When I announced I was blogging here for a few months, someone asked what exactly “Warwick Bar” is, where the name comes from and so on. The welcome page on this site tells you about the current developments and such but there’s nothing really substantive about the history of the place. So since my job is partly to fill in the gaps, let’s have a go.
It’s a conservation area.
Go to Wikipedia and you’ll learn that it’s “a conservation area in Birmingham, England which was home to many canalside factories during the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” The article goes on to mention all manner of buildings that I didn’t think were part of Warwick Bar so I checked on the council website.
In conservation terms then, this is Warwick Bar.
It took me a few seconds before I realised this is a pretty large chunk of Digbeth and Eastside. The two large white buildings in the middle are Millennium Point (with the bulge) and the old Parcelforce depot behind Curzon Street Station (now a wasteland / carpark). The bit we’re concerned with is the relatively small area just below that.
So from a conservation standpoint we’ve got three Statutorily Listed Buildings and one Locally Listed Building along with a section of the canal which I’ll get on to next.
The listed buildings are, clockwise from top, the Banana Warehouse, the old Fellows Morton and Clayton building (now home to Clifton Steel), 122 Fazeley Street (home to K4 Architects) and the recently renovated 106-110 Fazeley Street on the corner.
The rest of the site is light industrial units and brownfield development fodder. Oh, and a cement mixing plant.
It’s a quirk of the commercial canal network
If you look at the canal lock next to the Banana Warehouse you might notice something strange about it. Each side of the lock is the same height which is pretty pointless for a canal lock. But that lock is the key to the name of the area.
During the Industrial Revolution, when boats were the primary method of transporting goods across the country, water was a valuable commodity. Rival canal routes didn’t want to share their water so physical barriers were put in place to protect it, usually “stop locks” also known as “bars”.
From Wikipedia:
Where a junction was built, either because the older canal company saw an advantage in a connection, or where the new company managed to insert a mandatory connection into its Act of Parliament, then the old company would seek to protect (and even enhance) its water supply. Normally, they would specify that, at the junction, the newer canal must be at a higher level than their existing canal. Even though the drop from the newer to the older canal might only be a few inches, the difference in levels still required a lock — called a stop lock, because it was to stop water flowing continuously between the newer canal and the older, lower one. The lock would be under the control of the new company, and the gates would, of course, “point” uphill – towards the newer canal. This would protect the water supply of the newer canal, but would nevertheless “donate” a lockful of water to the older company every time a boat went through. In times of excess water, of course, the lock “bywash” would continuously supply water to the lower canal.
When variable conditions meant that a higher water level in the new canal could not be guaranteed, then the older company would also build a stop lock (under its own control, with gates pointing towards its own canal) which could be closed when the new canal was low.
The Warwick Bar, then, is a stop lock, connecting the Grand Union to the Birmingham Canal Navigations while sharing the minimum amount of precious water.
It’s a waterside regeneration project
What is a “waterside regeneration project”? It’s the sort of thing Isis do, and they’re the company that owns Warwick Bar. Isis is in turn part owned by British Waterways and are tasked with undertaking commercial developments that ensure “the natural systems, resources and diversity upon which they depend are enhanced for both current and future generations” with 50% of their profits being invested back in the waterways.
Like most of the big development projects in Digbeth over the last few years it’s stalled somewhat thanks to the market slump so Isis have scaled back their ambitions, looking at a slower form of development. The light industrial units have been spruced up and renamed Minerva Works and the brownfield area between the listed buildings is currently home to Edible Eastside.
I should say that I’m stating Isis’ intentions from memory of the presentation they gave to the Dutch visitors last week and I’m struggling to find that information online, but suffice to say the area was due to have something built on it and while that something isn’t going to be realised as intended they haven’t abandoned the site like some developers we could mention. Documenting this sustainable slow development, sharing the information and experience of the place with the tenants, Digbeth populace and Isis themselves, is the purpose of this blog.
Pete Ashton is the “blogger/photographer/artist-in-residence” for Warwick Bar and will be posting his findings on this blog from April through June. All his posts are archived here. His views are his own.
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