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For centuries, the best way to move large and heavy loads quickly between maker and market was by river boat that linked inland towns with sea ports here in the UK and across the world. Despite being criss-crossed with hundreds of miles of small streams and rivers, none of Birmingham’s natural waterways are deep enough for large boats which meant that raw materials and goods had to be carried by slow carts along rough roads. As the industrial revolution progressed there was an urgent need to find an alternative capable of moving huge loads of heavy and sometimes delicate materials such as pottery and glassware from the West Midlands to the ports at Bristol, Liverpool and London.
From 1770 to the late 1830’s almost 4,000 miles of canals were built in Britain, and although the West Midlands lagged behind other parts of the country, it soon caught up, with Birmingham now said to have more canals than Venice. The first canals were built level around the sides of hills to avoid having to go up or down slopes – the Wyrley and Essington canal is known locally as the ‘curly wyrley’ for this reason – making them cheaper to build, but longer and slower to navigate. Later canal builders such as Thomas Telford built flights of canal locks and dug deep tunnels or channels through the rock to make straighter canals that would be shorter and therefore more profitable. The best example of this the Birmingham Canal that runs in the deep cutting at Galton Bridge in Smethwick – the biggest engineering project of the time.
The Grand Union canal that links Birmingham with London is the result of a merger in the late 1920s between a number of smaller canal companies that ran sections of the network to create an organisation to operate the whole route. Travelling north from London, the Grand Union splits into two separate branches, one heading to Leicester, the other to Birmingham. There was huge competition between rival boat-owners to get the best cargo and race it to its destination – fights would sometimes break out in the struggle to get ahead of the queue at locks and junctions. Working the barges was full time, with whole families living on their boat, just like Thomas Shelby from the Peaky Blinders who was said to have been born on the family barge ‘The January’
This artefact is an advert for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company Limited – a late example of a company promoting its services in the face of increasing competition from the rail and road networks.