GALTON BRIDGE IN BLACK HEARTS AND BLUE DEVILS.

GALTON BRIDGE IN SMETHWICK was designed by Thomas Telford and built in 1829 to span the New Birmingham Main line Canal which had been completed in 1824. This 151 foot single span iron bridge was the highest in the world when it was built. Recent pictures attached. In Black Hearts And Blue Devils the bridge is the scene of an encounter with one of the ‘black-hearted’ villains of the story. The bridge was part of Roebuck Lane which today is no longer a busy thoroughfare but has lost it’s former importance to the extent that it has been pedestrianised. Incidentally, Cape Hill brewers Mitchells And Butlers used to advertise their ‘ales and stouts’ with an image of a ‘leaping deer’ (although not a roe buck). The original idea for such a device came from one Henry Mill Phillips, I understand. Anyway, the brewery, where my father once worked as a drayman and which used to have its own judo club, has long since gone; along with its once famous beers, Remember Brew XI? ‘For the men of the Midlands’!)

But I digress – we were talking bridges and canals. The reason for the new Birmingham Main Line was that the old line, fully completed in 1772, was long and meandering; it only had one tow (towing) path which made it awkward when boats and horses met coming from opposite directions; also, its high elevation and locks made maintaining water levels difficult, even after the intervention of James Watt and a pumping station, installed near Brasshouse Lane, which serves as a museum today. The new line was cut straight with only I think three locks and it stretched from Tipton to Gas Street basin in Birmingham. If you’ve ever had a night out at the canalside at Brindley place you would have been on the New Branch Line. Not far from where Galton Bridge stands is the Chance Brothers glassworks. In the nineteenth century the works supplied all the glass for the Crystal Palace, as well as Big Ben. It was justly world-famous: unlike when I got a summer job there after finishing A levels… Broken and crushed glass, known as cullet would have been stored outside in tubs. In Black Hearts I have suggested that it may have been used by villains – in a not very pleasant way!

For those that wish to visit places depicted in the book, I can thoroughly recommend a walk along the canal in Smethwick, particularly along stretches of the old line. If you start at Brasshouse Lane, you can visit the museum when it’s open and see the old steam pumping engine. Last time I was there, in the middle of Smethwick, there were cormorants nesting on the museum stack, a buzzard flying close overhead, and heron and kingfishers fishing. Can’t be bad.

Pictures following include one of a burnt out lock-keeper’s lodge on the old line.

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