Distance: 8.7 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the routes: via Ordnance Survey Maps
Canal towpath walk in the West Midlands between the two Black Country towns of Stourbridge and Dudley along the Stourbridge Canal
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Glassy Waterway
At just under 6 miles, the Stourbridge Canal is one of the Midland’s shorter inland waterways under the care of the Canal and Rivers Trust.
Like most of the UK’s shorter canals it was created for a very specific purpose. This was moving coal from the mines around Dudley down to the hungry glass and crystal furnaces at Stourbridge.
After a typically painful gestation in the 1770s as landowners, investors and industrialists (who in typical 18th Century fashion were often the same people or related to each other) squabbled over the route the canal opened in 1779 and swiftly became a success.
Unlike the very earliest canals it employs quite a few locks, but is far from straight in its course, instead meandering from near Dudley town centre to the middle of Stourbridge, mere metres from where the (naturally occurring) River Stour flows just north of Stourbridge town centre.
Initially isolated from the rest of the canal network, not least due to the lobbying clout of the mighty Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal to its west, which feared a competitor, the Stourbridge Canal may have enjoyed a moderately successful existence as a comparatively long industrial canal carrying coal from Dudley to the glass furnaces. This would probably into the early 20th Century, after which competition from motor lorries and the shift in coal mining away from the area around Dudley, would likely have killed it, leading it to be drained and built over. A fate which befell many of the Midland’s industrial branch canals.
This however, was not to be, and unlike many of the Midland’s other inland waterways the Stourbridge Canal never shut. In fact, it has always been a crucial node in the West Midland county’s canal network. This is because the planners of the Dudley Canal, both the first section through the mighty caverns beneath Dudley Castle, and the second longer part winding across the south west Black Country towards Selly Oak in Birmingham through the ill fated Lapal Tunnel, realised it was perfectly located.
In 1784 the Birmingham Canal Navigation agreed to support the construction of the first part of a canal extending from their network at Tipton right into the heart of the coal mining district around Dudley. This paved the way for the construction of the tunnels underneath Dudley Castle which connect the Birmingham Canal Navigation to the Stourbridge Canal. From there the second part of the Dudley Canal winds its way down to Halesowen, and at one time all the way to Selly Oak and a junction with the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.
As work to complete the tunnel progressed a commercial armistice was signed. The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal cut the toll they charged users of the Stourbridge Canal for accessing their network at Stourton. Nowadays the network that was created in the late 18th Century is one of the UK’s most popular cruising rings taking in the Staffordshire and Worcestershire countryside and urban Black Country alike.
Unlike other canals the Stourbridge remained profitable. It was earning more than was outlayed on its maintenance as late as 1938.
This said operating a canal in a region as heavily mined for its mineral resources as the south western Black Country was not without its hazards. In November 1903 old mine workings adjacent to the canal just below the Delph Locks in Brierley Hill subsided. The resulting landslip and sink holes breached the canal. In total a 3 mile stretch was placed out of action and surrounding factories and mines suffered severe damage from the flow of water and subsidence alike. Purportedly a 5.5 metre tall steam boiler was lost to a sinkhole at one workshop, whilst a colliery saw an entire headstock collapse into another. Fortunately there were no casualties as the epicentre of the disaster was in an entirely industrial area and the collapse happened on a Sunday afternoon when there was nobody at work.
Subsidence – albeit not due to the area’s centuries long history of mineral extraction – has also damaged the canal more recently. In 2008 a landslip near Stourton damaged the bank causing the lower reaches of the waterway to be shut for a time.
This said, nowadays the waterway like so many in the Black Country is a peaceful place, much enjoyed as a linear park like environment by the people of the region. In many ways the Stourbridge Canal was a pioneer in this regard, having been fully restored in the early to mid-1960s by volunteers aided in kind by British Waterways. An early example of the organisation looking at the leisure and amenity value of a waterway as well as its commercial potential.
The Walk
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps
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One of my favourite things about visiting Stourbridge is the train ride between Stourbridge Junction and Stourbridge Town. Stourbridge Junction is the mainline station where frequent trains run between Worcester and Birmingham, and then onto Dorridge, Stratford-upon-Avon and several times a day down to London. Stourbridge Town is a little branch line station a tad over a kilometre from Stourbridge Junction, immediately adjacent to the town’s bus station. Shuttling between them every 10 minutes is the Stourbridge Town Shuttle. It is rare enough in the UK these days to have a little inter-urban branch line serving a single stop in a town centre, it is even more unique that they have their own bespoke train unit serving them. Possibly the most unique train in regular service in the country, the Parry People Mover (British rail class 139) is a tiny, incredibly efficient gas powered railcar. Capable of carrying up to around 40 people, it constantly shuttles the short way between the mainline station and the town centre. Check it out below:
Despite having operated very successfully in Stourbridge since 2009 the idea has yet to catch on elsewhere in the UK, perhaps because of the lack of appropriate railway lines to utilise the concept. Something which I think is a real shame. But anyway, onto the walk…
Having reached Stourbridge Town Railway Station exit from the single platform onto the concourse for the bus station.
Turn left and walk round towards the main terminal of the bus station.
Just before you reach the main terminal you’ll come to a flight of steps on your left which lead down into an underpass.
Once in the underpass walk across to the far side and then head up the left hand ramp onto St. John’s Road.
From here turn left down the side road immediately ahead of you onto Stourbridge High Street. As you walk to the High Street on your right hand side stands the Red Cone pub (a nod to the town’s historic status as a major centre of the glass industry) and a branch of the West Bromwich Building Society.
Once you reach the High Street, turn right and walk straight along it for about five minutes. Stourbridge has a fairly lively town centre and there are plenty of shops including a large branch of TESCOs in a shopping centre on the left of the High Street from which you can buy provisions for the walk if needed.
Presently you come to a y-shaped junction. The small square-like area here was at one time the town’s marketplace. On your left the tall red brick gothic tower of the old Stourbridge Borough Council Town Hall rises up gauntly.
Having reached this junction carry on straight across it and down the gently sloping road on the other side.
After a couple of minutes walking the road narrows into a short path which leads up an underpass.
Once inside the underpass turn right once you reach a small sunken square in the middle of it (I turned left at this point, but this was a mistake… Albeit not a disastrous one).
Having walked up the ramp onto the side of the dual carriageway, take an almost immediate left down Canal Street, just after you cross the road bridge over the River Stour. As you turn first the Old Wharf Inn and then the Bonded Warehouse are on your right hand side.
Presently as you pass these buildings and enter a long strip of roughly paved land serving as a car park the area takes on the familiar trappings of a canal terminus, with narrowboats visible on your right hand side.
Presently you come to one of these anti-moped and motorcycle gates which stop people driving onto the towpath. This marks the start of the Stourbridge Canal Towpath.
Once on the pleasant towpath the next mile or two of walking is incredibly straightforward. You just follow the line of the canal along the towpath.
It is a pleasant walk, with a few interesting sights along the way.
Suburban Stourbridge is pleasant, not least because the people are also incredibly friendly. I was walking along the canal on a busy Friday morning and practically everybody I passed who was heading in the direction of Stourbridge town centre cheerily said hello to me. Not something that you’d get in Birmingham, or indeed most parts of the West Midlands conurbation, nor for that matter walking in most parts of urban or semi-urban Britian.
Along the way you walk across several bridges leading into what once must have been wharfs for long shut and demolished factories or warehousing areas.
You also pass The Ruskin Glass Centre, a workshop complex which is home to numerous craft businesses working with glass, which continue to keep the flame of the town’s glass working traditions alight.
Presently you arrive at Wordsley Junction. This is crossed by a bridge.
Walk straight across the bridge.
On the far side turn right heading up the towpath past a series of lock gates.
This leads through suburban Stourbridge past a series of former glassworks, some retaining their distinctive, bottle shaped, conical cones. One of them is the Red House Cone, now the site of Stourbridge’s revived glass museum, and a place where glass is made to this day.
Presently after walking straight along the canal for some distance a medium sized modern factory with a tall, thin white chimney comes into view.
Here the canal forks. There is a brick bridge to your right, turn right here and cross over the waterway, continuing on the towpath as it runs past the factory to the right.
This is where the canal enters Brierley Hill. You follow the canal as it loops around before heading north towards Merry Hill Shopping Centre and the middle of the Dudley.
Sections of this part of the walk are very industrial, others are far more residential, a mixture of interwar council housing and more post-1970s privately built estates, in terms of their character.
Presently you reach a modern road bridge, and encounter lampposts for illuminating the towpath in the dark. This is the sign that you have reached the area around the gargantuan Merry Hill Shopping Centre.
The first stages of Merry Hill were constructed in the late 1980s ostensibly as a regeneration project to reclaim the site of the Round Oak Steelworks which shut in 1982.
This is not in fact the case. Rather the shopping centre was built on farmland beneath where the steelworks once sat.
Having passed the shopping complex the towpath leads you into an area of redevelopment, primarily offices, but with some bars and restaurants, including a pub that is a standout example of early 1990s POMO postindustrial design, trying to look like a Victorian factory unit. This area is called the Waterfront, and this is partly where the steelworks actually stood.
Having passed The Waterfront you follow the towpath through an industrial area in between Brierley Hill and Dudley town.
After some distance you come to a bridge which carries the towpath across the canal to the other side.
Keep following the canal around. Soon you approach the place where the Stourbridge Canal and the Dudley Canal merge.
The canal curves to the left underneath a road bridge and you walk straight ahead past former canal offices towards a viaduct (wreathed in white hoarding sheets when I walked the route in late December 2022). This is the Parkhead Viaduct, opened in its current form in 1880 and disused since 1993. Soon it is hoped that the West Midlands Combined Authority’s Metro tram system will use it as part of a new line connecting Brierley Hill, with Dudley, Tipton, Wednesbury and the rest of the network.
Walk underneath the Parkhead Viaduct and into the canal cutting beyond.
Ahead of you there is a wharf area on the edge of the cutting leading up to the Dudley Tunnel.
Here to the right there is a bridge across the main line of the canal.
Cross over this bridge then head left following a path uphill through the trees.
This path winds uphill steadily towards the top of the cutting.
At the top of the cutting turn right and head to beside the busy A461.
Cross over the road via the crossing point in place here.
Then head slightly to the right, heading across a quiet parallel road into a small park next to Dudley’s Borough Cemetery.
Follow a tarmac path along the side of the park.
This leads into a series of streets of late 19th Century vintage terrace houses.
Here take the first street running uphill off on the right.
At the top of the hill there is a short snicket off to the left which leads out beside the busy Stourbridge Road.
Cross the road here and then turn right walking uphill towards Dudley town centre.
Continue walking for a fair distance, crossing side streets, until the road forks near to a small branch of ASDA.
Here take the left hand fork walking past the branch of ASDA and into Dudley town centre.
Keep on walking straight downhill until you reach Dudley’s marketplace.
Cross the marketplace walking straight ahead.
On the far side of the marketplace off to the right there is Dudley bus station. This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
Dudley Bus Station is well served by numerous buses to Birmingham, as well as buses to other West Midlands centres like Wolverhampton, West Bromwich (which has connections to the Midlands Metro) and other Black Country towns in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley and beyond. All being well Dudley will soon have a Midlands Metro connection of its own. This’ll call at the Bus Station, however, the completion date for this is currently uncertain. Likely 2023 or 2024. Once operational this’ll offer services to Birmingham and Wolverhampton via Wednesbury, as well as calling at Tipton where there is a mainline railway station.