It was a gloomy day with a bit of drizzle in the air when we left out mooring at the Fox ans Anchor near Coven. In 1974 the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal Society had a rally along this stretch that was 20p for two adults to enter. Children free. How much is Crick these days? Only saying.
Between the road and railway bridge at Slade Heath is this collection of buildings that must have been a wharf. I had previously looked on the 1888 map and there was no note of a wharf. I have dug further and there was a wharf at Slade Heath and it was to let in 1812 and 1818, and there was a sale of railway building equipment there in 1838. It originally consisted of a warehouse, stables, yard and small house.
As the canal meets the railway again what looks like another wharf can be seen. There is a small pumping station the other side of the railway and I thought it may have been used to bring equipment for that, but I now suspect that it was used for the electrification of the railway as a convenient point to bring equipment in by canal.
The enclosure of Coven and Slade Heaths occurred around 1851 and 1852. I assume that before then there would have been less field boundaries, but it is a very quiet rural place today too.
Hatherton Junction is now a quiet spot on the Staffs. and Worcs. but was a busy spot in its day. This end of the Hatherton Branch was constructed by the S&W canal themselves and went 3.5 miles to Churchbridge. The canal company made such good profits they didn't obtain an Act of Parliament so that they could compulsorily purchase land and raise money, they just negotiated individually with the land owners and paid for it out of profits. It was built to provide a route for the Cannock Chase mines produce. In 1860's the S&W made an agreement with the BCN to create a link via 13 locks between Churchbridge and the Cannock Extension Canal. It seems the two companies jointly purchased the land but the S&W paid for the locks over the 1/2 mile length. The link was made in around 1859/9 but the Cannock Extension Canal wasn't opened until 1863.
This would have been a busy toll station at the height of the coal period, and maybe will be again when the restoration is completed. It is perhaps the next sizable length of canal to be re-opened in the near future and see boat pass down it since its closure due subsidence in the 1950's.
Calf Heath Chemical works has grown over the years, starting in the 1920's and is owned by the Amewrican SI company now. There is also the waste incinerator with a sedum roof next to it. There was no smell or noise when we passed so not a bad run on this dead straight section, with a sharpish bend at the end.
You are then quickly at the Gailey Lock and the much photographed round house. It was the toll clerk's office and built at the same time as the lock and wharf nearby. The wharf was very busy with the turn round of their hire fleet as we passed. We had a small wait at the lock, just long enough to top up the water tank.
After Brick's, Bogg's and Rodbaston Locks the shine on the canal is lost a little as it butts up against the M^ with the noise and bustle but we were soon coming into Penkridge where we found a mooring and settled in. I had got a bit cold, but after a while we went off to explore a little.
At the end of the length of canal that runs alongside the M6 is the Littleton Colliery Railway Bridge, No. 81A. This peaked my curiosity and had had a poke about.
In the early 1870's there was a boom in the demand for coal and several pits opened. In May 1873 seven men got together and registered the Cannock and Huntington Colliery Co. They were men who had prospered in the Victoria Age, solicitor, iron founder, iron master's clerk, iron merchant and men with a property portfolio, plus others with aspirations to equal them. They planned to raise £100,000 by selling 5000 shares at £20 each. They planned that the cost to start production would be £70 to 80,0000 and then produce 1000 tons a day with annual profits of £52,000. The big plan was to construct a plateway from the mine site to the Staff and Worcs. Canal so as to avoid the massive congestion at Hednesford, where 200 boats could be waiting to load. The other plan was to sink the shafts using a continental system, the Kind Chaudron method that was popular on the Continent, but ti would be the first time it had been used in England. This method was selected due to the of a gravel layer in the bedding before reaching the coal seam. This was flooded with water and made the sinking of the shafts very difficult. It also is where a lot of the areas water is taken from by the numerous pumping stations in the area. In 1875 an exploratory shaft was drilled and coal was found at 650ft
In 1877 a plateway was laid and horses were used to bring up material from a basin dug at the canal, a distance of a bout 21/2 miles. The Kind Chaudron method was to drill the shafts by dropping a drill bit and then lifting, turning the bit a little and dropping it again, around 25 times a minute. When enough debris had been created a spoon or grab would be exchanged for the drill bit to bring the cuttings to the surface. The shafts was lined with a double skin of and the gap filled with concrete. The pioneer shaft of 6'7" was completed to 419' by October 1871. The full size shaft was completed to 405' in April 1879. The shaft had a lining tube in it at this stage and water was allowed to fill the shaft as drilling when on as it was all done via a derrick at the surface. The tricky bit of fitting the iron ring tubing down the shaft was next. These were all constructed at the site. The lining rings were bolted together and made water tight. At this stage a false bottom was created using a 'moss box'. This was a false floor that was lowered to the bottom of the shaft such that the tube linings were lowered into it and a watertight seal was created by the weight of linings compressing moss that had been packed into the threads and seams making it water tight. A false bottom was fixed to the bottom of the tube lings that were bolted together. This allowed them to be floated on the water in the shaft. A pipe was fitted from the centre of the false floor and extended upwards as the linings were added. By opening valves on this central pipe water could be introduced to relieve pressure and to allow the whole string of linings to sink in a controlled fashion down the shaft. Concrete was then poured into the linings and once set the water could be pumped out and as the waterlogged section had been passed through men could descend to the bottom of the shaft in the normal way.
This is Otherton Basin in 1882. The sharp bend at the head of the basin shows that it was very small gauge and it appears that there was just a shed at the wharf.
At he Cannock and Hartington No.1 shaft this is where things went wrong. In May 1879 9 or 10 sections of tubing were bolted together and allowed to sink to the bottom. As the central pipe was tried to be used to control the sinking it failed and it sank quickly and obviously damaged the moss box! The only thing to do was to recover the linings etc. through 135 yards of water. By October all the complete rings were removed then it took until October 1880 to smash the pieces up and bring them to the surface. The shaft was drilled a little further to make a new seating for the moss box and eventually, in April 1881 82 lining rings were lowered into place successfully. The linings were then filled with concrete and allowed to set for two months. They started pumping out the water but after 5 days and at 330' it became obvious that the lining was seriously leaking!
Meanwhile No.2 shaft was started a little after No.1. By October 1880 they were ready to lower the lining rings down the shaft to the moss box and 87 rings were successfully positioned. The concrete was poured and left to set and then the water removed. The reached the false floor and digging below the moss box continued by hand. A ledge of rock was left to support the weight of the tube lining but unfortunately there was a small fault in the strata at this point and as soon as the shaft was extended below it, it collapsed and the men had to evacuate.
The Cannock and Huntington Colliery Co, now tried to raise a further £20,000 and renegotiate terms with the Lord Hatherton the land owner. He was onboard so long as they could raise the extra money and he would chip in with money of his own. However by the end of 1883 they had managed to source any new capital so Lord Hatherton amicably foreclosed on the company. In August 1884 a massive auction of everything was held. 400,000 red bricks were sold from the brickworks on site as well as three miles worth of wood sleepers and iron rails from the rail line down to the basin. The Company was officially wound up in 1885.
From this map of 1882 you can see the plateway was been taken up, and the brick works in the bottom right hand corner.
Lord Hatherton, who took the surname Littleton, decided to resurrect the colliery and gave it that name. He raised £150,000 and decided to complete the shafts using 'traditional' means of pumping the water out as they went. He had appointed new mining engineers in 1897 and they decided that it would be best to start with No.2 shaft and in September 1897 the two pumps were started and three weeks later the bottom was reached. The water was coming in at 150 to 200 gals/minute. Strangely the level in No.1 shaft did not go down. The method of limiting the water was a mixture of iron tubing, brickwork and concrete linings and by February 1899 the shaft had been sunk to 1644' feet, passing through all the important coal seams of the district with around 90' of workable seams of coal.
In June 1899 work was resumed on No.1 shaft. In the end they had four new pumps working on the shaft and managed to lower the water level to 347'. It was then decided that they would have to cope with water ingress of around 2000 to 3000 gals./min and therefore they withdrew the pumps and took the decision to sink a new shaft. Work started on No.3 shaft in May 1900. By November they had reached 877' where a connection with No.2 shaft was made via a drift giving a second access and ventilation. It took another year to reach 1662', partly due to a bed of very hard sandstone that even defied blasting. The shaft had been sealed like no." with a mixture of linings. After a few months the water table rose back to normal levels and further lining had to take place.
This map from 1900 shows that the basin and railway to the canal were not in use at this time, Equipment etc was brought to the mine via the railways.
Compare the 1900 map with this one of 1921 and you can see that production has ramped up and the use of the canal for transport of the coal is busy. The branch line that cross the canal on the bridge is the branch from the colliery that goes to the Penkridge sidings that link in with all routes. At its height it employed 2000 people.
With the mine having such a length of a branch plus the basin and sidings it had its own steam engines too. The first at the new pit was Littleton No.1 that arrived in 1901 and was still there in
This is Littleton No,5 that was new in 1922 and was still at the pit in 1967, and has since been preserved. It looks like it is crossing that canal on the bridge as the line does not cross another watercourse, and it is a single track line.
After WWII the pit was nationalised and in 1963 it was thoroughly modernised and production rose to a million tons a year. In 1992 it was ensured that it was had been reprieved from any closures, but the following year it was closed, the last deep mine on the Cannock and south Staffordshire field with the loss of 600 jobs. The mine has been demolished and hardly anything exists to show it was ever there. The building of the M^ seems to have removed the basin too as there is nothing to see now.
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