TV series coming to region for story of canals
A new TV series celebrating canal systems will look at the role the waterways played in building the nation.
And the Midlands and Wales will feature in the BBC series, Canals: The Making of a Nation, on October 6, as host Liz McIvor makes her way along the Worcester and Birmingham canal route, telling a deeper story of how our waterways helped change our lives – and how that legacy lives on today.
She will discover why canals are so important to the Midlands and Wales, from the majesty of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct to the industry of the West Midlands.
From the beginnings of canal building in the 1700s, Britain's prosperity was largely due to its canal network, made up of more than 3,000 miles of waterways linking the cities, towns and ports with coalfields, quarries, foundries and factories.
They fuelled the growth of the Industrial Revolution, with the Birmingham Canal Old Main line passing landmarks like the Titford Canal, Engine Arm and Netherton Tunnel Branch.
Ms McIvor, an expert in industrial history and curator at Bradford Industrial Museum, aims to show viewers just how instrumental canals were in shaping our modern world and how they came to be.
She said: "The canals have been covered by television programmes before, which have lately tended to focus on them as pleasureways. This is how most of us know and love them today. But not so long ago they were used for the opposite of leisure and were not the rural idyll they now seem."
During the West Midlands episode Ms McIvor visits Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in north Wales, and travels to Birmingham where canals have become catalysts for property development and urban regeneration.
The West Midlands episode of Canals – The Making of a Nation will be shown on BBC Four on October 6 at 8pm, as part of the series which includes other UK regions.
