IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Castle Mill Road, DUDLEY, DY1 4BZ

Surrounded by newly built houses of the New Priory estate, this old electricity substation looks a little out of place. I'm not sure if it still fulfils its function or has just been left in place as a historic building.

Heading through Tipton.

Looking off Birmingham New Road.

This OS cut mark can be found on the wall south side of Birmingham New Road. It marks a point 158.472m above mean sea level.

The view in the basin on the Dudley Canal.

The Dudley tunnel ends in Castle Mill Basin, which originally was an underground limestone mine, has subsequently been widened to allow canal boats to turn around and is now a steep-sided hole in Castle Hill. From here the main canal leaves through the shorter Tipton tunnel (behind camera), while a branch tunnel leads west to the limestone mines inside Wren's Nest. This branch tunnel is now blocked off by a dam as can be seen in this photograph. Castle Mill basin is named after Castle Mill works, the buildings situated atop Tipton tunnel. Castle Hill and nearby Wren's Nest are anticlines of Silurian limestone layers protruding from the surrounding Carboniferous coal beds. Both the limestone and the coal were quarried from the beginning of the industrial revolution and used in the iron smelting industry of the West Midlands of England. Mining finally ceased in 1920. The Dudley canal was completed in 1791, running in a tunnel under Castle Hill for nearly 3km in a SSW direction. Several branch canals were built around the same time to access the limestone seams in the Castle Hill anticline, which run roughly SSE. In addition, there is a westerly branch leading to Wren's Nest. Multiple caverns have been excavated inside Castle Hill, some of which up to 800m in length. Many of the caverns have had roof collapses and rock falls and have since been backfilled. However, some are still accessible by boat through the original tunnels and a few new link tunnels built in the 1980s to enable the Dudley Canal Trust to run circular tours for visitors to see the mines. A schematic map of the canal system is shown on the Trust's website https://web.archive.org/web/20150101180643/http://www.dudleytunnel.co.uk/mines.html (archive link).

The view in the basin on the Dudley Canal.

Castle Mill basin is a former underground limestone mine cavern which was widened to enable canal boats to turn about 90 degrees from the Dudley tunnel (south) to the much shorter Tipton tunnel (east) effectively "inside" Castle Hill. Now open to the sky, the vertical cliff faces surrounding it are covered in vegetation. Castle Hill and nearby Wren's Nest are anticlines of Silurian limestone layers protruding from the surrounding Carboniferous coal beds. Both the limestone and the coal were quarried from the beginning of the industrial revolution and used in the iron smelting industry of the West Midlands of England. Mining finally ceased in 1920. The Dudley canal was completed in 1791, running in a tunnel under Castle Hill for nearly 3km in a SSW direction. Several branch canals were built around the same time to access the limestone seams in the Castle Hill anticline, which run roughly SSE. In addition, there is a westerly branch leading to Wren's Nest. Multiple caverns have been excavated inside Castle Hill, some of which up to 800m in length. Many of the caverns have had roof collapses and rock falls and have since been backfilled. However, some are still accessible by boat through the original tunnels and a few new link tunnels built in the 1980s to enable the Dudley Canal Trust to run circular tours for visitors to see the mines. A schematic map of the canal system is shown on the Trust's website https://web.archive.org/web/20150101180643/http://www.dudleytunnel.co.uk/mines.html (archive link).

The start of a new housing estate off Priory Road, Dudley.