Progress Lichfield Canal We spend a lot of time and effort restoring locks, but Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust are putting a lot of work into abolishing one... presence of the ‘big pipe’, a storm drain installed in the canal bed before the canal Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration was filled in after it was abandoned in the Trust volunteers have concentrated their 1950s. As volunteers started building the work on the Gallows Reach section of the north wall in front of the ‘big pipe’ they had canal alongside Tamworth Road on the to cross over it in order to tie the new wall southeast side of Lichfield, where the chanback into the old lock wall. They started by nel has to be lowered by 2.5 metres to allow excavating around the pipe and shaping a the restored canal to pass under Cricket Lane couple of quoin blocks to become the leading without the need for a humpback bridge edge of the angled wall and hence a rubbing (which it would have had originally, but strip or an impact strip for passing boats. It which would not be allowable now). This has has been a slow job building this tied wall as involved removing the old lock 24 (and will the leading edge has also been shaped with also involve building a new replacement lock chamfered bricks and the wall has been on the other side of Cricket Lane) and build- backfilled with concrete. ing buttresses to support the new north wall. The pipe will have to be crossed over After spending the last two months conagain on the wider section of canal bed, structing them, the volunteers have now which will leave a section of pipe remaining covered all six buttresses over with soil, so in situ as part of the new wall. It is hoped you wouldn’t even know they were there. that providing a parallel water channel will An added complication has been the assist boats to traverse this narrow section
Lichfield Canal
View across the head of the former Lock 24: deepened channel in the foreground, six buttresses supporting the old north wall behind have been covered in soil and are not now visible
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