Distance: 5 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

Walk from Kidderminster Railway Station, primarily along the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal towpath, to the 18th Century “inland port” of Stourbridge on Severn where the canal converges with the River Severn.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

UK’s Best Preserved 18th Centry Inland Port

Stourport-on-Severn is a mid-18th Century new town, one of the first in the UK called into being by the expansion of industry.

The River Severn upon which its sits in northern Worcestershire was an important artery for trade in Roman times and probably before. However, the key river port in the area was at Bewdley a couple of miles north, while what is now Stourport was barely a hamlet.

This changed in the years after 1768 when the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, one of the Midland region’s first, reached its terminus with the River Severn at Stourport. For the first time a more or less completely artificial waterway had been constructed linking the growing industrial hubs of the western Midlands to the north with the Severn.

At Stourport’s dock the cargo carried on narrowboats from the north was loaded onto Severn trows for shipment south towards Worcester, Gloucester, Bristol and the sea, or north up to Shropshire and the metalworking, china and coal mining industries of the Ironbridge Gorge.

By 1788 John Wesley, the founder of Methodism on one of his journey’s through the area was calling Stourport “a well built village”. When he next visited two years later he claimed that it doubled in size. In truth by 1795 the population was around 1,300, whereas little over a generation before itn barely entered double figures.

Stourport’s late 18th Century prosperity was not to last. Advances in canal building technology meant that by the 1810s quicker routes from the west Midlands industrial centres had opened up, like Worcester and Birmingham. And as the 19th Century progressed the commercial and social geography of Great Britain became steadily more concentrated in the island’s centre and less dependent upon naturally occurring navigable waterways like the Severn.

This meant the Stourport stagnated, though this had the effect of meaning that many grand late 18th and early 19th warehouses and houses were retained that otherwise may have been flattened. Something which means that today it is amongst the best preserved as well as the most impressive of the UK’s former inland ports.

The town’s location right by the River Severn gave it a second lease of life throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries and into our own time as a leisure destination. One of the truest embodiments of the dictum that landlocked Midlanders will turn anywhere with water into the seaside.

To this day residents of Birmingham and the Black Country flock to Stourport-on-Severn, now an interesting little town of slightly over 20,000 residents, at weekends and on bank holidays to go on the fairgrounds, stroll along the river bank, eat fish and chips and candy floss. Some even have holiday caravans overlooking the Severn.

The Walk

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

This walk was created using Ordnance Survey Explorer. To subscribe and also get Ordnance Survey Maps on your phone, click the banner above.

This walk from Kidderminster to Stourport-on-Severn begins from Kidderminster Railway Station.

Upon reaching Kidderminster leave the station via the exits next to the booking office.

Once on the car park in front of the booking office, turn left and walk across the car park past the front of Kidderminster Town Station, the southern end of the Severn Valley heritage railway until you reach the side of a main road running down into Kidderminster.

When you reach the main road turn left and walk down the hill.

Presently you come to a major roundabout which you need to cross. There are subways situated around the edge of the roundabout. Walk down one of these and through the underpass tunnel into the grassy area at the centre of the roundabout.

Upon reaching the centre of the roundabout turn right and head up a subway tunnel on the far side.

Here you reach Kidderminster town centre. Walk straight ahead then turn left down a road, then right until you reach the corner beside Kidderminster Town Hall. In front of the Town Hall stands a statue of Rowland Hill Kidderminster’s most famous son, the inventor of the Penny Black stamp.

Here turn left and walk past Kidderminster’s bus station towards the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. The canal runs north up around the Black Country and through Wolverhampton towards the Trent and Mersey. South it runs for around five miles down towards the River Severn at Stourport.

On reaching the canal through a gap between two units you come out onto the towpath. Upon reaching it, turn left.

Follow the canal for several miles heading towards the outskirts of Kidderminster.

Along the way you pass underneath the huge spectacular Falling Sands Viaduct which carries the Severn Valley Railway. It was restored in 2020 meaning that it should stand and remain in use for years to come.

Continue along the canal underneath the viaduct approaching the edge of Kidderminster.

Continue along the towpath through the rural fringe lying between Kidderminster and Stourbridge-on-Severn.

Keep on walking along the towpath through the town.

Presently you reach a point where you can exit the canal to the left up onto the side of the road.

Walk up the ramp. Off on your right is a road leading into the centre of Stourport. You, however, carry on straight, crossing the road. Here you reach the basin at the edge at the base of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal before it converges with the River Severn.

Follow a road walking straight ahead past the basin and a line of flats.

At the bottom you reach a little park in front of the River Severn past some historic canal buildings.

Once in the park turn right and follow a path across the locks where the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal enters the River Severn.

Having crossed the canal passing the funfair on the river bank in Stourport-on-Severn keep on walking straight ahead until you reach the main road.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Hartlebury Railway Station stands around a mile or so east of Stourport-on-Severn which has mainline services frequently throughout the day south towards Droitwich Spa and Worcester, and north towards Kidderminster, the Black Country and Birmingham. There are also frequent bus services back towards Kidderminster, as well as fairly frequent services up towards Bewdley.