3.7 Lord's Hayes Branch Canal, BCN 

Always very interesting, you are keeping history alive...

Another wonderful episode Andy. Your in my neck of the woods and I thank you for risking the wrath of a local farmer to create this video. Great job!

I am finding these videos fascinating, for thirty years me and my friends have hired boats for a week .every year . After getting bored with usual rings . We decided to cruise the Stourport ring . And that’s were I got a taste for the Birmingham canals . There is usually about six to eight of us on a boat . When we find ourselves on the Wyrley and Essington or the Walsall canal people are genuinely shocked to see us , it’s like a post apocalyptic world we feel we have the whole canal system to ourselves .

What a fascinating series, thank you for all your work and please keep it up!

Very Interesting, many thanks. I live less than a mile from this section and regularly photograph around the Fishley Rover Bridge where it joins the Wyrley and Essington. The Yates family (you mentioned Mrs Yates) are the farmers who own most of the land your were walking across.

Great video again Sir

Hi me again. I now have some local info. My next door neighbour worked at the Newtown Service station and I am informed that there was a massive opencast operation in the 1990s, he could look over a wall at the back of the garage right into the opencast, So there is your canal extension gone. The smaller of the two pools, the one behind the retirement home, is artificial and part of land drainage put in after the opencast. There is a culvert draining into it probably from the North Walsall Cemetery. The northern of the two basins is part under the retirement home car park and land to the east of Newtown Farm, which was built on the site of the Cannock Lodge Colliery no 5 and 6. The opencast would have worked round this area. The south basin would have gone with the opencast. I was therefore wrong in my last posting, anything that looks like remains of the basins is coincidental and probably from drainage channels put in after the opencast. Any bits of wall from the one behind the garage. If you want to get onto the nearby Wyrley and Essington canal, a pleasant walk, turn into Long lane off the A34 and proceed towards the bridge. There is an entrance on the left into the Junior Playing Fields, you can park to the side and a pedestrian entrance is always open. One of the buildings was the offices of the opencast and the whole of the fields between the canal and the A34 was a massive opencast, so so much for the canal archaeology. There should be some old photos around, when the virus has cleared I will try the Bloxwich Gold Club. Old photos usually get framed and hung on walls. Retirement home may have something.

I live just up the road from the retirement home at a bungalow called "Greengables". previously to that I lived other side of Bloxwich. As a young teen I used to fish in the old Fishley Canal as we called it, this about 1960. Actually the far end of Lord Hayes branch. This had been blocked off by tipping direct from the Fishley road bridge, but had water as far as the main canal. It was well known for its pike. It was not until years later that it was completely filled. A lot of fish removed first, inc pike up to 3 feet, I was told. At the Newtown end, the basins are still there, at least in part, but very badly overgrown and difficult to get to. Before the retirement home there was a garage, "Newtown Service Station". Interesting that the Newtown Road Bridge went in 1931, I was wondering about that. So the basins were cut off at least that early. I fancy that the pools, not shown on old maps, are the result of either mining subsidence or flooded opencast, and maybe caused by a breach in the canal in that area?

Andy, Congratulations on another wonderful episode. Are there any plans for restoration on this branch?

I wonder when coming to an area of a former canal bed that is fenced off & unenterable whether a drone would be helpful ?

Are you going to be doing the hatherton branch?

What a easy Canal to restore ?

I don't understand your commment about a Hayes belonging to Mr Lord. What is a Hayes? Is it a local term?