CovSoc member and keen jogger, Peter Hunter, has been down the cut! Peter writes…..
Coventry’s canal towpaths are great routes for joggers, walkers and cyclists. They regularly feature in my weekly runs. I love the fact that the towpath is generally quiet and fairly secluded even when it is only yards away from the busiest areas of the city. In recent years the towpath has been resurfaced from the city centre to Sutton Stop, making it an easy walk, jog or ride.
The contrast between the quiet canal and the chaotic city is especially marked at bridge 6, Navigation Bridge, where the canal is crossed by Stoney Stanton Rd. If you’re driving along Stoney Stanton Rd., the link between The A444 and the island accessing Gallagher Retail Park is always busy, a motorist’s nightmare of criss – crossing lanes, fast traffic and ever-changing lights. If you’re driving that short stretch of road, you’d never know that the canal passes quietly beneath you.
I love the contrast here between the chaos above and the calm below. Only a few yards apart, but different worlds. Bridge 6 itself has been much altered. Originally there was the 18th century Brindley bridge which I believe lasted until the early 20th century, when it was replaced by a significantly wider structure designed to accommodate increased traffic. The widened bridge was then widened once more in 1996 when the dual carriageway A444 was opened.
The bridge is named after The Navigation public house which was located next to the canal, south of Stoney Stanton Rd and west of the canal. I’m not sure when the pub opened, I would guess late 19th / early 20th century and I reckon it closed in the 1970’s. As a brief aside, just how many “Navigation” pubs are there across the country? If you were locating a pub next to a canal it was never obligatory that you called it “The Navigation”, but it sometimes seems that half of the canalside pubs across England were given that name, surely a marked lack of imagination. How many “Navigations” can you count just in Warwickshire?
The much-altered bridge 6 is in marked contrast to bridge 5, half a mile further south, which is one of the remaining original Brindley bridges in Coventry. Bridge 5 is the original Red Lane bridge. A new bridge carries Red Lane as it is now over the canal just a little south of the original, but the old bridge is still used by pedestrians and remains an important feature of the Coventry Canal Conservation Area.
Let’s be honest, the latest incarnation of the Navigation Bridge is a fairly mundane example of modern civil engineering. Functional, but not much else. The one feature associated with the bridge that transforms it from mundane to interesting for me is the original 18th / 19th century iron rubbing post just beneath the bridge on the city side of the towpath. It may well have been moved a few yards as the bridge was widened but it provides a tangible link to the canal’s busy past. There are the characteristic grooves where ropes rubbed against the post protecting the bridge structure from damage as innumerable horse drawn boats passed beneath it. There may be a little graffiti and spray paint now, but the link with the past is real and tangible. For me it has become something of a talisman, I have to touch the post for good luck every time I run or walk past. Bridge 6 and the rubbing post are special to me in that I was born only a couple of hundred yards away, before the chaos of the A444. It was a time when the Coventry loop railway was operating only a few yards to the east of the canal and when the signal box, celebrated in the name of the pub on the A444 roundabout was indeed a signal box and Bell Green goods yard was operational. As a child, my attention was focused on the railway line and the steam trains operating along the line which I could see from my garden. The canal was something of a no – go zone back then, dark, dirty, dangerous and very little used in the 50’s.
So when you’re driving along the A444 or Stoney Stanon Rd., briefly spare a though for The Navigation Bridge and its 200 year old rubbing post alongside the canal hidden away and out of site. But don’t dwell on it for too long. You’ll need your wits about you when driving and negotiating that junction.
