Gas Street Basin and Brindleyplace: a guide
Where the Birmingham Canal meets the Worcester and Birmingham, with the Mailbox on one side and 17 acres of Brindleyplace on the other. A short history, the free gallery in an old school, and a bench with Ozzy on it.
By Only Birmingham Editorial
Gas Street Basin is on Gas Street, a short walk down from Broad Street in B1, and Brindleyplace is the next bridge along. Between them they are the busiest few hundred yards of the cut: narrowboats, listed walls, a free gallery in a Victorian school, and more bars than anyone needs on a Tuesday. Start at the basin, walk the towpath west, and come back over the bridges.
Gas Street Basin
This is where the Birmingham Canal Main Line meets the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. When the Worcester canal arrived in the 1790s, the Birmingham company would not let it touch its water, so a barrier went in between them: the Worcester Bar, a strip of land 84 yards long and just over seven feet wide. For twenty years goods were carried by hand from one boat to another across it, until an Act of 1815 cut a lock through. The bar is still there, with narrowboats moored on both sides and a footbridge onto it.
Most of what you see around the water was rebuilt or done up in the 1990s, but the old wall and ramp down from Gas Street are listed, and so is the Tap and Spile pub building. The basin has had its screen moments too: Cliff Richard filmed Take Me High here in 1973, and a canalside cottage stood in for a character's home in Crossroads.
The big two-storey bar at 12 Bridge Street is The Botanist. It opened as The Canal House in 2017, on the site of the old James Brindley pub, and took the Botanist name in 2024. The terrace over the basin is full on any warm evening.
The Mailbox
Across the water to the south is the Mailbox, Royal Mail's main Birmingham sorting office when it was finished in 1970 and, since December 2000, a block of shops, restaurants, flats and hotels. The Worcester and Birmingham runs along the back, with restaurant terraces over it, and a bridge takes you from the Mailbox straight onto the towpath by the basin. The angular tower at the end is The Cube, the last phase of the scheme, with a rooftop restaurant and a hotel.
Black Sabbath Bridge
Walk north up the Main Line and the first bridge is Broad Street, renamed Black Sabbath Bridge in 2019. On it is a bench designed by a fan, Mohammed Osam, with the four members of the band in a row. There is usually someone sitting next to Ozzy. Join the queue.
Brindleyplace
The canal then opens out into Brindleyplace: 17 acres of old factory land, derelict since the 1970s, which the council pieced together in the 1980s and Argent built out from 1993. It takes its name from Brindley Place, a street named after James Brindley, who built the city's first canal. The first building to go up was Water's Edge, the row of bars and restaurants on the towpath opposite the International Convention Centre, finished in 1994. The Sea Life Centre, designed by Foster and Partners, opened in 1996, and the ICC and Symphony Hall are across the water, reached by footbridges.
Behind the canal front is Oozells Square, named after the street that ran through the site: a long channel of still water lined with cherry trees, with stone seats and a pergola by the sculptor Paul de Monchaux. In spring it is the best free blossom in B1.
The Ikon Gallery
At 1 Oozells Square is Ikon, the city's contemporary art gallery, in a Grade II listed Victorian school. It is free, and open Tuesday to Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays, 11am to 5pm. On site is Medicine Bakery, which bakes its own bread and pastries and opens from 9am, until 7pm on Fridays and Saturdays, with cocktails on its terrace. Gallery, coffee, cake, done.
Eating and drinking
Brindleyplace is mostly chains and big rooms, and it knows it. The pick for a drink is The Alchemist, for theatrical cocktails over the water. The estate's own list also names BANK, Pitcher and Piano and Panko and Sushi. For something less polished, follow the towpath north to Cambrian Wharf and The Flapper, an independent live music pub with a beer garden on the canal edge, or go back over Broad Street to the basin. The Crescent Theatre is close by too, and Brindleyplace lists its plays.
Getting there
- From New Street: about 750 metres, up through the Mailbox or along Broad Street. CAMRA puts the Botanist that far from the station.
When to come
Weekday mornings are for the towpath and the gallery, when the basin is quiet and the boats are still tied up. Friday and Saturday nights belong to Broad Street, and the canalside terraces fill fast in summer. A Sunday afternoon loop takes in all of it: the bar, the bench, Oozells Square, Ikon and a pint with your feet over the water.
