Gas Street Basin (grid reference SP062866 ) is a canal basin in the centre of Birmingham, England, where the Worcester and Birmingham Canal meets the BCN Main Line. It is located on Gas Street, off Broad Street, and between the Mailbox and Brindleyplace canal-side developments.
The Birmingham Canal, completed in 1773, terminated at Old Wharf beyond Bridge Street. When the Worcester and Birmingham Company started their canal at a point later known as Gas Street Basin the Birmingham Canal Navigations Company (BCN) insisted on a physical barrier to prevent the Worcester and Birmingham Canal from benefiting from their water. The Worcester Bar, a 7-foot-3-inch-wide (2.21 m) straight barrier 84 yards (77 m) long was built perpendicular to the run of the two canals. Cargoes had to be laboriously manhandled between boats on either side.
The Worcester and Birmingham Canal opened between Birmingham and Selly Oak on 30 October 1795 but took until 1815 to complete to Worcester, at which time, after much lobbying by iron and coal masters and the Worcester and Birmingham Canal Company, an Act of Parliament was passed to open up the bar and the bar lock was built. There were toll offices either side of the bar lock and tolls were collected by each company from boats using the canals. The Worcester Bar still exists, with boats moored to both sides of it. It is connected to Gas Street via a footbridge reconstructed to a design by Horseley Ironworks of the 19th century.
During the 1990s much of the area around the basin was redeveloped and older buildings refurbished.
The wall and ramp down from Gas Street, the Tap and Spile pub, and the neighbouring building are all grade II listed, as is the Martin & Chamberlain building built on top of the Broad Street Tunnel.
In 1973, the basin featured prominently in the Cliff Richard film Take Me High . A canal-side cottage there was used as the home of a character in the long-running soap opera Crossroads .
The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal is a navigable narrow canal in Staffordshire and Worcestershire in the English Midlands. It is 46 miles (74 km) long, linking the River Severn at Stourport in Worcestershire with the Trent and Mersey Canal at Haywood Junction by Great Haywood.
Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN) is a network of canals connecting Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and the eastern part of the Black Country. The BCN is connected to the rest of the English canal system at several junctions. It was owned and operated by the Birmingham Canal Navigation Company from 1767 to 1948.
The Worcester and Birmingham Canal is a canal linking Birmingham and Worcester in England. It starts in Worcester, as an 'offshoot' of the River Severn and ends in Gas Street Basin in Birmingham. It is 29 miles (47 km) long. There are 58 locks in total on the canal, including the 30 Tardebigge Locks, one of the longest lock flights in Europe. The canal climbs 428 feet (130 m) from Worcester to Birmingham.
The Dudley Canal is a canal passing through Dudley in the West Midlands of England. The canal is part of the English and Welsh network of connected navigable inland waterways and forms part of the popular Stourport Ring narrowboat cruising route.
The Warwick Bar conservation area is a conservation area in Birmingham, England which was home to many canalside factories during the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Stourport Ring is a connected series of canals forming a circuit, or canal ring, around Worcestershire, The Black Country and Birmingham in The Midlands, England. The ring is formed from the River Severn, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, the Stourbridge Canal, the Dudley Canals, the Birmingham Canal Navigations and the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.
Old Turn Junction, or Deep Cutting Junction is a canal junction in Birmingham, England, where the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal meets the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line Canal. The junction features a circular island.
In the United Kingdom a toll point or toll island is a place on a canal where a fee was collected as boats carrying cargo passed. These were sited at strategic points such as the stop lock at the transition from one canal company to another where water transfer was a concern, or at busy locks where water usage and pumping costs were an issue.
The BCN Main Line, or Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line is the evolving route of the Birmingham Canal between Birmingham and Wolverhampton in England.
The Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN), a network of narrow canals in the industrial midlands of England, is built on various water levels. The three longest are the Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Walsall levels. Locks allow boats to move from one level to another.
Tardebigge Locks or the Tardebigge Flight is the longest flight of locks in the UK, comprising 30 narrow locks on a two-and-a-quarter-mile (3.6 km) stretch of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal at Tardebigge, Worcestershire. It raises the waterway 220 feet (67 m), and lies between the Tardebigge tunnel to the North and the Stoke Prior flight of six narrow locks to the South. The Tardebigge Engine House is also on this stretch.
Kings Norton Junction is the name of the canal junction where the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal terminates and meets the Worcester and Birmingham Canal at Kings Norton, Birmingham, England.
The Horseley Ironworks was a major ironworks in the Tipton area in the county of Staffordshire, now the West Midlands, England.
Smethwick Junction is the name of the canal junctions where the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line Canal from Birmingham splits into the BCN Old Main Line and the BCN New Main Line near to Smethwick, West Midlands, England.
Bromford Junction is a canal junction at the foot of the Spon Lane Locks where the Spon Lane Locks Branch meets the BCN New Main Line near Oldbury in the West Midlands, England.
Wappenshall Junction is a British canal junction located at Wappenshall, Shropshire. It was created when the Newport Branch Canal joined the Shrewsbury Canal in 1835, and was closed along with the canal in 1944.
The Bradley Branch or Bradley Locks Branch was a short canal of the Birmingham Canal Navigations in the West Midlands, England. Completed in 1849, it included nine locks, and had a number of basins which enabled it to service local collieries and industrial sites. The locks were unusual, as they had a single gate at both ends, rather than double gates at the bottom end. The route closed in the 1950s, and the top seven locks were covered over and landscaped.
The Icknield Port Loop is a 0.6-mile (1 km) loop of the eighteenth-century-built Old BCN Main Line canal in Birmingham, England, about 2 miles (3 km) west of the city centre, which opened to traffic on 6 November 1769 and in some definitions includes its straighter bypass built in September 1827, a 550-yard (500 m) section of the New BCN Main Line. Most of the 56 acres (23 ha) of land thereby enclosed is derelict meaning the canal serves the Canal & River Trust maintenance depot at Icknield Port and conveys water from Edgbaston Reservoir to the BCN Main Line. The enclosed land has no pedestrian or vehicular access. Icknield Port (Loop) takes its name from the Roman Icknield Street which passed nearby, the exact route of which is unknown.
The Holliday Street aqueduct is a Grade II listed aqueduct at the start of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal in central Birmingham, England.
The Boat Gauging House is a building in Tipton, West Midlands, England. It is situated by the Main Line of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, and was used for calibrating new canal boats in order later to ascertain the weight of cargo carried. It is a Grade II listed building.
