyor at £150 a year, he undertook to give at least two months' attendance in every year, but he did not give what was expected. At that time he had nine other canals also. Brindley was a man that went his own way, asked no help or advice. On the Worcester/Staffs canal, a difference of levels of 30 feet called for three locks - the obvious solution was a staircase of three interlocking locks. Instead he built three separate locks with only a few feet of water between them. It was inconvenient, not enough room for a boat between them, so a boat going up had to wait until a boat going down had passed all three locks. But it was one of the few canals to be built on time and close to budget. Brindley followed the contours of the land, they circled small hills like a moat, he hated fast running water like rivers. He built most tunnels in the form of a double arch, something close to a circle, an inverted arch. He built narrow boats to carry about 25 tons, for they only had horse and carts and bad roads to compete against, unlike the wider barges that carried heavier loads. Brindley was apprenticed to a firm of millwrights/wheelwrights that had to know water courses, but his teacher was always drunk so he copied others, and with common sense, became self taught. His first job was to drain a mine - he installed a pump powered by a waterwheel, but he needed water to power it, but he could only do that from a river from the other side because of the mine, so he now had to syphon it under the same river along a channel of 800 yards. The first canals were wanted by the Wedgewood brothers, to move their pottery products.

Thomas Goodall was the first agent to live and work in canal house top of Bishop Street.

Just re-processing some old photos and came across this from Braunston in 2007 - thought our friend Kaga might be interested in the boat on the left

Midland Red. Oh my! You don't know what you have found, the HOLY GRAIL of canal/coal distribution (Mcgrory didn't know either). This boat looks in excellent condition for it needs to be well over a century old, this has to be the bumper boat. Let me explain. When they found coal on Sowe Common, they needed to get it elsewhere, so they built the Oxford Canal to move it, from the farm track halfway (forget bridge name), halfway along Lentons Lane they veered southeast towards Potters Green and the pitheads and around the old cemetery. But loading the boats was a failure, so they found the solution - to avoid land ownership, shafts and such they snipped the long winding canal, put in a straight piece to Woodway Lane. At the same time they built a new loading arm called Wyken Basin - if you think of the letter Y that was its shape, only a quarter of a mile long that led off the Oxford Canal. The beginning was about 8ft wide to take one boat at a tlme, the two prongs made of bricks, with a brick wall joining the end of the prongs was now filled with water. On the left of the left prong was the loading bay, unloaded boats on the right, but they had another problem - the boats had nowhere to turn, so they came up with that bumper boat. It could edge the boats into position on their own axis (simple) so they ran a small 'bogey' tramway from the pitheads to the loading bay of conveyer belts, loaded the boat, weighed it with weighing stick, and it made its way back along the arm to the canal, then bumped an empty boat across to the loading bay. Later when trains came in they ran a rail line past the loading bay across the fields through AG Road to Hawkesbury Halt.

Midland Red, I should have thanked you, a great find. For me exciting, and a probe into long ago memories. THANK YOU, THANK YOU. REGARDS, KAGA.

I hear that they are replacing the locks at Sutton Stop, after I believe 80 years. Long time since I gave bread pudding to a bunch of Yanks, but ho, so happy, laughter from our new found friends.

Its only a Monday but already contenders for 'Find of the Week!' Following my earlier post (these could go in a Bishop Street thread so mods feel free to move), thanks to my friend Alan Denyer from the Visit Coventry website, these have just come up showing the demolition of the Canal Offices at the top of Bishop Street circa 1959/60. They were removed as right in the way of Ringway St Nicholas but show yet again another treasure of a building that could have / should have been saved. Surroundings are interesting as well. It's very rare to see a shot of this even intact and these are the very first ones I have seen of it and the area at that time in colour.

Damn Ring Road

Typical

NeilsYard, Hard to query you these days but where did that great wall come from next to the house (407)? Sure it wasn't there in 54, big black gates and bushes next to the house and round the corner. I lived on a boat in the basin for a few days around 52/3. The house was a warehouse for plumbing owned by a man named Arthur (not sure of surname), also a racehorse trainer. Next to, Radford side, was the timber firm of Cartwrights, also inside the basin. Story to it. D Di and I would occasionally go for a drink after racing, if a long journey. One night in the King William a very smart guy joined, said he was Peter, he knew Arthur. He was very chatty, he would find out winners from him for us, said join him for a meal and drink in a few days time. Before I could object D Di accepted. He told us his mother was very rich, lived in some large house, was director of some fashion house. Next day I asked D Di who his friend was. "No idea, thought he was your friend". We met Peter on the night. He took charge, asking for a table, ordering the beer, chatting up the waitress, ordering the meals. Well, when the waitress collected the plates etc we were a merry bunch! Peter rose. "First, I must slip to..." He rose, but so did I a second later. Peter headed for a different room then out a different door. I caught him in the car park. "Oh, and where are you heading?" I asked. "I'm... " he stammered. "No you're not, you're coming back and paying the bill"

Neils Yard, With all this talk about hygiene may I use your post 407 to show the Grand Union Canal Warehouse. This warehouse was to receive Coventry's first and real taste of hygiene, for here thousands of crates of soap were delivered from north of the midlands to that warehouse at the end of the 18th century onward. New to Coventry, this was the first time of washing with soap, the mortality rate dropped drastically, health improved. The building of the link canal between the Grand Union Canal, B'ham and the Coventry canal was immense, for it meant heavy goods could now be transported to and from, throughout the whole country. The terrible roads in the 18th century meant that Wedgwood lost fifty percent of crockery through breakages, and soap was too expensive, too heavy for stagecoach transport in great quantities, so the canals were a blessing. A hundred more in quantity, with fewer horses and less man power, hundreds more types of goods, a great turning point in our history.