Woolly says – With us spending the month of February in Dudley, Jo and I had been scratching our heads for a blog in an area that we have written about extensively in the past, when daughter Zoe came up with a bright idea. Combine Alfie the Dog walks with some of the Black Country’s industrial history and so a was plan started.

The Black Country is an area of the West Midlands, covering most of the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, and some minor parts of Walsall. Dudley and Tipton are generally considered to be the centre and was one of the birth places of the Industrial Revolution across England with coal mines, coking, iron foundries, glass factories, brickworks and steel mills. The name dates from the 1840s and is believed to come from the soot that the heavy industries covered the area in, although the 30-foot-thick coal seam close to the surface is another possible origin. It is an area that my carer knows well.

I moved as an eight-year-old to the Black Country and still retain the accent even after years of living away, an accent that is frequently confused with the Brummies’ tones, but is completely different and comes with its own dialect and language. The canals in the area featured heavily in my childhood with walks along them on sunny Sundays and a period of time where my slightly eccentric Father decided that having a boat on the canal would make for good holidays. The holidays on the waterways took us to far off places such as Chester and Llangollen taking a week to navigate each way. It is an area that I still hold dear.

Woolly says – After consulting local maps I split the canal system into four areas for us to cover, our first being the brilliantly named Bumble hole, close to the small town of Netherton which became famous in 1911 when the local firm Noah Hingley and Sons produced the anchor for the RMS Titanic.

Built in the 1790’s the Dudley number 2 Canal or the Cut as it’s known locally became the backbone of the motorways on water. Traffic from all over the isle would pass goods, post, illegal booze and arms (as portrayed in the BBC series Peaky Blinders) and even prisoners via the waterways with the Black Country being one of the busiest places in Europe at the time.

We set off across one of the six iron bridges which had been produced by the Toll End Works to allow access across the water, the casting still looked as good today as it had when first placed there although being iron, I dreaded to think how much weight the brick abutments where holding. The views however were lovely across the nature reserve that now covers the area, the wammel (well you have to get into the lingo you know) barely paused for a quick pant before racing across and along the tow path.

The path we choose along the waters edge leads to a dead end and is now used as permanent moorings for some of the water dwellers of today, it did however lead us past an area which was full to brimming with nostalgia, from an old red telephone box to a Romany caravan the area was full of strange items not forgetting the Black Country flag which is seen flying all over the surrounding areas.

Rounding a corner I caught my first glimpse of the Windmill End Pumping Station, known locally as Cobb’s Engine House. Below it, a 160-metre shaft leads to the abandoned coal pit.

Completed in 1836, Cobb’s Engine House pumped water out of the mines and back into the canal. When the mines closed in 1928, the huge Newcomen beam engine inside was sold to Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company and is now on working display in an industrial museum in Michigan, USA. Now a Grade II listed building it leaves a stark reminder of industry that had once been there. As the mutt raced inside and out, we carried on, I found myself at the top of a step bank of steps leading back onto the tow path and towards the Netherton Tunnel.

Opened in 1858, the tunnel took three years to build using 26 million bricks. The bricks, a distinctive dark blue, are known as ‘toccy’ bricks after a local term for ‘chewy’ or ‘sticky’. They’re made of soft Staffordshire clay that becomes waterproof when baked – ideal for lining canals.

Work actually started in 1785 with disastrous effect. The tunnel was not straight, engineers resigned and the tunnel was vastly over budget. As soon as this tunnel was complete, a bill for another canal (Now called Line 2, with the Dudley canal called Line 1) to reach the collieries in Netherton.

Construction began 1774 and was once again plagued with problems. Different engineers were brought in due to the death of the original engineer, tunnel problems with bad foundations of sand and water pumping issues caused the majority of the funds to go here. In all the total cost of the Line 2 canal was around £120,000 an awful lot of money in those days.

I sat for a moment contemplating the darkness before me, a mile and three quarters of almost total darkness lay ahead with just a small pinprick of light showing where the end would be. The panting beast had no fear and trotted inside as Jo and I followed at a more sedate pace, it was cold and somehow eerie, I wondered if it might be haunted by the eight men who had lost their lives in its construction. As we moved further and further in the darkness took over, I offered my paw to my carer to give her reassurance that I was still there as we took one careful step at a time. Minutes which felt like hours passed in the dim light as we moved slowly onwards until Jo came to a sudden holt, ‘I’m not liking this Wool’s’ she said, ‘Shall we head back?’. Not wanting to look as though I was giving up or that I had any form of fear, I paused for a moment before agreeing that it wasn’t great for walking, we could barely see the mutt and the tow path didn’t feel all together safe and promptly turned tail and raced back into the daylight.

The only one who seemed to have enjoyed the tunnel experience was the wammal, I felt far happier being outside and suggested that we find the toll island.

Woolly says – Having climbed back up the embankment we walked along the canal to a curious area where a small island lay. In operation until the end of the 19^th century the island had been where the toll keeper would have measured the depth of the boat in the water and then charged accordingly for its weight and cargo.

Sadly, no buildings survive but the wildlife are now enjoying the island and the small basin which would have once been a hive of activity for unloading and loading the cargo.

With the clouds darkening and the threat of Storm Dudley (which made me chuckle given we were in Dudley itself) looming we wandered past the visitor centre and back to the car, part one of the canal heritage was ticked off my list only three to go.

The storm had passed us by but with more forecast the mammoth and I decided to make the most of the weak sunshine and head to our next canal.

Woolly says – My second choice was actually a place that I had padded along many times as we had lived only metres away from the Stourbridge Canal, I remembered with fondness the bike rides we had taken along the tow path and the evening ambles which always involved a drink or two on the way back.

The Stourbridge Canal links the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal (at Stourton Junction) with the Dudley Canal, and hence, via the Birmingham Canal Navigations, to Birmingham.  It has a unique association with the glassmaking industry where more than 20 glassworks had once been in the area including Thomas Webb’s, Webb Corbett and Stuart Crystal.

The canal was originally built to transport coal from the Dudley coalfields to the glass manufacturers around Stourbridge although the building of it was met with fierce opposition from Birmingham it was eventually completed in 1781.  We set off along the towpath passing the many canal dwellers that use the Stourbridge Wharf as their permanent moorings, passing over one of the many bridges I was reminded that although the bridges could be quite steep very shallow steps had been inserted to allow the horses who had once drawn the boats to get over them.

Whole new housing estates had sprung up since my last walk there which seems to have reduced the wildlife and increased the rubbish. Rubbish is a huge issue on all of the areas canal networks a problem that one of my good friends Mr Bliz and his team of Razza Rats (https://www.facebook.com/razzarats) are constantly battling against.

As we rounded a corner, I saw some of the old factories that would have once used the water for receiving their coal and for sending goods to Birmingham and onward destinations. It reminded me of Venice with the doors opening straight onto the cut and a small tunnel going under one of the buildings where huge crates would have been slid down a small incline and onto the narrowboats.

As I took a picture of the buildings, I smiled to myself, somewhere in Turkey I have a photograph of this exact place taken as a boat was being loaded in the mid 1970’s by my Dad, the black and white picture looked little different to the one I now had on my camera.

As Alfie the wammal sniffed and scoured the towpath for good smells we came to an abrupt halt as we came face to face with red fencing blocking the path and the canal. Jo and I peered through the bridge and quickly realised that they were in fact dredging the canal and that there was no way through. It’s actually really unusual to see a canal half empty and looking at the amount of mud and slurry appearing as the water disappeared it would seem the workmen would have their work cut out clearing it all. With no option we turned round and headed back towards the wharf itself and the Bonded Warehouse.

The Bonded Warehouse was built in 1779, originally a simple two-storey brick structure approximately 23 feet wide and 70 feet long, with the interesting feature of a semi-circular east end it had been constructed as a storage facility holding taxable goods such as tea, spirits and tobacco “in bond” until an importer redeemed them by paying the appropriate level of excise duty.

The most famous products which left the company’s wharf were two locomotives made between 1828 and 1829: the “Agenoria”, which operated locally on the Shutt End railway line and the “Stourbridge Lion”, the first locomotive to run on rails in North America. The remains of the “Stourbridge Lion” rest in the Smithsonian museum in Washington DC. The company originally made and despatched five steam engines for America, but only one arrived, the rest having been sunk in the St Lawrence Seaway.

Today it is used as a community hub hosting events, private functions and slimmer’s world. As I climbed back into the car, I wondered how many years it might be before we walked along this area again and how many more dwellings they might have squeezed onto the land by then.