Worcester and Birmingham Canal south of Stoke Top Lock

Image: © Roger D Kidd Taken: 23 Aug 2010

Seen through the arch of Thompson's Bridge, No 47, by the tiller man of a narrowboat entering the lock chamber. (Well the boat was going at 1.5 mph and it wasn't likely to go off course!!) There are six locks in the Stoke flight. Together they provide a rise in water level of 42 feet (12.8 metres) over about 1400 metres. The Worcester and Birmingham Canal was constructed in stages between 1791 and 1815. Between the River Severn at Worcester and the Birmingham level at the top of the Tardebigge flight (just under sixteen miles) there are 58 locks (including the Stoke flight of six), raising the water level by 428 feet (about 157 metres) and four tunnels. This was not the original plan, which involved 76 locks. At one time the engineer John Woodhouse proposed that there be just twelve locks and a series of boat-lifts, but although just one lift was built (at the present Tardebigge Top Lock) this was quite quickly replaced, and the lift idea was replaced with just 58 locks. Industrial goods and coal were carried down towards Worcester, often for onward transport to Bristol. Pairs of donkeys were often used in preference to horses, maybe because they could easily be put onto the boats which had to be legged through the tunnels near Birmingham.

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