Canals around Coventry

Thanks for that info. I will look out for everything you mention next time we're coming through. The collapse of the embankment explains the two aqueducts in my first post as these are shown in the Nicholsons canal guide but are now no more than culverts, The railway arches are however still clearly visible. They were also doing some flood alleviation work in the fields along this stretch last year!

Malvern, hi. The Canal House at Brinklow I've been told is now a pleasure boat centre. The house stands end on to the canal, it also stands on the two-way slopes of the hill, this means it stands on small brick legs. If you go in the field and look under the house you may find my old bike, it sure knows its way about the towpath between Brinklow and Sutton Stop. Outside the house you will find the canal narrows to one boat width, for planks to be inserted if a breakage occurs through that length, although my young brother and I used to jump across. A few yards on are the showings of the old canal. As you pass near the aqueduct the train veers away from the canal behind the hill, here there was another narrow plank width, but this one had a plank firmly fixed alongside the canal on a swivel, so you had a long pole with a hook to pull the plank across the canal. Here there were two horse stables, one on either side of the canal - on the towpath side there was another Canal House, it was built on the old canal that had been filled in but the old canal was still there behind the house and garden until they built the golf course. This old canal went under the railway round near Withybrook and Mobs Wood and back to near Canal House, Brinklow. Through the cutting nearing the dreaded 19 bridge, at the side of the towpath, was the 'well' - boxed in and locked.

It looks like it's the end on house that is above the 'o' in 'stop. You are a mine of information sir.

Heathite. Thank you. The inn on the map actually had one bar over the railway lines, it was hard to drink a pint when a train passed underneath. A few years into the twentieth century a boy was walking behind a horse towing a narrow boat, at the tiller was a man called Jack, employed by his father. About two hundred yards further on was a similar boat, the boy's uncle walking behind a horse, at the tiller his aunt. The boy was day dreaming, but brought back to his senses by his uncle's urgent voice shouting instructions. Jack also was shouting, the canal was on the move. Both Jack and his uncle were urging him to release the tow-rope from the horse but the tow-rope was very taut, he could do nothing and now the boat was drifting backwards, pulling the horse backwards and close to the edge of the canal. His uncle had released his horse and was carrying the tow-rope as he ran back. He took a knife from his pocket and slashed the boy's tow-rope just as the horse's hind legs were about to be dragged into the canal. His aunt's boat was now drifting towards the boy's boat at an alarming rate, but once the rope was cut then it too began to go backwards faster. The boy was told to tie the horses to anything to keep them from wandering off. Meanwhile his uncle raced back and tied his tow-rope to a tree - there was a lot of shouting instructions to one another to keep the boats in the deepest water. The water was now dropping in level and racing backwards and pulling both boats with it. Ahead someone had aroused a team to put the planks in. The uncle's boat was now level with the tree and the tow-rope now took the strain, at the same time the boats were scraping the bed of the canal. Jack threw a plank end-on into the water, gave it a push and the plank hit the tow-path. Uncle carried the plank to his boat, placed it from bank to cabin and got his family off the boat. A boatman on a bike approached, told them that the canal had a 'break' the other side of where planks where being put in, the current was now slowing down, the canal was filling up again and the danger was over.

When they built the Coventry Canal, most of the area in Foleshill was fields and heathland. It was reasonably straight from Bedworth to Grange Road, then they looped across fields, under Longford Road, looped round to New Inn Bridge, looped left under the Foleshill Road, then right, then left again under the Stoney Stanton Road, right again, looped round Bridge Street and Eden Street and the Red House and cut off the whole area of Stoke, before switching back under Stoney Stanton Road and Foleshill Road and round by Cash's to the Cov Basin. So what was wrong with Stoke or was it Freddie Birds, or even the Bantams? LOL Merry Christmas everyone.

At the side of the Navigation pub in Stoney Stanton Road was the terraced row of Bridge Street, the street little wider than a cart, the pavements no wider than one flagstone. You entered the living room straight off the pavement, front room and backroom, the same above, just two rooms. I believe they were a lot smaller houses than streets like Matlock Road. Opposite was a small wasteland the width of the pub, then the canal, the end of the street was cut off by the canal looping round to the Red House. Early 1940, drizzling with rain, still dark (dawn), as I entered the street a woman was about to throw something out the bedroom window until she saw me, then changed her mind. I couldn't help thinking it must have happened a lot in the early twenties when opposite was just Stoke Heath.

When they built the new Aldermans Green Road bridge a man died. People saw him drinking with a couple of strangers in the Old Crown, at dawn the next morning he was found upside down wedged in a framework of girders sunk into the canal (like a chimney with no pot) his arms wedged in too. He was quickly hoisted out and laid on the towpath, while someone went for the authorities, only his head had been in water, the two strangers were never seen again in the area. The rumour was he had upset someone at some time (pay back time). We kids were told not to talk about it, of course we did. I have no idea today what the papers made of it then, but it quickly faded away. Some years later a local business man was found in the cut at the entrance to the basin, he too had rumours of bad business relations with a hard man, and had been dumped over Lentons Lane bridge into the water, there were a lot of evidence to support these accusations at the time in both cases, but people did not want to get involved and kept tight lipped.

My godfather was Herbert (Bert) Dunkley, Mr Coventry Canal. When I was young I remember the Sunday School having trips on the canal and many times visiting Bert at various spots on the canal. Later in life I had a girlfriend who painted roses and castles, and Bert gave her advice

Would that be the Herbert that lived at Monks Kirby? If so he was a Lengthman, but not in a canal house. Worked alongside my father for about ten years, just the two of them, never heard him called that, as far as I know he only worked there he was not a boatman but I could be wrong about that, scores of times my father would chat to the boat people he knew as they passed by but I never saw Herb hail them as old friends, he was a rough old lovable character, I knew him well for a few years. May I ask what Sunday school and year?

Or would it be the guy that lived at New Inn Bridge?

It was Autumn 1952, and there was a keenness in the air which hinted at snow. As I walked up Bishop Street, it was bitterly cold, the wind howled mournfully over the chimneys and sent leaves flying - sleet began to fall. A few months ago a very good friend of mine had been missing for almost a year, and then he turned up in Coventry Basin in a houseboat, a wife and a baby. I visited them a few times and now I was about to again. The big wooden doors were closed. I shook them and called out and the wife answered, opened the door. I went through, she closed the door, placed a wooden beam across them and left a large padlock on the staple. We dashed to the cabin. Once inside she told me Ron wasn't there, they had split up - once he had found her somewhere to live the boat would be sold. They had only married when she became pregnant. She hated the boat, and was frightened of the large buildings and, locked behind those doors, it was dark eerie and lonely. I said my grandfather once owned some of those buildings, had an office in Bishop Street. Both my parents as children had slept in a boat similar in the same spot she was in now. It had turned into a real storm outside. The wood yard opposite made some queer sounds, but she was more relaxed. The boat had a narrow walk-way down the length of the boat, the galley had been made larger, there were two bedrooms and a small wash/shower room, and a small lounge we now sat in. I relished the company of an attractive woman - and she did have a strange beauty - as well as the opportunity to talk books, and the time passed quickly. But few of us would think of the eerie place the basin turns into at night.

This story will probably not be new to you Kaga. A good friend of my father, an enterprising man, told my father that during the pre-war depression when men were desperate for work that at one time he bought a horse and cart, paid out of work men to dive into the canal to retrieve coal that had fallen from barges and sold it around the town. This served both the men he employed and himself well. Then the health officials turned up and stopped the enterprise for being a danger to the men's health. I would have thought starvation was a danger too.

My story above has the wrong date should be 1952. Mod note Thank you Kaga, I have changed the date. Best wishes. Philip

Thank you Philip, hope your good lady is still on the mend, hey' it was nice to meet that time. My best regards to you both. Kaga.

The storm had passed. It was very calm, no one about, quiet and solitude, only Iris in the galley. The dining table no longer had to be dismantled to turn it into a double bed. The boat lay along the staithe (landing berth, you could step onto the boat without using a plank). Just a slight breeze now and then made small ripples on the water, no longer covered in coal dust - it was now an oily water and the canal littered with rubbish. I sat on a fisherman's fold-up canvas stool, a book on my lap, a sweet sherry at my side, and let my mind go back through the years, to my father's stories of the basin and canal when he was a lad (about 1906). In those days there were no engines to disturb the beauty of the countryside as he walked mile after mile driving the horse that pulled the two boats, equivalent of twenty cartloads of goods or coal. The boats almost silent as they moved along, just the swish of the towing line now and then. A large variety of plants, butterflies, birds - especially the beautiful kingfisher - as they made the way along the Oxford Canal towards Coventry. As they neared Priestley's Bridge, they saw cranes, winches, warehouses and graneries, stables and workers' cottages, right in the heart of Coventry - people extremely busy with the loading and unloading of goods. As they tied up the boats, he took the horse to the stables, fed and watered it and gave it a good brushing down. His elder brother would go to the ticket office to see when they would be unloaded, the next cargo and destination. He could now play with other kids he only met occasionally in times like this, excited that he could travel on the 'iron-horse' as they called the tram, and to explore and look in the windows of the shops in the town. I then remember he told me his elder sister, as a young girl, was accidentally shot dead by a gun in the cabin of a boat. He also lost a brother, who missed his footing as the water in the lock was filling. Just as I was feeling gloomy, Iris called - the dinner is doing nicely, the baby asleep, why don't you come in for awhile?