Galton Valley Canal Heritage Centre facts for kids
The Galton Valley Canal Museum is a small museum located in Smethwick, England. It sits right next to the famous BCN Main Line canals, which are like old water highways. This museum helps you learn all about how these canals were built and used. You can also discover the stories of the people who designed them, built them, and worked on them every day.
In 2009, the museum won a special award for being a "Best Small Visitor Attraction." Later, in 2011, the museum moved to a new home. It's now inside the amazing New Smethwick Pumping Station. You can visit it when it's opened by the Sandwell Museum Service and a group called The Friends of Galton Valley. Because the new place is smaller, some of the old museum items are now at the Smethwick Heritage Centre in Victoria Park.
The New Smethwick Pumping Station
The New Smethwick Pumping Station is a really interesting building. It sits between two important canals: the Birmingham Old Main Line and the New Main Line Canals. This station first opened way back in 1892. Its main job was to pump water from the lower New Main Line Canal up to the higher Old Main Line Canal. This was super important because water was lost from the higher canal every time boats went through the Smethwick locks.
But the pumping station didn't work for very long. It closed in the mid-1920s because fewer boats were using the canals. Except for a short time during the Second World War, the building stayed empty. Then, in the late 1980s, it was fixed up and opened as part of the Galton Valley Canal Heritage Centre.
When it was new, this pumping station replaced two older wooden steam engines. These engines were located at Bridge Street and Spon Lane in Smethwick. The site at Bridge Street was where James Watt's famous Smethwick Engine once stood. You can now see Watt's engine at the Think Tank Museum in Birmingham. However, you can still arrange tours of the original site through the museum in Galton Valley.
