The Lichfield Canal runs for just over seven miles and drops through 30 locks between Ogley Junction, on the Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN), and Huddlesford Junction, on the Coventry Canal. Once a working link in the Midlands network, it was abandoned in the mid-twentieth century, drained and largely filled in. Today it is the focus of an ambitious, long-running restoration led by the Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust (LHCRT), which aims to return the whole line to navigation and reconnect it to the wider canal system.

It is a project measured in decades rather than seasons — part civil engineering, part conservation, and part community endeavour — and much of the work is carried out by volunteers.

A short history

The canal began life as the Ogley Locks Section of the Wyrley and Essington Canal, and was built between 1794 and 1797. This was the great age of canal construction in Britain, when a rapidly industrialising Midlands needed reliable, high-capacity transport for coal, lime, iron and finished goods. Water was the answer, and a dense web of narrow canals spread across Staffordshire and the Black Country.

The Ogley Locks line was a useful connector, joining the Wyrley and Essington system to the Coventry Canal at Huddlesford and so knitting together routes that would otherwise have been separate. For a century and a half it carried the everyday traffic of the region, its 30 locks lifting and lowering boats along the seven-mile course.

Why the canal was lost

Like much of the inland waterway network, the canal’s commercial usefulness faded as the railways and then the roads took over the carrying trade. Traffic dwindled, maintenance lapsed, and the legal right of navigation was formally extinguished by the British Transport Commission Act of 1954.

With no protection and no traffic to justify upkeep, the canal’s physical fabric disappeared quickly. During the 1960s much of the channel was drained and filled in. Locks were dismantled or buried, bridges removed, and in places the line of the canal was built over or ploughed back into the surrounding land. For anyone walking the route today, long stretches show little obvious sign that a waterway ever ran there — which is exactly the challenge the restoration sets out to overcome.

The vision for restoration

The aim of the restoration is straightforward to state and formidable to deliver: to bring the full length of the Lichfield Canal back into navigable use, reconnecting the BCN at Ogley with the Coventry Canal at Huddlesford. Reopening this link would restore a through route for boaters and add a fresh loop to the cruising network, while also creating a green corridor of water, towpath and wildlife habitat through and around Lichfield.

Crucially, the restoration follows the original historic route wherever it can. There are four diversions from that line, each needed to steer the new canal around developments — roads, buildings and other changes — that have appeared in the decades since the canal was abandoned. Working around these obstacles, rather than simply abandoning affected sections, is one of the reasons the project is so complex.

Video’s Updates of the Canal Restoration

Putting the plan on a firm footing

A restoration on this scale cannot proceed on enthusiasm alone; it needs rigorous technical and strategic planning. In 2009 a detailed Feasibility Report was produced by the well-known consultants WS Atkins, setting out how the route could realistically be brought back and what it would involve. That report gave the project a credible engineering foundation and a reference point for the work that has followed.

Around that technical base, the Trust works to a published strategy that explains how it intends to reach its long-term goal of full restoration. An operational plan then acts as the bridge between that high-level strategy and the day-to-day reality — the individual projects and programmes on the ground, and the supporting work that goes on behind the scenes. In other words, there is a clear line of sight from the overall ambition down to what is actually being dug, built and maintained on any given site.

The route and its challenges

Restoring an urban-fringe canal that was filled in more than half a century ago throws up a particular set of problems. The channel has to be re-excavated and made watertight, locks have to be rebuilt, and new bridges and crossings have to be provided where roads and infrastructure now sever the old line. The four diversions from the historic route are the clearest expression of this: each is a pragmatic response to something that has been built across the way since abandonment.

Modern road schemes are among the biggest hurdles for any canal restoration, but they can also present opportunities. Where major new roads have been planned across the route, provision for the future canal has sometimes been designed in — allowing the waterway to pass beneath or across the road when the time comes — which saves the enormous cost and disruption of retro-fitting a crossing later. Securing that kind of forward provision is a key part of the Trust’s long game, because decisions taken during road construction can either safeguard the canal’s future or block it for good.

The sites along the way — points of interest

Rather than tackle seven miles in one impossible push, the restoration is organised around a series of named sites, each at its own stage of progress. Together they show the project in miniature — some already welcoming visitors, others still very much works in progress:

• Borrowcop Locks Canal Park — a restored stretch and green space around Locks 24 to 26 on the Lichfield side; the Tamworth Road section here is the only part currently in water.
• Darnford Moors Ecology Park — where canal restoration runs alongside habitat and ecology work.
• Darnford Park — an adjoining site (archive page).
• Fosseway Heath Nature Reserve and Wetlands — a half-mile stretch through Locks 18 and 19, with a boardwalk, nature trail and recreated lowland heath.
• Gallows Reach — a section of channel along the line.
• Gallows Wharf — a restored wharf beside the surviving London Road bridge.
• Lichfield Canal Aqueduct — one of the project’s most striking features, built to carry the restored canal over the M6 Toll.
• Summerhill — the section between the Boat Inn on the A461 and Barracks Lane, just west of the aqueduct.

Each site tells part of the story, and taken together they let the Trust make visible, tangible progress on manageable lengths while the larger vision is pursued.

Nature as well as navigation

One striking feature of the modern restoration is how closely it is tied to wildlife and green space. Fosseway Heath is a good example: derelict land donated by Lichfield District Council, where buried Lock 18 was excavated in the mid-1990s and later — with grant funding secured in 2017 — developed into a nature reserve with a surfaced heritage towpath, a boardwalk and a recreated wetland. It is a reminder that since 1800 more than 80% of the UK’s lowland heathland has been lost, so recreating even a small patch matters. A restored canal is a linear wildlife corridor, bringing water, reeds, trees and open space back into the landscape, and offering walkers, cyclists and local residents a green route to enjoy long before — and quite apart from — any boat passes through.

The sister project: the Hatherton Canal

The Hatherton Canal is the Trust’s second restoration, and its story runs in parallel to the Lichfield. It is a disused and partly derelict branch of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal in South Staffordshire, built in two phases. The first section opened in 1841, connecting the main line to Churchbridge, from where a tramway ran on to the Great Wyrley coal mines. The second section, a joint venture with the Birmingham Canal Navigations, linked Churchbridge to the Cannock Extension Canal by a flight of 13 locks, opened together with the Extension Canal in 1863.

Coal traffic made the canal highly profitable, and it stayed in use until 1949 before being formally abandoned in 1955. After that, the Churchbridge flight and much of the Extension Canal were destroyed by opencast mining — damage that makes the Hatherton’s revival a considerable undertaking in its own right. The Trust is not actively working on the Hatherton at present, but when it does, the restoration is planned in four distinct sections:

• Calf Heath to Wedges Mills
• Wedges Mills to Walkmill Lane
• Walkmill to Churchbridge
• Churchbridge to Wyrley Grove (page to follow)

Restored together, the Lichfield and Hatherton lines would reinstate two lost links and add real value to the surrounding canal network.

Who is behind it

The driving force is the Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust, the charity that co-ordinates the work, owns and manages the sites, raises funds, and organises the volunteer effort that does so much of the physical restoration. Progress depends heavily on volunteers, donations and partnerships with local authorities, landowners and the wider waterways movement. It is patient, incremental work, funded piece by piece and built length by length.

Maps and finding out more

The Trust publishes a range of maps covering both the canal routes and the walking routes that follow them, so visitors can trace the line on the ground and see how the restored sections connect. See the Lichfield Canal maps and the Hatherton Canal maps for the full picture.

In summary

The Lichfield Canal restoration is the long, determined effort to reverse a twentieth-century loss: to reopen just over seven miles and 30 locks between Ogley and Huddlesford, and to reconnect this historic link to the national network. Backed by a professional feasibility study, guided by a clear strategy and operational plan, and delivered site by site through the work of the Trust and its volunteers, it blends heritage, engineering and nature conservation into a single ambitious scheme. Full restoration remains a long-term goal — but with each rebuilt lock, re-watered channel and newly opened park, a canal that was written off decades ago edges a little closer to carrying boats once again.