The Wyrley and Essington Canal

Virtual Walks	Anglesey Basin at Chasewater to Anglesey Junction
Too far away to visit?	Anglesey Junction to Catshill Junction
Don't want to go out today?	Catshill Junction to Pelsall Junction
I've done it for you.	Catshill Junction to Walsall Wood
Try these walks ..........	Anglesey Junction to Huddlesford Junction
	The Cannock Extension from Pelsall Junction

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Multi Media Mapping.

Wyrley and Essington Canal - 1792. First act of parliament to build between "Essington Bank" and "Wyrley Bank".

Wyrley and Essington Canal - 1794. Further act of parliament to build through to the Coventry Canal at Huddlesford. Lichfield Canal extension - 1797. Link to the Coventry Canal at Huddlesford was opened. Its seven miles contained 30 locks.

Cannock Chase Reservoir (Chasewater) - 1799. Contains 800 million gallons of water. Dam burst - in June 1799 floodwater from the Reservoir left a trail of destruction south east to Tamworth and the River Tame beyond. The flood was caused by the failure of a sluice gate at the dam.

Anglesey Branch Canal - 1850. Was built along the line of the feeder from the Cannock Chase Reservoir to connect with the W & E. Anglesey Basin was required to carry coal from mines of the area.

Lichfield Canal extension - 1954. Closed (and later drained).

Brownhills canal view of the 1950's while the route was still in commercial use.

Walsall's new art gallery at the end of the Walsall Extention of the W&E and the state of the canal a few years previous.

The scale of work needed to bring a lock back to life.

The efforts needed to plug a hole in the bottom of a stretch of canal.

Just north of the Anchor Bridge, Brownhills.

(at the junction of High Street, Lindon Road and Chester Road)

---------------------------------Links to other Canal interest sites-------------------------------

Anglesey Bridge Marina.

Birmingham Canal Navigation Society

British Waterways Home Page

Canals Glossary

Canals in the West Midlands

The Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust was formed in 1988 and is a registered charity. It campaigns for the restoration of the "Lichfield Canal" (as the closed section of the W&E between Ogley and Huddlesford is now called) and also the Hatherton Canal through the Cannock / A5 area. It promotes the restoration as public amenities for boating, angling, walking, cycling etc. and raises funds to carry out physical restoration work.

http://www.laurencehoggproductions.co.uk/index.htm The maker of the Video BCN 10 "The Missing Links".
"Today, the Northern waters of the BCN are only accessible from the South, making the number of craft penetrating the top of the BCN system quite small. The situation was not always thus. The BCN has lost three major links in the course of time: the Lapal Section of the Dudley Canal to the South, the Hatherton Branch, Churchbridge Locks connection to the North West, and the Lichfield part of the Wyrley and Essington Canal to the North East. This film deals with these two lost links to the North.... David Suchet introduces the film and then takes you on a tour of the routes. We look back at the history and examine in detail all of the sections including the parts which are lost for ever..........."

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V1.6 - 12 July 2003.