Looking in unlikely places for Wonders, I occasionally present some findings…

Previously:
Robert Plant, musician
The Katyn Memorial, Cannock Chase
The Great Dune of Pilat
The Bizarre Cafe

The Netherton Tunnel

If you look hard enough you will find rivers within the industrial West Midlands, though none of any particular note. There’s the River Tame, typically described as an ‘urban river, polluted heavily modified by culverting, straightening, rerouting with concrete banks and few natural features.’ It can be seen running under the M6 at Wednesbury, or under Spaghetti Junction at Gravelly Hill, where it joins with the River Rea, which itself then runs in a culvert south through Cannon Hill Park.

Most water here is artificial, a result of the great canal networks constructed by Brindley, Smeaton and Telford, between 1768 and 1863 – over 180 miles of canal were dug out and 216 locks built to accommodate the rise and fall of the land. With the Industrial Revolution the area developed from a small series of hamlets to a concentration of metal foundries, metal working and engineering factories, all utilising the abundant supply of mineral deposits of limestone, coal, ironstone and fireclay. These existing rivers were too small and shallow for most craft to navigate, so the canal network was devised to provide the means of moving goods and materials. The products of this region – coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals, glass-making, brass, guns, bricks and soap, nail and chain making, quarrying, engines and boilers, gas works – all helped provide the manufacturing base for the expansion of Imperial Britain.

Birmingham alone was said to have more canals than Venice and the town of Tipton, riddled with canals (called ‘cuts’ locally) was known as ‘Little Venice’. Hundreds of boats worked these canals every day, linking mines, furnaces, factories. Despite the coming of the railways, these canals still carried over eight and a half million tons a year at the end of the 19th century.

Running for over a mile, the Netherton Tunnel was the last major canal tunnel to be constructed in Britain. It opened in 1858 to relieve congestion in the very narrow Dudley Tunnel. The first sod of earth was turned by Lord Ward on the last day of 1855 and was opened on 20th August 1858.

Statutory list description (from Sandwell M.B.C):

Entrance to canal tunnel. Opened 1858. Brick with sandstone keystone. Round arch has moulded arch band. Flanking walls battered and of concave plan. Parapet has brick coping. The Dudley Canal was amalgamated with the Birmingham Canal Navigations in 1846, and the Netherton Tunnel was subsequently built to improve links between the two systems. It is 3027 yards long and is unusual because of its late date and because of its width: it has two towpaths.  It was lit by gas and later by electricity.

The tunnel runs under the Rowley Hills, now mostly parkland. One hundred and fifty years ago this area was covered with mineshafts, spoil heaps and coke ovens. These mines often flooded and 1,600,000 litres of water were pumped out of them every day into the canal. We entered the tunnel from the southern end, the Dudley side. There is no light, apart from that provided by the occasional ventilation tunnels. Bring your torch. For a moment, with a shiver, we imagine the months and years of digging by the itinerant Irish navvies, down here in the cold and damp darkness.

Photos: Kate Jackson