John Cary's Inland Navigation Map Man

If you were transporting heavy goods today, how would you do it?

By road, on a truck, by train perhaps?

200 years ago, you'd have made a very different choice.

In fact, you'd have gone for one of these - a narrow boat on a canal.

In the 1790s, canals were THE mode of transport.

Bringing raw materials straight to factory doorsteps,

they made the industrial revolution possible.

And in 1796, the finest mapmaker in the country

decided that he, too, would cash in on the excitement.

His name was John Cary, and with his inland navigation,

he produced the first national maps

to show you where this new transport could take you.

What I want to know is, do they still work?

Can I navigate a 60 mile route,

all the way from the old coalfields outside Birmingham to the city centre

using nothing more than John Cary's 18th century canal maps?

When John Cary created his first inland navigation maps,

Britain was in the grip of a canal mania.

Canals were radically changing the landscape,

and perhaps nowhere more than in the area around Birmingham.

Cary places Birmingham itself on the margins,

because the real heart of the map

is in what in the 1790s they started to call the Black Country.

This is Cannock Chase, a pocket of heathland north of Birmingham.

All over the Black Country, areas like this

were rich in the one rock everyone cared about - coal.

But to exploit it would require direct and easy transport.

Remember, this is before the age of the railways.

The roads were absolutely dire and in this particular area,

there weren't any big rivers - only little streams like this.

And that gave the industrialists a real headache.

They needed to move the coal from up here, to the big towns that needed it down there.

So what did they do? They built artificial rivers - canals.

Up to 20 of them a year, to shift the coal from the pits

to the factories and foundries in Wolverhampton and Birmingham.

I'm going to take a canal journey across Cary's map,

to see how he mapped the major communication routes

of the industrial age.

From up here on Cannock Chase,

I'm going to be going down to Muckley Corner,

and then I'm going to try to follow the canals all the way down here,

past Wolverhampton, through Dudley, hopefully all the way to Birmingham.

It's a journey of about 60 miles.

The trouble I'll be facing is that once trains and trucks came along,

many of the canals fell into disuse and some disappeared altogether.

What I don't know is how many of the canals I want to use

have even got any water in them.

The first thing you notice about Cary's map is its orientation.

You'd expect North at the top,

but, in fact, Cary puts the East and Birmingham at the top.

That means the Wyrley and Essington canal at Muckley Corner

is south-east of where I am.

The canal should be somewhere around here.

I ought to be able to see it from the top of this slope,

snaking through the dip at the bottom of this field.

It's not obvious, but there are trees along the bottom of this field

and then, in front, what looks like a trough,

so I think I'll go and have a look.

Well, there is something here -

a parallel sided ditch,

squelchy in the bottom. I think this is the canal.

I can see it running each side of me here.

If this was the Wyrley and Essington,

perhaps it's not surprising it's lost its water,

as it was one of the higher canals in the area,

so it would have drained empty first.

Here's a rock.

Yep, that's interesting.

You don't normally find rocks sitting in the bottom of rivers,

so this is a piece of the old canal wall that's fallen down from above, probably.

Maybe from up here.

What we've got here - this is rather good.

Here's the side of the canal.

These moss-covered stones contained the water,

so right above here is the old towpath.

I'm going to see where that goes.

This is looking rather good.

I've got a trickle of water - a lot of water.

Eurgh! Quite a lot of water!

Down there is a bridge - not the original bridge, because the arch is far too high.

Very exciting!

Rubbish everywhere.

Such a shame that this noble work of civil engineering

has been turned into a modern-day garbage dump.

Just the other side of the bridge,

I can see where the canal is widening out into a basin.

Perhaps it's where the boats used to turn around or maybe pass each other.

You have to imagine those 70ft narrow boats, brightly painted,

smoke curling out of stovepipe chimneys, the horses on the towpath

stamping their feet impatiently, children running about.

It's a lost world down here.

Those truck drivers thundering by

don't even know it's here.

No sign of restoration here.

And I'm not going to make much progress

just tramping around in semi- dried-up canals.

Further up, there are navigable sections, so I've got a rendezvous

with someone who knows the canals, and, more importantly, has a boat.

Hi, Graham.

Graham Wigley has worked on the canals for nearly 40 years.

-This is huge!

-Yeah, it's a full 72ft, this.

Very exciting. How much freight could this boat have carried?

About 22, 23 tonnes. It depends on the state of the canal.

I mean, I have had 27 tonnes on it, on very specific occasions.

-This one is an absolute swine of a turn, this.

-Is it?

-Not a lot of head room.

-There'd be adequate head room when built,

to let a boat and chimney get under.

But many of them were affected by subsidence.

The whole area around here was riddled with small coal mines

in the heydays of the canals in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Many of the mines were very close, and there were special basins.

Sometimes, if they weren't so close,

there would be a horse-drawn tramway or plate way,

half a mile, something like that,

to connect with the canal.

-This is a basin here.

-Oh yes.

So you could've taken a narrow boat up, loaded up,

-come out on to Birmingham canal network and set off to your destination?

-Yep.

Then all this coal went into the rapidly expanding towns

of Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall, West Bromwich,

to feed the newly developing metal-bashing industries.

So what's now a lovely grassy area to walk your dog and have picnics

was once a mess of clanging ironworks, filthy coal dust

and all the rest of it.

Absolutely. Right in the middle

of what would otherwise be unspoiled countryside.

From the Black Country to the green country.

-Yeah, that's it.

-Oh, I nearly fell in then!

John Cary was born in 1755.

In his lifetime, he produced over 600 original maps,

including a highly successful county atlas.

Two years before his canal map, Cary made his name with roads.

His survey of the country's post roads

was the most detailed for 100 years.

The canal towpaths would have been measured

in the same way as the roads.

So I'm going to see if I can survey as accurately as Cary,

using his methods.

His surveyors used one of these.

It looks like a pocket watch, but it's a pedometer. It counts paces.

It works by this chain here pulling out of the bottom of the counter

and moving this needle around the outside of the dial.

So all I've got to do is fix this onto my waist,

and then attach the chain onto my boot lace,

and off I go.

In 1794, this was the main road between Walsall and Stafford.

The numbers 16 and 17 on Cary's map indicate that the distance

between the bridge where I left Graham and the T-junction

was exactly one mile. Let's see.

This pedometer is an ingenious little gadget.

It saves me the trouble of counting paces.

But it's remarkably difficult to operate.

It might look like I'm walking in a straight line,

daydreaming, but actually what I'm trying to do is to avoid

being shoved round out of course by vehicles like these ones here.

If it's going to work accurately, I have to walk in a straight line

along this road. I keep coming across obstacles.

I've got one right here.

Excuse me.

I'm trying to count the number of paces using this machine here

between the canal bridge there

and the road junction here, and I've got to walk in a dead straight line.

No, no, I speak French.

Just a little English.

Are you going to be parked here for very long?

-Park?

-Is your car going to be here for very long?

-No.

This man is kindly going to move his car

and allow me to press on down the pavement.

If I'd had to walk round the car...

I'm guessing, but it may have added

four paces on to the measurement.

There's not much point doing this if I don't do it accurately.

Not sure he understood what I was up to, though.

Here we go. Off we go again.

Interruption cleared.

I'm sure John Cary didn't have this trouble.

'T-junction coming up.

'Each of my paces is 68 inches, so...'

Here's the junction.

If I've been pacing correctly, the pedometer should read 931.

Let's see what the reading actually is.

Oh no! 1,238!

That's an error of about 30%.

I think it just goes to show how changes in the road over 200 years,

an old scientific instrument, and all the obstacles

I've been winding around have added some paces.

In Cary's day this was exactly one mile. Nowadays it's a lot more.

How's that for excuses?

Canals in the 1790s were the hottest new investment.

Anyone selling coal or other raw materials needed access to one.

To build a canal required an Act of Parliament, and to get that,

surveyors were asked to provide accurate maps of the planned routes.

These proposals became the primary source for Cary's inland navigation.

This close relationship between the canals and the coal -

did that mean that the fate of the two were tied up?

Oh yes. Very much so.

In actual fact, the last coal to be carried

on this northern part of the BCN, or Birmingham Canal Navigations,

passed in the late '60s, and then after that,

the canals really became largely disused.

Did you ever carry coal yourself?

I did. I used to fit in when our regular boatmen may have been ill

or we didn't have enough to cover the available traffic,

and yes, from time to time I used to take boats out, including this one.

This narrow boat carried coal?

-Oh yes.

-Did it?

-Yes.

Up until...on a regular basis, up until about 1969.

'It's curious that Cary's map has scarcely any industrial information.

'The one mention of coal mining is New Colliery,

'standing at the head of a now disused Wyrley and Essington branch.'

The question is, is there anything of it left?

The stubby branch would be the place where narrow boats

could moor to collect the coal.

It's no longer on a canal - so can I find it by road?

So far, there's no evidence

on the ground of a canal or a mine.

No earthworks, no embankments.

But I have found a lake.

This might be a vital clue.

This little lake could have been a feeder pool for the canal,

and feeder pools were often found near coal mines.

Water was pumped out of the mine using the latest invention -

a steam engine.

The water then gathered in the feeder pools and could be used

to top-up the nearby canal.

Look at this - there's a channel full of water,

and it seems to have...

parallel sides, it's long and straight.

Maybe it was a stub of the original canal.

Let's see. It continues across the path,

into the wood here, in a kind of trough.

What I'm looking for is evidence

that the coal mine was around here.

And I think... yup, over here on the ground,

there are flakes of coal absolutely everywhere - lots of them.

Flakes of coal. Incredible.

200 years on, you can still find bits of coal lying all over.

Look at this big bit! Massive. There's a bigger bit!

Look at the size of that!

A huge lump of coal.

So somewhere around here was the coal mine,

the New Colliery on Cary's map.

Coal traffic was all about shifting large volumes with minimal effort.

And in the absence of good roads, the canals provided

an efficient method of transport, and the price of coal halved.

This wasn't an easy map to create.

Cary had to draw on information from the canal companies, local boatmen,

people who used the canals every day.

He also visited many of the canals himself.

All that information he had to collate and then put down

onto the maps - an incredible exercise

in information gathering and in editing.

The maps are very, very detailed.

They don't just show the canals, but surrounding geography as well.

Forest of Cannock Chase, here.

The road network.

The bridges.

There's a tunnel marked here.

And of course, all the towns of the Black Country.

Walsall, Wednesbury.

Wolverhampton, Stourbridge.

Dudley, and up here, Birmingham itself.

But the most amazing aspect of this map

is the canals themselves.

This thick, black network,

overlaid on the existing natural geography of the region.

If you navigate a river, you need to know where the shallows are,

the bends, the rapids and so on.

With canals, you just need to know where the locks are,

as they're what will slow you down

as you shift freight around the region.

So Cary has taken great care about marking the locks.

He's used a little device shaped like a chevron,

with a point facing uphill,

to show you which direction the locks are going,

so you can make a guess about how much they'll slow you down

as you travel from A to B.

Curiously, Cary has also marked canals that hadn't yet been built.

For example, the Birmingham-Worcester.

That wasn't finished until 1815, 20 years after this map was published.

Cary was being quite clever.

He knew that if he put canals on that he thought would be built

he'd increase his potential customers,

as the map would stay current for longer.

He's also unfortunately got it wrong in one place.

There's a little canal down near Dudley that hasn't been built today.

But the feature of this map that really fascinates me

is this area here around Tipton.

Why is it that Cary's got Tipton in the centre of the map

and Birmingham on the edge?

Birmingham had doubled in size since 1770.

All the canals seem to radiate outward from Tipton,

as if it's the hub in the centre of a wheel.

I want to go there and find out why Tipton mattered so much to Cary.

The canals on Cary's map, especially around Tipton,

twist and turn through the landscape.

I don't really see how anyone could map them accurately,

but tomorrow, I'll find out.

I'm going to tackle the oldest and most difficult stretches

of the Birmingham Canal Navigations.

-Morning.

-Do you need a hand casting off?

Yes, please.

'New day, next stage of my journey.'

I'm rejoining Graham to make my way north-east

towards Tipton.

We're now beyond the urban sprawl,

and into what is very pretty countryside.

This way to Stourbridge and Birmingham.

But there are two major sets of locks to get through on the way.

MUSIC: "Keep What Ya Got" by Ian Brown and Noel Gallagher

# Yesterday came suddenly

# Tomorrow will receive

# Today now you're at the wheel

# I'll ask, "How does it feel?" #

OK.

This is where we are. Here on the Dudley Canal.

We've just come up a flight of locks here,

and there's a flight of locks ahead of us here.

But they're closed for repairs, so we're stuck.

But I still want to get to the Tipton area here,

to find out why Cary put it in the centre of his map.

Cary suggests I can get there by going through the tunnel here.

-What do you think?

-Looks like we'll have to launch the canoe.

The Dudley tunnel was built in 1792,

only four years before Cary drew his map.

It's two miles long and was a major connection

between Dudley and the fast track into Birmingham.

In Cary's time, it would have been chaos.

Up to 100 boats would have passed through this tunnel every day.

But there were quieter moments.

Believe it or not, this tunnel was a tourist attraction in its day.

Well-to-do people

paid hard cash to be taken down this dark, narrow passage for fun.

Some said it was like being rowed across the River Styx -

the river of death in the underworld -

as once the canal traffic had stopped

at the end of a working day, this tunnel could be deathly quiet.

Out of the tunnel and into Tipton.

Why was this place so important to Cary?

There has to be a reason, and I hope I'm about to meet the man who knows.

Carl Chinn has recorded the history

of the Black Country for 13 years.

He was once a bookie,

then became a historian, and now he has his own radio show,

which celebrates the memories of the people who live around here.

There you go. How's that?

'What's Tipton's secret? Why is it in the centre of the map?'

Tipton is a place that's important to the concept of the Black Country.

A pre-eminent manufacturing region. It's in the middle.

If you look at that map, Tipton is between Birmingham -

the beginning and end of the local network - and Wolverhampton.

It was close to Dudley with its minerals,

and Bilston with its ironworks.

Did it have any of its own industrial heroes?

Tipton had many industrial heroes.

It was famous for coal, and it was close to Bradley,

where "Iron-mad" Wilkinson

was based, with all his ironworks.

You've got coal in Tipton, but the people of Tipton

not only were miners, or working on the canals, the cuts -

they were involved in transforming the iron

into something useful and beautiful.

Most of the best canal bridges in Britain were made in Tipton.

So there's Tipton, right smack in the middle,

and that's why today there's canals all around Tipton,

and it's known by local folk as Tippon-on-cut.

So, last leg.

I need to join up with the Birmingham Canal.

But the water's run out on me.

Somehow I've got to find my way across Tipton

to yet another stubby branch,

which should help me get into the centre of Birmingham.

MUSIC: "In My Heart" by Moby

Tipton was at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution.

At their height, the collieries here

here were shipping 300 tonnes of coal a day to the foundries in the city.

This is where it all began.

Not much left to remind us of those great times.

Finding the course of old winding canals is not going to be easy.

I'm on a high plateau that's been churned up

by what looks like heavy industry some time ago.

The original landscape has been completely obliterated.

But I am following the top of a long curving embankment,

and I'm hoping, perhaps it's part of the old towpath,

and it's going in the right direction.

Better find water soon - this canoe is getting heavy!

Water!

By the early 1800s, the canals were congested.

As well as shipping raw materials,

they helped in the war against Napoleonic France.

Narrow boats began to carry weapons and horses,

and wounded soldiers, too, were transported to Birmingham hospitals.

Amazingly, these canals are still here, wending their way under the M5,

and scarcely anyone on that superhighway has a clue they're here.

The irony is the very success of the canals eventually killed them off.

The canals took the power to the factories

which created the first steam engines,

and once those steam engines had been put on rails

and become a train service, the canals were doomed.

Or maybe not so doomed.

I've made it to Birmingham, and it's clearly in love with canals.

A massive restoration programme 10 years ago

has put them back at the heart of the city.

But the need for canal maps like John Cary's only lasted until about 1830.

Railways were the new transport mania.

As investment swung that way, no-one wanted to know about canals.

Never one to miss a trick, Cary's firm went on

to map the expanding rail network.

Having already mapped the roads and canals,

Cary became the great creator of communications maps.

In his 70s, he passed his business on to his three sons,

and by the time of his death in 1835, he'd become one of the most wealthy,

feted and influential mapmakers of the industrial age.

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast - 2005

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