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Wheelwright Road, BIRMINGHAM, B24 8PD

Sited on Stoneyhurst Road, the church is shared by the Church of England and the Methodist Church

This is the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal south-west of Erdington, and looking east towards Fazeley. The industrial building on the left is built across the canal for about 200 metres. Aerial images from 2019 show the building being demolished. Aerial images from the mid-1930s show this was the Birlec Electric Furnace Works alongside the canal. The concrete structures supporting the extension across the canal are characteristic of the 1960s. Can anyone inform us of their actual date, and whether Birlec still owned the whole site? (Please).

An OS cutmark on an old stone wall bounding the north side of Kingsbury Road; originally levelled at 121.19m above Ordnance Datum Newlyn.

The bridge carries Jarvis Way over the canal. The current edition of Nicholson's Waterways Guide is a little confusing here as it calls this bridge Troutpool Bridge and Image New Troutpool Bridge. But old large scale Ordnance Survey maps show a Troutpool Bridge in the location of the latter from at least the 1916 edition onwards, whereas the bridge in this photograph is not shown in the 1937 edition. Logic suggests therefore that this is the New Troutpool Bridge. This photograph was taken from the western end of an approximate 200 metre reach of the canal that is covered by an industrial building. The canal is enclosed on the northern side by the building wall but open through the concrete building support columns on the southern side. The 1937 edition of the Ordnance Survey mapping does not show this cover, but does show an electric furnace works on the north side of the canal. It would appear that this works has subsequently been extended out over the canal, and is shown as such in the 1952-1964 edition.

Beyond this bridge, the canal passes under a factory for about two hundred metres. It is strange that this bridge position appears to post date that of New Troutpool Bridge http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3134709 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3134633 about two hundred metres to the west. Note 2020: This bridge did not exist when aerial photographs in the mid-1930s were taken. Possibly it was built at the same time the factory ahead was extended across the canal. I suggest this is actually Troutpool New Bridge, and the one two hundred metres to the west (which shows on Victorian maps by a gravel pit - subsequently trout pool?) is Troutpool Bridge.

The Birmingham and Fazeley Canal was completed in 1789 having been engineered and supervised by John Smeaton. It linked Birmingham (Farmer's Bridge Junction) with the Coventry Canal at Fazeley Junction, fifteen miles in length, with 38 locks. An extension along part of the Coventry Canal route to Whittington was added later.

Over the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal.

Looking up Kingsbury Road, towards Wentworth Court on the right.