we've just walked through the netherton canal tunnel here in south west birmingham
now if you didn't know there was water just down there
you'd be forgiven for thinking that perhaps this was more of a modern railway tunnel
and that's for good reason because the canal tunnel the netherton canal tunnel was built in
1858 and it was the most recent canal tunnel built in the uk
taking four years to build now compared to what we're talking about in today's video
that canal tunnel is heavenly it's got room for two barges it's got two towpaths on either
side you can walk its entire length but perhaps at your apparel because that's 1.7 miles long
it was even fitted with gas lights for its entire length how cool is that
so that's all good but it doesn't really fit into this channel's remit
abandoned and disused as you can see by the boats going through it just there
what we're looking for is something far more terrifying than that tunnel ever knew how to be
so before we get to that we just want to show you this relic we found next to netherton tunnel
portal the southern portal this is cobb's engine house it was built in 1831 and it pumped around
about 1.6 million litres of water from the mine shaft below which is what 500 feet i think the
record said it's quite an impressive structure sits here in this nature reserve for all to see so
back on today's main event we're now following the Dudley canal number two or line number two south
east towards the tunnels soon after the first stretch of the Dudley canal was completed in 1792
another route to link up with the Worcester and Birmingham canal and subsequently down to London
was proposed despite opposition construction began in 1794 the route would include three tunnels one
was dropped and turned into a cutting but two remained the ghosty tunnel and the lapel tunnel
all the plans and the designs were drawn up by josiah claus
he was brother-in-law of james brindley
now clouds was supported by william underhill the actually
underhill underhill get it tunnels underhill clowns unfortunately died
during the construction of the canal and underhill carried on his work thereafter
so on our journey southwest along this canal the dudley number two canal we've come across this
tunnel this is the gaussian here or gusty hill tunnel 509 meters long now you'll be pretty strong
headed to do this and a recent blogger did it a couple of years ago and they found it took them
25 minutes to do the 500 meters on account it was so silted up um yeah halfway through as well it
lowers showing you the potential of claustrophobia there's actually a little plaque inside there of
Dracula as the as the bit lowers right down to about nine feet tall quite an echo to it as well
so we're approaching we think we're approaching maybe a few hundred meters away
the level tunnel three thousand seven hundred and ninety five yards long now the designer of this
town as we said uh josiah closed clouds he was of good stock he just built a few years previous
the sapperton canal tunnel which was at the time for quite a period the longest canal tunnel in the
country so he knew what he was doing what could possibly go wrong with this tunnel
so we were hoping for a better view of the site but just through there
just the other side of this massive great hedgerow is the site of the eastern port of
the the abandoned la paul tunnel lapel tunnel it's long since buried you've had a huge wall
leading up to it and of course the relatively small portal i say small because it was nine foot
by nine foot that's just enough to get your barge through you'd be polling and you'd be legging
through now due to many subsidence issues over the years even at the start of its construction
1801 1805 the the the mine shafts that were around here caused it to shrink in size in a
lot of places i think it went down to seven feet imagine the claustrophobia now back at
gorsky tunnel we had an idea of how small that gets in that middle section so think of the
contrast in the tunnel that we walked through at the start of the video the netherton tunnel and
the difference in technology just 60 years apart but my goodness me that difference is staggering
so here is where things get interesting in this clip i've muted i was wafering quite a
bit about my fascination with the 30 shafts along the lapel tunnel and how you can see
some of the indents in the ground above today and perhaps more importantly how those shafts
potentially cause subsided issues throughout the tunnel's life but here's a thing whenever we go
somewhere we always try and plan ahead a little bit and find a local society or trust who are
working on the subject matter of video often with these emails they get missed or perhaps
misdirected on our part maybe to the wrong person but literally as i was walking and waffling here
my phone pinged with an email from a lovely chap called hugh and within 20 minutes this happened
so you join us at the very eastern end of the dudley number two canal and we've we've
bumped into a man called hugh hugh hugh you are um i want to say membership secretary or
chief president of the lapel canal trust so um well thanks for joining
us thanks for taking the time to come and see us pleasure to show you um so we're stood now
um on what was the very point where it joined the worcester in birmingham that was the oil
junction yes yep okay what is the trust aiming to do what's what's your goal our immediate goal
is to get to past the same place shopping center yep when the center when the shop was built
it was actually built over the old route right and there's a 106 agreement requiring them to make
provision for the restoration ah that's great they spent about 700 000 on that provision i'll show
you later yep and in addition they provided 700 000 yeah uh deposited with members of the council
for us to use to do the restoration oh fantastic so far we raised about half a million yep and we
need to raise another six hundred thousand to finish the work a million questions hugh
um do you want us to are we going to walk that way as we walk along the route to the canal let's go
we have to do this [ __ ] by 20 25 or we lose the three-quarters of a million oh blimey so
that's giving me some pressure here that's giving everybody an incentive to get it done in time
so five and a half miles hugh money to be raised as we said link in the description
below on how you could help and to my mind it's a really we when we're up at neverton it
was very busy lots of canal boats i'm guessing the same here what a great link that would be
and not only is the link but it'll be a ring around birmingham yeah okay 21 miles yeah
back here okay so be very popular
so here when you when you reinstate a bit of canal for example this bit right here do you
need to re-clay line it or yes you need to do everything sort of from scratch as such
you have to move about 4 000 cubic meters that soil right okay and bring in about
700 cubic meters of purple clay right to line it okay
yeah is there a feeder for the canal in terms of a reservoir or
is it not just we have agreement we can't have another test i'll be taking water from the
western and that's obviously ample for the needs i guess because you're only
it's relatively small isn't it very small compared to there yes so when birmingham city council
built their ring load they also incorporated the uh cow so we don't need to do anything
with the with a bridge as such we need to line the walls with brick okay that's about it yeah so no
major structure in terms of raising or lowering or anything that's beyond us yeah
so this area you see now um it's called half on the wharf it used to be full
of soil okay but care is the contractor the remediation contractor for the safety site yep
removed two thousand cubic meters of soil and you're on your ass yeah without payment
wonderful just because they happen to be here and we're being nice they were very good yeah
that's great so not so good news is because they moved it to that side now we're gonna have to
maybe give a call again and not really the same soil but it's uh so we have to move it again
so that looks like a lovely bridge ahead of us yes we believe this was probably built in 17 a while
in 1796 because the canal only took four years to build between uh 1794 and 1798 right so somewhere
it's built with this page was built sometime between those two times i love that it's sort of
hidden away here that's great isn't it i wonder if it's so nice to have more people coming down yeah
is there anything else you want to add to anything else you want to say and where
where should we point people how can people help yeah go to our web page yep hit the donate button
yeah and if you're in the area can i come and have a look as well come and see obviously we're very
pleased to see anybody else yeah or if a group would like a presentation yep i've got a 45
minute presentation i'd be happy to go along and explain the history and our plans yeah but
we're not short of volunteers yeah although we would like more people to help you with the
more money fundraising fundraising fundraising is key people say so do click all the links in
the description below and uh yeah big thanks for hugh for joining us today a bit last minute if
you'd if you'd have seen the conversations we had in the last 10 minutes um but yeah really
appreciative um and from me and rebecca we'll call it a day as well shall we yeah we're kind
of walked out so yeah thanks for joining us do all the good things click on subscribe and um
yeah check out the links below for hugh and his team let's see what kind of mess you make
you