Lapal Tunnel
canal tunnel in the UK
The Lapal Tunnel (old spelling Lappal Tunnel) is a disused 3,795-yard (3,470 m) canal tunnel on the five mile dry section of the Dudley No. 2 Canal in the West Midlands, England. It takes its name from the settlement of Lapal.
History
The narrow brick-lined tunnel, built in 1798 by William Underhill, had no towpath. It had a very small bore — at 7 feet 9 inches, barely wider than the boats which used it, with a headroom of only 6 feet. Boats originally took about three hours to complete the passage by legging or poling, so in 1841 a steam engine was built at the Halesowen end which drove a scoop wheel to load the tunnel with water. Stop gates could be opened at either end to assist boats along the tunnel in either direction.
The tunnel suffered many collapses, and after a collapse in 1917 due to mining subsidence it was abandoned. It runs under Lapal, the M5 motorway near junction 3 and Woodgate Valley Country Park. The canal between Halesowen and Selly Oak is disused and some sections have been filled in as the tunnel was considered uneconomic to repair.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lapal Tunnel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.