The Birmingham to Bilston Canal, 1771

Description:Earl Gower’s papers include Parliamentary acts relating to improvements to canals for the use of industry and trade. A notable act amongst these from ‘the Parliament begin and holden at Westminster, the Tenth Day of May, Anno Domini 1768’ gives permission to the Birmingham Canal Company to undertake construction work on the Birmingham to Bilston canal.

The Act featured above is entitled ‘An Act to oblige the Company of Proprietors of the Birmingham Canal Navigation’ to complete the Birmingham to Bilston canal ‘to a Field called Newhall Ring, adjoining the Town of Birmingham, in the County of Warwick’. The company were given additional responsibility to ensure that the canal was kept ‘free and open for the passage of boats, barges, and other vessels’.

These Acts provide an overview of the geographical construction of canals during the mid eighteenth century. The Act states that the Birmingham to Bilston canal was engineered ‘to communicate with the canal now making between the Rivers Severn and Trent; and for making collateral cuts up to several Coal Mines’.

The industrial purpose of the canal is evident in its construction near to ‘several large coal mines and Lime-stone quarries’, the products of which would be transported by the new canal link.