Distance: 3 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: easy

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Short walk between the Black Country town of Coseley and the nearby settlement of Bradley primarily along the Bradley Arm Canal, a green and often beautiful canal backwater, that once formed part of the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

New Money for Old Loop

When the canal network began snaking across the country around 1770, what is now West Midlands, along with the Potteries and North Western England, was one of the first parts of the country to be hooked up to the new system of inland waterways.

And initially – snaked – was exactly what the canal network did. Any user of the UK’s older canals such as the Caldon Canal (opened 1779) running from Stoke-on-Trent out into the Staffordshire Moorlands District, or the Dudley No. 1 Canal in the Black Country, will know that they meander their way across the landscape in great loops.

This is because whilst lock gate technology was known to 18th Century engineers it was often easier for them to construct an entirely level canal, building embankments here and there, and stretches of stone aqueduct (metal ones only coming into use in the second half of the 1790s) if required.

Known as “contour canals” these waterways closely hung the lie of the land not unlike natural river systems. This means that they are by necessity meandering. It is testimony to how much these early canals revolutionised the transport of goods during the early industrial era that it was considered worthwhile from an economic perspective constructing them at all.

As canal constructing technology improved and was refined over time, some of the older canals were revisited and straightened out. A famous example of this is the Grand Union Canal system in the 1930s which was extensively straightened, widened and modernised as part of a government backed scheme to rejuvenate the waterway.

However, this was just a late flowering of such an initiative. In 1824 the company running the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line from Wolverhampton to Birmingham, right across the middle of the Black Country, commissioned Thomas Telford to look into ways of straightening and widening the narrow meandering route engineered by James Brindley around 50 years previously.

This proved a gargantuan task, which was undertaken in stages between 1824 and 1838, after Thomas Telford was dead. However, the end result was a much faster canal with significantly increased carrying capacity. Precisely 7 miles was shaved off the distance between Wolverhampton, cutting just over 22 and a half miles down to a little more than 15 and a half.

A consequence of the efforts to straighten the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line was that several large loops which formed part of the old James Brindley era canal were left behind. The loops are essentially bypassed sections of waterway which were typically left open because they served

Over time many of these loops were closed and filled in, in full or in part, as industry and mining gave way to housing and the need for firms with requirements for carriage to have access to the waterways dwindled away to practically nothing.

In recent years the most famous of the Loops on the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line has been the Icknield Port Loop due west of Birmingham city centre. This has been because of efforts by the developer Urban Splash to redevelop it as a new housing estate. There are several other orphaned loops in Icknield Port’s immediate vicinity.

These stretches of bypassed canal are not, however, the most attractive or the longest sections of orphaned canal along the straightened Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line.

To discover that you need to head about 10 miles north west to the Bradley Arm Canal, the surviving section of the Wednesbury Oak Loop.

The quiet and bucolic Bradley Arm Canal cuts through the furthest southern reaches of outer Wolverhampton, close to the council boundaries with Sandwell and Dudley to the south. This makes it inarguably close to the heart of the Black Country.

Today whilst the canal remains navigable, its winding banks are primarily a place for nature, a means for pedestrians to walk between Coseley, Bilston, Bradley and other adjoining residential areas, and a green lung for those living near its line.

Interestingly the canal’s terminus is the location of a workshop in the suburbs of Bradley where the Canal and Rivers Trust manufactures lock gates. Peering through the fence it is possible to see stacks, and stacks of wooden lock gates yet to be treated and painted, ahead of their installation along canals across the Midlands and beyond.

Historically the area around Bradley and Wednesbury was criss-crossed with industrial workshops which served the coal mines, foundries and metal works in the area. Some factories remain along the side of the Bradley Canal Arm and in the area to this day, but coal mining ceased generations ago.

Once upon a time the Bradley Arm Canal, then known as the Wednesbury Oak Loop, continued all the way back to the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line. However, much of its course beyond Bradley towards Wednesbury was filled in after the canal formally shut in 1954. The Glebefields Estate now in Tipton, Sandwell was constructed on top of the old canal navigation during the 1960s.

This said there is a project – well supported locally – to link up some of the numerous abandoned canals in the area, to create a new inland waterway between the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line and the Walsall Canal. The new route will use the existing Bradley Arm Canal, as well as the partially overgrown Bradley Branch Canal which stretches from the Walsall Canal. The mile or so in the middle will be created by reopening existing disused canal navigation, long overgrown, snaking through the area. These efforts are supported by the Bradley Canal Restoration Society. Which is a registered charity and a member of the National Heritage Trust Network.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

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From Coseley Railway Station on the Bimingham to Wolverhampton line, turn left and walk up a short flight of steps onto Haveacre Lane.

Once on the road turn right.

This leads through a residential area.

Presently on the left hand side of the road next to a bungalow there is a snicket.

Turn left and walk down this snicket.

At the bottom of the snicket you come out onto a cul-de-sac.

Here turn right and head down another snicket.

This leads out onto a promontory of sorts just above the cut of the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line.

Head down onto the towpath.

Then turn right and start heading north along the towpath.

After a short distance you come to a concrete road bridge. This is the boundary between the Borough of Dudley and the City of Wolverhampton.

On the other side of the bridge keep walking.

Soon you reach another bridge, this one is older and made of bricks.

On the far side of the bridge you soon come to another steep hunchback bridge over another canal which is merging into the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line.

This canal is the Bradley Arm Canal. When constructed as a contour canal in the 1770s the Bradley Arm Canal was a loop on the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line. Later in the 1830s, to a plan developed by Thomas Telford, the canal was straightened and widened. This shaved 7 miles off the distance between Wolverhampton and Birmingham making the canal able to carry a far higher volume of goods quickly. This process left numerous “loops” which were now bypassed by the faster new canal. Typically the loops were maintained for the purpose of servicing industry and other locations like coal mines of which there were many in the area between Coseley and Wednesbury. Since the early 19th Century many of them have been filled in or have become overgrown. However, some remain, of which the Bradley Arm Canal as a green lung, nature reserve, and local walking route, as well as a still navigable waterway, is amongst the most impressive.

Having crossed the bridge across the Bradley Arm Canal, turn right.

This leads onto the towpath of the Bradley Arm Canal.

Keep following the very attractive canal as it winds between a mixture of greenspaces, housing estates (some recent, some older) and industrial units here and there.

Presently You reach a brick section of towpath opposite an estate of 1960s or early 1970s houses.

Here the path curves slightly to the left.

Then it joins another path turn to the right and keep walking straight ahead following the line of the canal.

You keep walking straight along the path which steadily moves away from the canal.

Soon the path runs into some trees.

Then leads out through a gateway onto a suburban road.

Here if you turn to the right and walk a very short way up the road you come to the Canal and River Trust’s lock gate making depot which sits at the bottom of the Bradley Canal Arm.

A fascinating example of a craft several hundred years old still being practised.

After visiting the workshop, or if you are not interested in seeing it, turn left and start walking along the suburban road.

Once you have walked for several minutes you come to a bridge across the road.

This carries the road across the Midlands Metro tramway. You can get down to the Metro via steps and ramps just after the bridge.

Getting Back

From Bradley Midlands Metro stop you can quickly get back to destinations in the direction of both Wolverhampton and Birmingham. There are also buses towards Bilston and other destinations.