2 October 2025

 

In Selly Oak there is a dead end which perplexes me – predominantly because it seems to have been designed into the environment, recently, by those who developed the newest retail park. The sand-coloured footpath deviates off the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, cuts under student apartments, circumvents the car park, and then continues to railings that block entry under the main road. It is lined, all along, with a carefully staged wildness: tall bullrushes, raggedy yarrow, purple verbena. 

This is the beginning of a lost canal. 


Photographs by Jen Dixon
From the Arden Archive