Historical information of local canal & club

If you are moored anywhere above the top lock on Rushall canal you are on the Daw End Branch of the Wyrley & Essington Canal. This is a five and a half mile section of canal cut in 1800 just three years after the Wyrley & Essington canal was opened, to serve the limestone workings already in operation at Hay Head.

Just as the rest of the Wyrley & Essington Canal it follows the contours and has no locks. It is still a surprisingly rural canal for much of the way, and even when the urban sights appear it still seems to keep its peacefulness and tranquillity. It must have been almost completely rural when first cut but shortly after, the rich clay deposits in the area were worked and Brownhills developed a very busy brick and tile making industry. Many of the bricks made at these brickworks are to be found supporting the sides of local canals. Utopia is a name to look out for as those big blue rounded bricks on the side of the canal were made at these brickworks. Added to the coal mining, the bricks and tile, and the limeworks must have made the cut a very busy and financially viable canal in its hey day.

The result of the clay excavations has left enormously deep pits in the Brownhills area and the coal mining resulted in quite severe subsidence which has left the canal bed deeper in places than others along that length, even though a great deal of work heightening banks and infilling canal depths took place in the past two centuries. This gives the canal a very built up appearance towards the junction and may take your mind away from the contour canal you thought you were on.

Hay Head Arm and Longwood Boat Club: 

The club house at Longwood, probably obvious from its appearance, is a former stable block for the continual supply of horses required in the 19th century, when as many as two hundred boat movements took place here each working day.

The Hay Head Arm as it is now known was originally not an arm but the terminus of the Daw End Branch. It became an arm when the Rushall Canal was built at the later date of 1847. The Hay Head Arm was longer than it is now but in the 1930's the part of it at the other side of Longwood Lane was permanently isolated by the lowering of the road level, and has now become an important water feature in the Hay Head Woods Nature Reserve and home to an interesting variety of wetland life.

A visit to the Nature Reserve is recommended if you wish to look for evidence of the long gone industry of lime excavation, as mineshafts can still be seen on the nature trail.

The limestone mined at Hay Head Works was used as flux in the iron foundries of the Black Country. The lime was later found to have excellent adhesive qualities required for cement production. The cement was used in canal buildings and stuccoing (a covering for brick walls).

The Hay Head Works ceased to function in the early years of the 20th century and the canal abandoned soon after. It was to be over half a century later that it would be used for boats again when a group of families who enjoyed boating took on the challenge. Along with friends they formed LONGWOOD BOAT CLUB and soon began clearing out a section of the derelict canal for somewhere off-line to moor their boats. It is thanks to them that we have the fine moorings we have today.