Tardebigge Locks

The Tardebigge flight climbs the Worcester and Birmingham Canal from Stoke Pound up to Tardebigge New Wharf, just south of Tardebigge Tunnel. Pronunciation first: “TAR-di-big”, stress on the first syllable — said to be the local pronunciation. The interest here for Bolinder readers is engineering: a failed boat lift, a steam pumping engine, tunnel tugs above the top lock (one of them Bolinder-engined), and a listed lock rebuilt brick by brick in 2025.

Longest? Define the metric

Canal & River Trust calls Tardebigge the longest lock flight in Britain. That is true by number of locks: 30 against the 29 of Caen Hill. Caen Hill rises further, though — about 237 ft against Tardebigge’s 220 ft — so name the metric.

“Thirty-six locks in a day” means Tardebigge plus the separate six-lock Stoke flight below it (locks 23–58). The Astwood flight (17–22) is separate again. The Tardebigge flight itself is thirty.

Lift versus locks

Before the flight was built, an alternative was tried. John Woodhouse built an experimental vertical boat lift at the top of the climb, at his own expense, finished in June 1808. Secondary accounts describe a roofed structure with a wooden caisson of about 64 tons, guillotine gates at each end, and a fixed brick counterweight hung on eight chains over pulleys, worked by two men with a windlass. It lifted boats about 12 ft, and in one trial passed 110 boats in 12 hours — a test figure, not a daily throughput.

Accounts of the trials differ. Historic England says trials began in 1810; other accounts have William Jessop (for the lift) and John Rennie (against) reporting around 1810–11. Rennie judged it too delicate, needing constant attention, and an 1812 investigation showed there was enough water for conventional locks. The lift was abandoned, probably around 1811, and removed by about 1814–15; the flight was built and the whole canal opened in December 1815.

Lock 58, the top lock, stands on the lift site and is the surviving fingerprint: it has a rise of about 11 ft, roughly half as much again as a typical lock on the flight. (Historic England’s listing gives the chamber as “about 14 feet deep” — a different measure from the rise.) You will read that the outline of the lift’s balancing pit can be seen beside the lock cottage. We do not repeat that: a 2025 archaeological watching brief found no evidence of the lift in its trench, and the feature people point to may be a former side pond.

Water: reservoir and engine house

Thirty chambers of lockage need a lot of water. Tardebigge Reservoir, beside the flight around locks 50–53, was built in 1822–23 and its embankment raised further up to 1827. It lies well below the summit (sources give 50 to 60 ft), so water had to be pumped up.

The engine house by lock 57 (Grade II, c.1823) held a steam beam engine that lifted water from the reservoir into the canal near the top of the flight. It last ran in January 1914 and was removed in 1915, when supply was switched to gravity feed from Upper Bittell. The building later had a long second life as a jazz club, nightclub, pub and restaurant, and since about 2012 it has been private flats. View it from the towpath only.

Above the top lock: tunnel tugs and Worcester’s Bolinder

North of the top lock the canal runs lock-free through Tardebigge Tunnel (580 yd) and Shortwood Tunnel towards King’s Norton. Through the tunnels, horse boats were towed by tugs.

The honest Bolinder thread at Tardebigge is the tug Worcester. Built in 1912 by Abdela & Mitchell at Brimscombe for the Sharpness New Docks Company, she was one of five motor tugs from 1908–12 and towed horse boats along the Tardebigge–King’s Norton pound and through the Tardebigge and Shortwood tunnels. Her original Kromhout engine was replaced with a 30 hp Bolinder semi-diesel in 1929/30 (the National Historic Ships register gives both years). She worked until 1956 and is now at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port.

What we do not claim: that Worcester worked the lock flight (her job was the summit and its tunnels), or exactly where she worked in her Bolinder years — the register also records long service on the Gloucester side. Her sister tug Sharpness, long based at Tardebigge, was not a Bolinder.

The Cressy meeting and the plaque error

During the war Tom Rolt’s narrowboat Cressy lay at Tardebigge New Wharf. On 11 August 1945 Robert Aickman came aboard, with Ray Aickman and Tom and Angela Rolt (and probably others), and the conversation that led to the Inland Waterways Association began. The IWA itself was formally founded in 1946, in London — not at Tardebigge.

There are two plaques at the top lock. The original gives the year as 1946, which is wrong; a corrected plaque was unveiled in 2005 by Sonia Rolt. For the record, Cressy was not a Bolinder boat: she had a steam engine, then a Ford Model T engine that Rolt ran on paraffin in wartime.

The 2025 rebuild of lock 58

In October 2024 the top lock was width-restricted. Navigation was closed on 17 February 2025 for a planned investigation, and in March a chamber wall moved 80–90 mm over three days. With Listed Building Consent granted in June 2025, the wall was taken down and rebuilt by hand using more than 20,000 bricks, about half of them original, with new bricks from Ketley; the old timber ties were replaced with stainless-steel “sock” anchors into the counterforts. The lock reopened on 27 August 2025.

St Bartholomew’s church

The spire you see all the way up the flight belongs to St Bartholomew’s, built in 1776–77 by Francis Hiorne of Warwick after the medieval tower collapsed in the mid-1770s. The tower and spire rise about 135 ft (42 m); the chancel is by Henry Rowe (1879). The church is Grade II* and stands on the hilltop above the top lock and wharf.

The name

The earliest record is æt Tærdebicgan, in a late tenth-century will; Domesday Book has Terdeberie. Place-name scholarship calls the name unexplained. The popular reading “tower on the hill” is local tradition, not an established etymology.

Video — the flight

A time-lapse of a boat working up all thirty locks, filmed in August 2018 (before the 2025 rebuild of lock 58). It is here for place: the boat is not a Bolinder, and the uploader’s “longest continuous flight” is by lock count.

Have you filmed a Bolinder at Tardebigge?

We have found no widely indexed film of a Bolinder working this flight, and no photograph of Worcester on the Tardebigge summit in her Bolinder years. If you have either, please get in touch via the Contact page so we can credit and use it. We will not invent such a film.

FAQ

Walking and visitor notes

• There is a free car park beside St Bartholomew’s church (Church Lane, B60 3AH), with a path down to the towpath near New Wharf; the top lock is a short walk south.
• The flight is about 2¼ miles each way. Canal & River Trust gives Tardebigge Wharf to Stoke Prior as 3½ miles, about 1¾ hours.
• Tardebigge New Wharf is a working Canal & River Trust maintenance yard; keep to public areas.
• The Queen’s Head is a pub near Stoke Pound Bridge (no. 48), just below lock 29; check opening before you go.
• The engine house and lock cottages are homes: be discreet with cameras.
• This is not a navigation guide. Check Canal & River Trust notices for stoppages.

Practical notes for Bolinder crews

• Allow 4–6 hours for the thirty, depending on crew, season and how many locks are against you.
• Once committed there is effectively nowhere to moor between lock 57 and the bottom, so plan heat, fuel and crew before you start.
• Short pounds and repeated stops: keep the engine hot, and strap if reverse is unreliable.
• Lock 58 is deeper than the rest and sits apart from the flight; take it steadily.
• Water and boater services are at New Wharf. Volunteer lock-keepers are often on duty in season.

Sources include Canal & River Trust news on the 2025 repairs, Historic England list entries 1078238 (lock 58) and 1100167 (church), the National Historic Ships register entry for tug Worcester, the IWA, the BBC, CanalPlanAC and Tardebigge Locks (Wikipedia).

Places on the map

• Tardebigge Top Lock (58)
• Tardebigge New Wharf
• Tardebigge Bottom Lock (29)
• Engine house (private, by lock 57)
• Tardebigge Reservoir
• St Bartholomew’s church
• Tardebigge Tunnel, north portal

Related: Caen Hill Locks · Crofton Beam Engines (another canal pumping engine) · Historic boat convoy (Ellesmere Port) · Sound & video · Hot-bulb history

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