BW157/11
Stourbridge Extension Canal (Canal Number 96)
Date
1836-nd [mid 20th century]
Reference code
BW157/11
Administrative / Biographical history
There was the threat of railway competition from before the Extension was built. In 1845 the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway (OWWR) was applying for an Act of Parliament for several different routes. One of them was in direct competition with the Extension Canal and so it was agreed that the Railway would purchase the canal if it got parliamentary approval. The same Act of Parliament approved the purchase of the Stratford on Avon Canal.
On 27 March 1847 the canal was bought by the OWWR, which the canal company had petitioned against only a few years previously. The chairman of the Railway, Francis Rufford, had recently joined the Extension canal's committee. The Railway was as unsuccessful as the canal was successful, which is why the Railway was so eager to own it and was prepared to maintain it. By the 1850s there were 17 blast furnaces in 6 ironworks, 2 brickworks and 4 major collieries served by the canal, so there was plenty of traffic.
In 1860, the Oxford Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway and Worcester & Hereford Railway merged to form the West Midland Railway. On 1 August 1863, the West Midland Railway amalgamated with the Great Western Railway and the Stourbridge Extension Canal went with it. The canal continued to operate at a profit, even though some of the loads travelled less than a mile along the waterway. By the early 1900s the use of the canal was declining, though it wasn't abandoned until 1935.
For further information see Edward Paget-Tomlinson's The Illustrated History of Canals & River Navigations and Charles Hadfield's The Canals of the West Midlands.