The first 85 metres of the Lichfield Canal is in water at Gallows Reach, paid for with £200,000 of developer levy. Final watering is targeted for spring 2028.

An 85-metre stretch of the Lichfield Canal at Gallows Reach is holding water for the first time since the route was drained, after volunteers finished and bunded the section in July. Lichfield District Council announced the milestone on 20 August, crediting its £200,000 grant towards the work.

The canal was built between 1794 and 1797 as the Ogley Locks section of the Wyrley and Essington Canal. It was abandoned in the 1950s. The right of navigation was formally extinguished by the British Transport Commission Act of 1954, and much of the route was drained and filled in during the 1960s. Those dates come from the Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust, the charity carrying out the work.

What the £200,000 bought

The council’s money came from the Community Infrastructure Levy, a charge collected from new developments and spent on local infrastructure. It is funding materials and contractor support for a 225-metre section: sheet piling for the canal sides and a watertight lining for the bed.

The council’s Infrastructure Funding Statement 2025 shows the grant was allocated on 11 February 2025 and records the agreement as signed, with structured payments of £70,000, £70,000 and £60,000 due during 2025/26.

That document also shows this is not the trust’s first CIL award, and that the earlier ones did not survive. A £35,000 grant for a St Johns community link, allocated in March 2019, and £260,000 for the Falkland Road Fosseway canal walk, allocated in February 2022, were both recorded as “funding withdrawn 22/11/2023”.

Three Community Infrastructure Levy awards to Lichfield Canal projects: £35,000 in March 2019 and £260,000 in February 2022, both withdrawn on 22 November 2023, and £200,000 in February 2025 with the grant agreement signed
Every strategic levy award the council has made to a Lichfield Canal project. Source: Lichfield District Council Infrastructure Funding Statement 2025, Table 7.

Volunteers had already reached the point of laying channel. The trust’s Gallows Reach project page dates the run-up. Work restarted at Gallows Wharf in February 2025. A large pipe crossing the line came out in June 2026. The first 85 metres was finished in July.

What is still to come, and when

Planning permission for the wider scheme was granted in summer 2024. The trust says it covers:

  • a 650-metre watertight channel from London Road to the old Lock 24 in Borrowcop Locks Canal Park
  • a new lock west of Cricket Lane
  • a lift bridge linking Longbridge Road with Tamworth Road
  • new pedestrian steps from Gallows Wharf up to London Road

The lift bridge went in during April 2026. The trust’s own timeline for the Gallows Reach project, updated this month, puts the remaining stages like this:

Stage Target
85m to the lift bridge November 2026
Lift bridge to new Lock 24 Summer 2027
Cricket Lane culvert Winter 2027
Lock 24 tie into the Cricket Lane culvert Spring 2028
Tamworth Road narrows tie into the culvert Spring 2028
Wall by Lock 25 completed Spring 2028
Final watering of the reach Spring 2028

The trust attaches a plain warning to those dates: they are estimates, and depend on volunteers, funding and weather. It has no paid staff and no central funding, and says the work is done by its own volunteers and visiting groups, with contractors used where necessary.

Funding for the individual pieces has been raised separately. The trust raised £39,000 towards the lift bridge through a Big Give Christmas Challenge appeal in 2022, plus a legacy from a local supporter. Most of the cost of the new Lock 24 came from a Big Give Green Match Fund appeal in April 2025, which raised £157,154, short of its target. The trust says it aims to fund the next phase through the Big Give Christmas Challenge in December 2026.

What it means for you

The finished stretch is not a navigation yet. Once the whole Gallows Reach channel is complete, it delivers a traffic-free walking route between the new housing at Cricket Lane and St John’s Grange. It also connects through to Borrowcop Locks Canal Park.

You can already walk it. The trust says Gallows Wharf is open to walkers, with:

  • public access from London Road
  • a towpath on one side and a nature trail on the other
  • wheelchair access along the towpath, down a slope from London Road
  • no designated parking

The site sits off London Road near the Tamworth Road junction, postcode WS14 9EQ.

The wider ambition is longer than one stretch. The Lichfield Canal runs seven miles from Huddlesford Junction to Ogley Junction, on the edge of Brownhills, with 30 locks along it. The restoration follows the original line apart from four diversions around development built since the canal was abandoned.

Two things at Gallows Reach are worth knowing before you go, both from the trust’s Gallows Wharf page. The wharf is named after the Lichfield gallows, first erected in 1532 on a site close by. The last three men hanged in Lichfield died there on 1 June 1801, convicted of “uttering” forged banknotes.

The second is quieter. It was at this wharf, in 1803, that the Herkenrode stained glass was unloaded from canal boats on its way to Lichfield Cathedral. A replica of the glass crate stands on the site today, alongside a Garden of Reflection completed in 2019.

For more places to walk and visit locally, see our guide to things to do in Lichfield.