The Boat Gauging House is a building in

Tipton Tipton is an industrial town in the metropolitan borough of Sandwell, in the county of the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It had a population of 38,777 at the 2011 UK Census. It is located northwest of Birmingham and southeas ...

, West Midlands, England. It is situated by the Main Line of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, and was used for calibrating new canal boats in order later to ascertain the weight of cargo carried. It is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

Background

Canal companies charged boats for using the canals, the fees, based on the weight of the cargo, being collected at

toll point In the United Kingdom a toll point or toll island is a place on a canal where a fee was collected as boats carrying cargo passed. These were sited at strategic points such as the stop lock at the transition from one canal company to another wher ...

s. In order to assess the weight of cargo, boats were initially calibrated. The "wet" method was done during the building of the boat; the

Birmingham Canal Navigations Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN) is a network of canals connecting Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and the eastern part of the Black Country. The BCN is connected to the rest of the English canal system at several junctions. It was owned and opera ...

(BCN) used the "dry" method, in which a new or refitted boat was loaded from empty with ton weights, and the resulting

freeboard In sailing and boating, a vessel's freeboard is the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, measured at the lowest point of sheer where water can enter the boat or ship. In commercial vessels, the latter criterion measured relativ ...

, or "dry inches", as the boat sat lower in the water, was each time noted. Gauging plates were then fixed to the boat."Gauging on the BCN"
'' Birmingham Canal Navigations Society''. Retrieved 16 October 2020.

Description and history

The BCN built gauging houses (or gauging stations) at

Smethwick Smethwick () is an industrial town in the Sandwell district, in the county of the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It lies west of Birmingham city centre. Historically it was in Staffordshire and then Worcestershire before bei ...

in 1872, and at Tipton in 1873. The Tipton gauging house could accommodate boats up to the coal-carrying "Hampton" boats of eighty feet in length. It was in use until gauging and toll collection was abandoned in 1959. The building is next to the Factory Locks at Tipton. It is built of red and blue bricks laid in

English bond Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called '' courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by s ...

, and has a

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downward to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope, with variants including tented roofs and others. Thus, a hipped roof has no gables or other vertical sides ...

. The interior originally had two docks (since filled in) running west–east, lock gates inside the western doorways, and internal cranes.

References

External links

Tipton heritage trail
leaflet from

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, or Sandwell Council, is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell in the West Midlands, England. It is a metropolitan borough council and provides the majority of local government servic ...

{{Birmingham Canal Navigations Grade II listed buildings in the West Midlands (county) Tipton Buildings and structures in Sandwell Birmingham Canal Navigations Toll (fee)