Arguments in favour of a Canal from Birmingham to Worcester, 1768

Description:Amongst Granville Leveson-Gower's papers exists a large document entitled ‘A Comparative State of the different Prices at which Goods may be carried, from Birmingham to Worcester, Bristol, &c, &c, by the undermentioned Conveyances’.

The tabulated statistics drawn on this document compare the prices of transporting merchandise from Birmingham to Worcester ‘by land carriage’, by the ‘Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal’ and by ‘the intended canal’ between Birmingham and Worcester.

The cost of ‘Merchandize passing’ by land, or by the Staffordshire Worcestershire canal is calculated at £5 by land and at 15 shillings and 10 and a quarter pence by the canal. In contrast, the cost using the intended canal is estimated at only 6 pence.

The document also includes written statements about the advantages of the proposed Birmingham to Worcester canal. One such statement suggests that ‘the merchants and manufacturers prefer sending their goods’ using ‘carriage by land’, demonstrating the insufficiency of the Staffordshire to Worcester canal.

The document is critical of the current Staffordshire to Worcester canal, describing ‘the delay of the shipping at Stourport, and the very great uncertainty of the River Severn Navigation’. In contrast with the Staffordshire and Worcester canal, it is proposed that on the Birmingham to Worcester canal ‘merchandize will be delivered either at Bristol, or Birmingham, as well as at the intermediate towns of Worcester, Upton, Tewkesbury and Gloucester…almost as soon as by land carriage’.

The principle advantages of the new canal for ‘merchants and manufacturers’ include the ‘certain and quick delivery of their goods’. The document also suggests that towns such as Bromsgrove and Droitwich would benefit from a reduction in the price of coal owing to its more cost effective transportation by canal. With reference to Droitwich, the document proposes that owing to ‘the reduction in the price of coal, its salt trade will be increased to Treble’. The document states that ‘from this increase of the salt trade, the town and neighbourhood will be particularly benefited, as well as the public in general’.

To summarise the advantages of the proposed Birmingham to Worcester Canal, the document calculates that the ‘total annual saving to the public besides other advantages in the carriage of manure, grain &c’ would be ‘£50,250’.