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Birches Head winding hole Caldon canal


Paul Myatt

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Birches Head winding hole has been  covered by reeds for as long as I can remember, years ago a friend and I had a rowing boat and tried to get to the centre of the reeds, not far into this adventure we struck a couple of bows of sunken barges. Does anybody have any history of barges being sunken back in the canals history?.

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Okay thanks, I wasn't being picky honest. It's generally understood that a barge had no living cabin and was about 14ft wide.

Boats were built to carry cargoes solely within the canal they travelled.  Hence on the lockless parts of the Birmingham Canal Navigations boats were used that exceeded the restrictions elsewhere.

The Caldon does have locks which are only 7ft wide, however limestone was a common cargo on the bottom end of it. Depending on how far they moved it would have dictated the boat used. I was hoping you'd discovered an anomaly more exciting.  I for one would love to know the origin and history of the abandoned boats .... perhaps you'd like to go back and take photos? :detective:

Please have a report on my desk by Wednesday, diagrams will earn further points.

Zenataomm

 

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Hi, Martin, its at Birches Head, sorry don't mean to be rude! I have complained about the bar of mud across the winding hole many times as there is nowhere to turn between Hanley and Milton, despite the three winding holes marked on CRT maps. All are impossible for full length boats to turn. CRT have them down for dredging in 2019, think they are having a laugh! I don't think there are sunk boats in the hole, just hard mud. There are several iron day(?)boats used as bank support on the sides of a stream further towards Milton from Birches Head

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34 minutes ago, oldironsides said:

Hi, Martin, its at Birches Head, sorry don't mean to be rude! I have complained about the bar of mud across the winding hole many times as there is nowhere to turn between Hanley and Milton, despite the three winding holes marked on CRT maps. All are impossible for full length boats to turn. CRT have them down for dredging in 2019, think they are having a laugh! I don't think there are sunk boats in the hole, just hard mud. There are several iron day(?)boats used as bank support on the sides of a stream further towards Milton from Birches Head

I say the sunken boats bow wood but taking 40 years ago to be honest lol, for years the front of the winding hole had a swans nest, so this might be why the hole was left to reed over!, but I did see them honest!, and no al

Ironside if your passing birches head check out how large the winding hole as it goes a large way back!, it’s like a small marina lol

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Yes that’s the one, I live on the estate that borders the hole for the last 35 years and lived my childhood at a house just up the field from bridge 16 Northwood!.

on the picture the trees are all mature and if you look carefully you can trace the outline of the larger winding hole.

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You're welcome, it's a really useful website that isn't it?

It's worth bookmarking it and revisiting to have a play. If you examine the drop down menus you'll see there are a few differently timed OS maps you can make the comparison against.

There's also an option to overlay one map over the other and then you can play with the opaque %.

Enjoy and have fun.

:)

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Zenataomm, that link is fabulous, cheers for putting it up! I too have always wondered whether something more industrious used to happen there and you've confirmed it. Might have to get back up there for another look. I followed the maps on the link back down through Stoke and to Barlaston to see if the maps went that far enough to see our house. Not expecting they did I was amazed that you can see it on there and will have to go back and do some more looking later! Many thanks again.

Just to recap, are we saying that there are boats abandoned visible there?!

Ian.

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