Members celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust

A group working to restore the Lichfield Canal has celebrated its 30th anniversary.

Members celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust
Members celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust

More than 100 people attended a barbecue at Gallows Wharf to mark the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust’s milestone.

Among those present were the three remaining founder members of the trust – Eric Wood, Dennis Cooper and Phil Sharpe, who shared a vision of restoring two sections of the canal network that had been abandoned in the 1950s.

The closure of the canals cut the link between the underused northern sections of the Birmingham Canal Navigations and the Coventry Canal to the east and the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal to the west.

The trust’s founder members saw that restoring those links would revive an important part of South Staffordshire’s heritage, regenerate neglected urban and rural areas and provide a wildlife corridor with benefits for the community through leisure activities like boating, walking and cycling.

The event also coincided with the Lichfield 10k, from which many of the Trust’s volunteers had hot-footed after providing a water station for participants in the run.

Among the runners were a team of supporters who raised £900 in sponsorship which will go towards the £1million Tunnel Vision Appeal, set up to provide a canal tunnel under the cross-city railway line.