A towpath journey:
THE Coventry Canal was built with the intention of linking Coventry to the ‘Grand Trunk’ route (now the Trent & Mersey Canal) and also to more easily transport coal from the coalfields at Bedworth to the town of Coventry. The canal’s connections to the benefits of the wider canal network including London via the Oxford Canal also contributed to its fortunes.
James Brindley, the great canal engineer, built the narrow Coventry Canal in his typical winding fashion, flowing around contours rather than bulldozing a straight course, so there are very few locks.
A revolutionary plan in the transport system of Britain was devised by Brindley – a ‘Grand Cross’ of four canals to connect four main rivers, the Thames, Severn, Trent and Mersey.
The Trent & Mersey ran from the River Trent at Shardlow to the Bridgewater Canal at Preston Brook, the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal from the River Severn at Stourport to the Trent & Mersey at Great Haywood, the Oxford Canal from Oxford on the River Thames to Hawkesbury Junction where it met the Coventry Canal which in turn linked to the Trent & Mersey at Fradley Junction.
Brindley’s Grand Cross plan was a resounding success and the major trunk route became the first water road ‘motorway’ system. And the Coventry Canal benefited from a rare collaboration of canal companies which resulted in a ‘shared’ stretch from Fazeley Junction through to Whittington.
The canal sets off from the canal basin in Coventry. The basin is surrounded by wooden warehouses which would have replaced earlier buildings from its heyday. In order to keep boats from staying in the basin overnight, bridge no.1 was built with a small aperture that could be closed easily with a wooden beam.
In the city centre, the ruins of the city’s original medieval cathedral are a stark voice on the skyline of Coventry’s own ‘ground zero’ left from the horror of the Second World War.
In the 1960s a light of hope was built in a new cathedral. A bond between these two buildings that lean side by side is a powerful and emotional paradox.
Lady Godiva, of Coventry fame, is said to have lived in King’s Bromley, a short distance from the end of the Coventry Canal at Fradley Junction, along the Trent & Mersey Canal, and a cross in the churchyard is known as Godiva’s Cross.
The canal winds through the suburbs of Coventry, passing a row of threestorey terraced houses known as Cash’s Hundred Houses, now Grade II-listed. An art trail with works including a bronze statue of James Brindley in Coventry Canal Basin runs alongside the canal from Coventry for more than five miles to Hawkesbury Junction, where the Oxford Canal heads off southwards.
Hawkesbury Junction is also known as Sutton Stop, after a family who were toll clerks here for much of the 1800s. The entire junction is a conservation area and is a busy, photogenic place filled with boats, a dramatic Horsley cast-iron bridge, a renowned canalside pub and a former engine house, which used to pump water up from a well to the canal. The original Newcomen steam engine, called rather appropriately Lady Godiva and dating back to 1725, is now on display in Dartmouth Museum in Devon.
Skirting the edge of Bedworth, the canal passes Marston Junction, where the Ashby Canal heads off to the east, and continues northwards through the suburbs of Nuneaton. Heading into open countryside, the canal passes a series of nature reserves and landscape formed from the spoil heaps of former quarries, the most dramatic of which is known as Mount Judd.
The majority of the locks on the Coventry Canal are at Atherstone, once a busy centre for hat making, where a burst of energy is needed from boaters to descend the stretch of 11 locks into more open landscape. Passing the remnants of an unusual iron swing bridge, then under the railway which has shadowed the canal since Atherstone, the canal ambles through Polesworth and past Pooley Country Park before ducking under the noisy M42.
At Alvecote, a nature reserve has been created from the pools left by the mining industry, then the canal passes through the outskirts of Tamworth and another two locks at Glascote before crossing over the beautiful Grade II-listed Tame Aqueduct.
Fazeley Junction is where the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal meets the Coventry, and where any children may want a quick detour southwards along the Birmingham & Fazeley to the theme park of Drayton Manor, a mile or so from the junction.
The ‘shared’ stretch of canal, the Birmingham & Fazeley, now shadows the River Tame and winds through delicious English countryside past Hopwas Hill and Hopwas Hays Wood to Whittington. There are military firing ranges here so mooring of boats is not permitted, and walkers need to keep an eye out for warning flags! A stone marks the point just outside Whittington where