Birmingham & Fazeley Canal
Fifteen miles down from the heart of Birmingham through two great lock flights to the Coventry Canal at Fazeley
The Birmingham & Fazeley Canal runs 15 miles from Gas Street Basin, in the centre of Birmingham, out to Fazeley Junction, where it meets the Coventry Canal. In that short distance it drops through 38 locks, so it is one of the harder-working canals in the region for anyone travelling by boat, though the towpath itself is an easy enough walk. It opened in 1789.
Its two lock flights are the defining feature. Farmer’s Bridge, a staircase of thirteen locks, drops the canal out of the city centre through what was once the densest concentration of works and wharves in the country; contemporaries counted scores of steam engines lining it, and at its busiest the flight was worked day and night by gaslight. The Aston flight of eleven follows soon after. Below them the canal quietens, running out through the northern edge of the conurbation toward open country at Fazeley.
The canal was promoted to break the monopoly the older Birmingham Canal held over the town’s trade, and after a fight in Parliament the two companies were made to merge. The result knitted Birmingham’s waterways to the Coventry and Oxford canals and so to London, which is why the Farmer’s Bridge locks became so relentlessly busy.
For the walker it is a canal of two halves. The city sections, with their locks, tunnels and modern quarters around the basins, are the interest; the outer reaches toward Fazeley are calmer. Central Birmingham’s stations put the start within easy reach, and the towpath connects into the rest of the Birmingham Canal system at Gas Street.
