The old meeting point of Birmingham's canals, where narrowboats still moor in the middle of the city
Gas Street Basin is the historic heart of Birmingham’s canal network, a pool of water and moored narrowboats tucked between office blocks and bars in the centre of the city. It marks the point where the Birmingham Canal system meets the Worcester & Birmingham Canal, and it takes its name from the gasworks that once stood alongside and lit the wharves. For all the modern building around it, the basin keeps the feel of a working canal port, with painted boats, cast-iron bridges and cobbled edges.
Its curiosity is the Worcester Bar. When the Worcester & Birmingham Canal reached the city in the 1790s, the older Birmingham company refused to let the two waterways join, fearing a loss of their water, and insisted on a narrow strip of land — the bar — kept between them. For twenty years goods had to be manhandled from boat to boat across it. Only in 1815 was a stop-lock cut through, letting boats pass at last. The bar survives today with boats moored along both sides.
The basin is free and open, and threaded by public towpaths, so anyone can walk straight in. It sits a few minutes from New Street and Broad Street, close to the Mailbox and Brindleyplace, and is the natural place to start exploring Birmingham on foot along the water. From here the towpaths fan out for miles across the city, whose canals famously run to a greater length than those of Venice.
