Yarningale Aqueduct

The Southern section of the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal has three aqueducts of which the Yarningale is the first (if you are heading to Stratford from the North, or the last if the other direction of course!)

The very short Yarningale Aqueduct spans the Kingswood Brook near Claverdon and dates from the early 19th century. Yarningale itself is a hamlet of the Claverdon parish.

The original aqueduct was made of wood but it was washed away in 1834 during the flooding of the canal and the nearby Grand Union Canal. A new aqueduct was made from cast iron at Horseley Ironworks and this is the structure that remains today. Like the Edstone and Wootton Wawen aqueducts further down the Stratford canal the Yarningale Aqueduct is unusual in that the bottom of the towpath is level with the bottom of the canal.

Soho Loop

The original Birmingham Main Line stretched from over 36km from Aldersley Junction (Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal) to the centre of Birmingham. The canal opened to traffic in 1769 and was fully open in 1772. However the original line was long and winding as it followed the contours of the land with a number of deviations to give access to the many industries in the area. This was creating bottlenecks along the route.

A much straighter New Main Line was built in the 1820s, opening in 1827. Much of the original main line was kept especially where it gave access to industry, some of the old loops becoming branches of the new main line including the Soho Loop.

The Soho Loop is a 2km section of canal which once had a branch which served Matthew Bolton's Soho Manufactory. The remnant of the Soho Branch is now private moorings. A notable location the Soho Loop passes is Winson Green prison and also Soho railway depot.

Rotton Park Junction, the Soho Loop begins under the bridge

Soho Loop

A pipe bridge

Winson Green junction, the Main Line is beyond

The Soho Branch

Digbeth Branch Canal

The Digbeth Branch Canal was built in 1799. It is a short stretch of waterway that links the Grand Union Canal at Bordesley Junction to the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal at Aston Junction and hence enables boats on the Grand Union to go through into the city centre. The canal was built as part of the Birmingham Canal Act of 1768.

Information
Opened:	1799
Route:	Aston-Bordesley, Birmingham
Distance:	2.4km
Status:	Complete

Although only 2.4 km/1.5 miles long the canal is certainly not lacking for features. It has two tunnels, the Ashted and Curzon Street tunnels - the latter carries several of the approach railway lines including the West Coast Main Line into Birmingham New Street over the canal. There are also a number of locks and bridges, plus a wharf and a basin! Its not the most scenic of canal walks it has to be said.

Originally the canal only stretched as far as the Warwick Bar where a stop lock was installed to stop water leaking between the Birmingham Canal Navigations and what became the Grand Union. However these days the canal is counted as continuing onto Bordesley (or Digbeth) Junction.

Aston Junction

BCU's new campus now dominates the skyline behind this lock

Inside Ashted Tunnel

Travelling through Aston Science Park

Berwood Bridge

Berwood Bridge of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal is one of the Listed Buildings in Erdington and one of the last remaining traces of the Berwood sub-manor of Erdington.

Berwood Bridge

Berwood Hall, which once stood where the modern day Farnborough Road is now, dates from the 13th century. The land originally, it is recorded, was given by Hugh de Arderne [1] to the Abbey of St Mary of the Meadows in Leicester for use of a monastic grange. A moated hall is recorded in the 13th century but by the 17th century it had fallen in disrepair. A chapel on the manor (built by the canons in return for the gifts of land to sing masses for the souls of Hugh's descendants) fell into disuse by the early 15th century. The manor remained the possession of the abbey until the dissolution of the monastries and the manor was sold to Thomas Arden in 1540.

It remained owned by the Ardens until a later descendant (Dorothy) married into the Bagot family of Staffordshire [2]. The Reverend Walter Bagot was lord of the manor in 1783, his son was also later lord of the manor at nearby Pype Hayes Hall. The Bagot Arms pub still bears their name.

Much of the land was sold in the 1880s by the Bagots to the Birmingham Tame and Rae Drainage Board (a sewage farm is listed as being here in the late 1800s before it was moved to its current location in Minworth) but by then the manor probably no longer existed in any real sense.

December 1945 view of Berwood Bridge (via Google Earth), the bridge can be seen just left of the centre of the image.

A farmhouse built on the site of the former manor house served as the officers' mess at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome during the First World War [3] though by the Second World War the farmhouse and much of the rest of the Berwood estate had been swallowed up by the airfield. Following the war the Castle Vale estate was built on the site of the old airfield.

A few names survive here and then on new buildings and roads but it is likely the only surviving remnant of the old manor is Berwood Bridge which was built at the end of the 18th century or early 19th to allow Berwood Lane to cross the then-new Birmingham and Fazeley Canal.

[1] L. F. Salzman (editor). "Parishes: Curdworth." A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 4: Hemlingford Hundred (1947): 60-67. British History Online. Web. 26 March 2012. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42656&strquery=berwood
[2] William Fowler. "A history of Erdington: an address to the members of the Erdington Institute... delivered April 27th, 1885 (London:British Library)"
[3] William Dargue. "A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames . . . from A to Y" Berwood, Berwood Common http://billdargue.jimdo.com/placenames-gazetteer-a-to-y/places-b/berwood/

Travelling the Grand Union Canal in the 1930s

An amazing video following showing canal boats travelling from London up to Birmingham in the 1930s. Showing inland waterway traffic on the Thames, Regent's Canal and Grand Union Canal. Some things of course look very different now but some things are unchanged, though you may need to look closely sometimes!