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I have heard of a term used for canal carriers traffic to Birmingham for a route described as the "bottom road". It was specifically used to describe a narrow boat pair being diverted that way following a culvert collapse at Leamington. It would appear the route from the GU, Oxford, Coventry and Birmingham & Fazeley had this term applied. In view of Mr Moss's interest in nomenclature regarding points of the compass. It may be instructive to delve into the origin of this term.

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Yes, I have heard this term applied to the route to and from London via the Oxford Canal. I have assumed that it refers to the quality, rather than to the geography, of the journey: many meanders, narrow bits and single locks can't have speeded the progress of pairs of working boats. Compare and contrast the G.U. with its broad locks and gentle, deeply-dredged route; was this ever called the "Top Road"?

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The Alarum theatre tour on Tench said they took the Bottom road

http://alarumtheatre.8ch.co.uk/?page_id=314

http://www.frostmagazine.com/2017/07/ah-brilliant-more-about-idle-women-of-the-waterways-by-milly-adams/

"Then it’s back through London, up the Grand Union to Birmingham (mid June) where they unloaded before heading to Coventry for coal to bring back to London. In the early days of the scheme they then had to follow the same route the working boaters used to reach the Coventry coalfields, the much hated ‘bottom road’ (Birmingham & Fazeley canal)."

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I always assumed it was topographical. Birmingham is high up and the route out to Fazeley is an immediate continuous descent from Sampson Road whereas the route back via the GU (Warwick & Birmingham) remains at the same elevated level for nine miles out of Birmingham and even then only drops through 40' or so in close to 20 miles.

I have never taken it to refer to anything other than the route taken from unloading at Sampson Road to receiving orders at Hawkesbury for a load back toward London. Certainly not specifically a route to London via Oxford which I am not sure ever really existed.

JP

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9 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

.

I have never taken it to refer to anything other than the route taken from unloading at Sampson Road to receiving orders at Hawkesbury for a load back toward London. Certainly not specifically a route to London via Oxford which I am not sure ever really existed.

JP

I think it did: you would go down through Rugby and Banbury, join the Thames at Oxford and turn left towards London.

I can remember reading of working boats on the Napton to Braunston section, both bound for London, passing each other in opposite directions!

 

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2 hours ago, David Mack said:

I have always assumed that the reference is to the lowest point on the 'bottom road' i.e. around Fazeley Junction, being lower than the low point at Warwick on the GU route. But I've never checked the lock falls to see if this is the case. 

Not found a great tool to give you elevation, but from what I have found I would sat that the elevation is Leamington Spa is about 20ft lower than at Fazeley Junction.

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13 minutes ago, Athy said:

I think it did: you would go down through Rugby and Banbury, join the Thames at Oxford and turn left towards London.

I can remember reading of working boats on the Napton to Braunston section, both bound for London, passing each other in opposite directions!

 

Well yes the route exists but how extensively was it used? Was there much long distance trade before the opening of the Grand Junction and why would you go via Oxford once it was. That's not to say boats didn't head south via both routes.

I would be interested to read from the sources you have seen. My great grandfather had two boats registered for OC, GJC and Port of London in the 1890s and given he officially (although perhaps not actually) resided in Banbury I asked my mother if she knew how he got to London. She emphatically said down the Grand Union (and yes she did say that even though it wasn't called that at the time).

JP

Edited by Captain Pegg
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12 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Well yes the route exists but how extensively was it used? Was there much long distance trade before the opening of the Grand Junction and why would you go via Oxford once it was. That's not to say boats didn't head south via both routes.

I would be interested to read from the sources you have seen.

So would I, but I can't remember the source(s); boating mags from years gone by I suppose.

I would guess that it was a bit like expresses and stopping trains on the railways: the "stoppers" would serve intermediate points down the Oxford, the expresses would go down the G.U. 

But in that case, why was the Oxford Canal built? Surely to link Oxford to the industrial and mining Midlands and to London, otherwise why bother extending it to meet the Thames?

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The Bottom Road was specific to the Garrison, Minworth, Curdworth, Glascote and Atherstone route to the Coventry Coalfields.  I have never encountered the term being used for the Oxford route.  Knowle Locks are the Middle Road and the North Stratford the Top Road, rarely used because of the state of the cut during the latter years of carrying.

 

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Doesn't one of the books go to some length to explain that although boatmen knew every yard of canal they used intimately, they had little ide of maps, or the interellation of the canal locations to everything else in the country.

To us "Bottom Road" sounds odd, because it is at the top of any map that shows the various routes into Birmingham, but there is nothing to suggest that to a boatman it would have seemed an unusual description at all.

6 minutes ago, BuckbyLocks said:

The Bottom Road was specific to the Garrison, Minworth, Curdworth, Glascote and Atherstone route to the Coventry Coalfields.  I have never encountered the term being used for the Oxford route.

^^^^^^^

Yes, exactly this, I think!

 

Edited by alan_fincher
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From Birmingham to Coventry via Fazeley is the Bottom Road, windswept shallow and dirty. You go downhill to get to it (from Brum), hence bottom road, in the same way the You go 'Down North' from the Midlands. when travelling North. A reversal of the motoring terms of going 'up' North or 'down' South. Maps didn't come into it for boatmen who knew their way around.

'Evelyn's War' series in the HNBC journal depicts the problems of the bottom road very well.

Edited by Derek R.
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I think Alan has highlighted the fact that boatmen had their own descriptions for routes and specific locations, like the Ganzey (Rushall Canal). Road, is also a railway term, with terms like "bang road" being used for working along the track normally used (on double tracks) by trains coming the other way. The bang in this case I recall was through the laying of detonators for protection!

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33 minutes ago, Athy said:

 

But in that case, why was the Oxford Canal built? Surely to link Oxford to the industrial and mining Midlands and to London, otherwise why bother extending it to meet the Thames?

The Oxford Canal is much older in conception than the Grand Union route, and slightly older in implementation. It was part of Brindley's vision for "Grand Cross" linking the Trent, Thames, Mersey and Severn, and as a result linking the primary maritime ports at the cardinal points of England's compass

As to the nomenclature - the terms bottom and top or upper and lower are often quite slippery. The Upper Bristol Road in Bath is the northern of the two routes, and also historically the more senior having been the A4 when roads were numbered and the original "Bristol Road".

Did the other route out of Birmingham ever get described as the "Top Road" or was this one of those (frequent) situations where a name was only given to the variant - if one didn't refer to the bottom road one was by default going the regular route?

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20 minutes ago, Derek R. said:

From Birmingham to Coventry via Fazeley is the Bottom Road, windswept shallow and dirty. You go downhill to get to it (from Brum), hence bottom road, in the same way the You go 'Down North' from the Midlands. when travelling North. A reversal of the motoring terms of going 'up' North or 'down' South. Maps didn't come into it for boatmen who knew their way around.

'Evelyn's War' series in the HNBC journal depicts the problems of the bottom road very well.

Interestingly I was speaking to Phoebe Barratt this morning and she referred to a trip from Birmingham to Ellesmere Port by saying "When we went down up North."

When Mike was boating he said he hated the Bottom Road and would avoid it at all costs.

Edited by Ray T
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3 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

The Oxford Canal is much older in conception than the Grand Union route, and slightly older in implementation. It was part of Brindley's vision for "Grand Cross" linking the Trent, Thames, Mersey and Severn, and as a result linking the primary maritime ports at the cardinal points of England's compass.

And with the Grand Cross canals only partly complete the advantages of canal transport over other modes were apparent and proposals came forward for quicker routes to the main markets. Hence the original route from Birmingham to London via Autherley, Great Haywood, Fradley, Coventry and Oxford and the Thames was quickly superseded first by the Bottom Road and then by the construction of the Grand Junction Canal and the Warwick Canals.

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10 minutes ago, David Mack said:

And with the Grand Cross canals only partly complete the advantages of canal transport over other modes were apparent and proposals came forward for quicker routes to the main markets. Hence the original route from Birmingham to London via Autherley, Great Haywood, Fradley, Coventry and Oxford and the Thames was quickly superseded first by the Bottom Road and then by the construction of the Grand Junction Canal and the Warwick Canals.

The Grand Junction route was much more difficult to build than the Oxford, and was probably only possible with the advances in civil engineering between the 1760s and 1790s. Even then, with several summits and the requirement for pumping, it would never really be a success economically, and the GJC/GUC relied upon traffic around London to offset losses on its more northerly section.

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4 hours ago, Athy said:

So would I, but I can't remember the source(s); boating mags from years gone by I suppose.

I would guess that it was a bit like expresses and stopping trains on the railways: the "stoppers" would serve intermediate points down the Oxford, the expresses would go down the G.U. 

But in that case, why was the Oxford Canal built? Surely to link Oxford to the industrial and mining Midlands and to London, otherwise why bother extending it to meet the Thames?

As stated by others it was part of a grand design. In part possibly speculative but nothing wrong with that; there are folk who think the same about parts of today's transport strategy.

One facet of waterborne transport is that it makes use of transshipment more than perhaps any other single form of transport. Presumably because of the differing nature of navigable watercourses. So while I do realise that narrowboats did make it onto the Thames at Oxford I do wonder if a through route involving horsedrawn narrow boats over a river the size and length of the Thames ever was a major thing.

I don't doubt though that prior to the completion of the Grand Junction goods did travel by water between the Midlands and London via Oxford and it would be interseting to know how that worked given the very different nature of the Oxford Canal and the Thames.

JP

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I suspect they disliked the bottom road too because of the effort with a pair, all locks being narrow and not in flights. the locks on the middle road are mixed wide narrow.

the top road has all wide locks except  on the northern Stratford , but here it is a fairly easy flight with 2 people and a pair.

ive done top and middle routes with a pair tops easiest apart from the state of the northern Stratford..

as for the bottom route, I didn't go through there in the 80s 90s too much bandit country for 2 people with 2 boats through curdworth and minworth.

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Is there any evidence of historic use of the terms 'top road' and 'middle road' or are they a modern creation?

The concept of top, middle and bottom only works from central Birmingham where as I am familiar with the term bottom road relating to transit from from the top end of the widened GU.

JP

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For what it's worth, on 1 August 1767, this notice appeared in the Oxford Journal:-

'It is proposed to make a navigable canal from the canal now making along the Vale of the Trent in Staffordshire, to pass through the parishes of Tamworth, Amington, Polesworth, Grindon, Atherstone, Caldecote, Weddington, Nuneaton, Chilver's Coton, Bedworth and Foreshill [Foleshill] to the city of Coventry, with communications to all the great collieries betwixt Tamworth and Coventry, and a survey has been made and found practicable and [?construction (word missing)]  will be undertaken as soon as an Act of Parliament can be procured; And a further proposal has been made for continuing such navigable canal from the city of Coventry southwards through the parishes of Stoke, Binley, Newbold-Revel, Lawford, Rugby, Barby, Willoughby, Granborough, Stockton, Ladbrook, Wormleighton, Banbury and rom there down to the City of Oxford, to communicate with the navigation of the Thames.'

No mention whatever of its being a 'bottom' route, but perhaps that isn't entirely surprising at this date. What the notice strikingly shows, is that in their initial conception, the Coventry and Oxford Canals appear to have been viewed as a single waterway - a detail which may owe something to the energetic promotion of both by Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury, sometime MP for Oxford University. 

 

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10 hours ago, zenataomm said:

The Birmingham & Fazeley part of the bottom road was notoriously badly maintained and dirty and greasy.

The greasy bit was down through Garrison Locks on the Birmingham & Warwick Junction Canal, before joining the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal at Salford Junction.

James

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The still working boaters I came in contact with in the 50's & up to the demise of BW's fleet in 62/3 i only ever heard the "bottom road"quoted I can't remember a route being termed middle /top road, one thing I did come across was boaters who regularly worked a certain route had some different names for places to a boater only occasionally working that route, & a well used term for Southern boaters on Northern Canals & vise versa was "Yoom best be careful yoom'll get lost up/down there"coming with occasional loads from the "Shroppie" to the lower GU I received that advise on most occasions. 

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