Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
When the wharf was removed there was a collapse of coffins and skeletons down the canal
bank and it had to be reinstated. Close by is the spire of a late medieval red sandstone church.
The footway is on the left and into a mural-lined concrete tunnel leading down below the ring
road.
At Upper Mitton the canal passes between the Bird in Hand and a graveyard. Although
the name Lower Mitton, formerly a Saxon settlement, may be seen on a bridge, the village's
name was changed to Stourport-on-Severn when the canal was built. One wharf has a series
of arches highlighted with courses of blue bricks. The increase in canalside public houses
such as the Rising Sun, Black Swan and Bell Hotel give an indication that the terminus is be-
ing reached. York Street Lock is the final lock into the basin. Alongside the lock is a Gothic
cottage of 1854 while upstream are interesting wharf buildings that have been restored. This
is generally considered Britain's best canal town.
The town was built by the canal company, the only one in Britain built to serve canals, with
what would become a 7ha complex of basins at the terminus, in use by 1771. When the Up-
per Basin was dug it was only 230mm deep in the centre but deeper at the outsides. In 1956 it
was deepened right across. There are Georgian warehouses, one with an overhanging roof on
cast-iron columns and one, originally a grain store and now home of Stourport Yacht Club,
with a prominent clocktower of 1812 that gives its name to the Clock Basin, also known as
the Middle Basin despite being on the upper level 9m above the Severn, clear of floodwater.
Two of the three original drydocks in the Lower Basin survive and there are flights of both
wide and narrow locks down to the river with a cast-iron footbridge crossing.
Below the inland port is the River Severn, a much older and more major navigation route.
