Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in 874 and again in 953. The 1180s castle has a rare Norman shell keep and tower, a medieval
gatehouse, a Tudor chapel and a 15th century timber-framed great banqueting hall, Jacobean
and Tudor apartments, Victorian suite and a bedroom haunted by the Black Lady, St Editha,
the 9th century founder of Polesworth Abbey. The castle has been occupied for nearly 800
years. Offa, king of Mercia, had his capital and palace here in 757 and it was probably the
stronghold of Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great.
The canal runs straight for 800m, to arrive at Fazeley Junction where it meets the Birming-
ham & Fazeley Canal.
The Coventry Canal reached Fazeley Junction (now restored) in 1790, by which time the
Birmingham & Fazeley Canal had already been extended to Whittington Brook. The Trent
& Mersey Canal built the final section, then sold it to the Coventry Canal as a disconnected
piece.
Huddlesford Junction used to bring in the Wyrley & Essington Canal, now just a spur as a
result of being abandoned in 1954 but with restoration underway.
The Plough is tucked into a corner next to a minor road at Huddlesford, a small community
cut in two by the Trent Valley Railway, which passes over for the last time.
To the left lies Lichfield. Between 1195 and 1310 the only medieval cathedral with three
spires was built, the Ladies of the Vale, sited at the shrine of St Chad and built in local red
sandstone. It has a 7th century manuscript of the gospels and a lady chapel with Flemish Her-
ckenrode windows of 1802. It was badly damaged in the Civil War but the Victorian-restored
west front has over a hundred carved figures.
The city was the birthplace of Samuel Johnson and Elias Ashmole, who left a collection of
antiquities to Oxford University in the world's oldest museum, the Ashmolean.
Fradley developed because of an airfield, which stands beside the canal, its large hangars
still dominating. The Coventry Canal joins the Trent & Mersey Canal at Fradley Junction,
one of the busiest points on the canal system, the middle of a lock flight.
