THIS VIDEO
This ongoing Video Diary by myself John Neal, sometimes known as John Longcroft-Neal, as the whim takes me.
TODAY’S SUBJECT is a closer look at the Ansley Railway Tunnel and the cycle route to get there.
GENERAL STUFF
I am retired from two careers of primary school teaching when I was deputy head of a Middle School and Primary School, and as a self employed Chalkboard Artist from 2002 until I reached the grand old age of 65 in 2016. Since I retired it’s like a second childhood but with more expensive toys.
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I play guitar and write songs and have written about 14 songs for the local BBC radio station. I run a weekly (weakly) evening Acoustic session at a local pub and have been doing so for 14 years now. I also started an afternoon acoustic session in a quite large cafe in Nuneaton. Both premises were former songwriting clients of mine.
Much of the music I use on this channel is taken from epidemicsound.com free to use on Youtube for a reasonable monthly fee, and sometimes I suffer you with my own music.
Gear that I use:
DJI Mavic Mini 3 Drone.
Iphone 15 Pro for camera, generally front facing so I can see myself in frame. Super quality especially if I keep the lens clean.
Go Pro11
Gimble is a Q2 Smooth by Zhiyun, I ought to use this more often because it was expensive.
Canon G7mk2
Sony IC recorder
Omnidirectional Lavalier Microphone
Rhode videomic to do voice over on computer
Video editing with Final Cut Pro X
Polarduck Mini Tripod for mobile phone. This is so good and under £10.00 I bought two.
Lamcou bendy leg tripod
Smatree Tripod / mono pod
Mono pod is a Manfrotto Compact MMC3-02 and is very useful for getting high angles that look like low flight drone shots and so easy to carry on my bike along with the mini tripod.
My bike is a e28 Estarli electric bike.
https://www.estarli.co.uk/
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I am a follower of the Bahá’i Faith and some of my philosophical ideas may show through in comments that I make, but, by and large, I’ll not make direct reference to my beliefs.
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To hear my Bahá’i INSPIRED SONGS, (and others) GO TO:
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I also enjoy gardening but lay no claims to have any expertise, and you might catch me out in the countryside of Warwickshire and nearby Leicestershire on a walk with my wife or on a bike ride.
Please comment below to inform further plans for my vlogs. I’d love to hear from you. If you don’t you will just get whatever bubbly ideas float to the surface of my slightly muddled elderly mind.
[Music] hello it’s John lro Neil here it’s Monday the 17th of July 2024 and I am outside of Nan railway station because today I’m going to have a look at Ansley railway tunnel [Music] 937 now then if you wanted to go from Nan to Birmingham you’d have to go over to platform 7 and yes we have seven platforms here which is more than centry at Nan railway station it’s the L uh Birmingham line goes through nonon but on Route it has to negotiate one or two little hilly bits over by Ali gal commonway and one of the ways of doing it is to build a tunnel so that’s what they did back in the 19th century here we see the railway line coming from platform 7 towards us and then off towards Birmingham and as we move around you can see the center of Nan and fortunately there is a train coming towards us on the line notice that uh big patch of water which is one of the filled in Cor is we’ll have a look at that closer later on it’s always a bit of a thrill to see one of the fast trains going down to London I spoke in my previous video about uh the bulia bush plant beautiful purple flowers that smell really nice here they are lot and since I’m doing a thing about Railways I said that there are plenty of them around by the railways and here they are there’s just lots of them and they flourish by the way I’m on my way from Sand and Fields to the bottom of Tuttle Hill um it’s a a passageway through which is uh maybe one day will become uh a way for cars but at the minute it’s this very rough track which I think the railway people use as well because there’s Railway sidings there’s a lot here actually and um yeah it might be a point to just let you know about the Nan sidings which were considerable back in the day let me show you the caption said this is an OS ma covering Nan station goodyard in 1951 and just look at all those sidings you can see the river anchor going underneath them all but there’s so much traffic of coal and other produce mostly coal I think to various places around the Midlands terrific sad old houses here look but we emerge past more birly onto uh the bottom of totle Hill that’s enormous look at this one wow so now I’ve arrived at the kohill road at the bottom of Tuttle Hill and this is a major route out of Nan heading west and going up tole hill so it’s quite a hilly terrain and there’s a number of cors up here too now as I enter Camp Hill there’s not a lot to see because there’s a lot of vegetation so best use the Drone and there Beyond this vegetation is a huge Quarry hole full of water look at that magnificent and then beyond these new houses you can see the canal and the railway that we’re looking at as it heads off to the right along this shallow Valley as it heads towards Birmingham and so this is quite an interesting shot of the state which is called Camp Hill on my other travels I’ve been along here before and I know there’s a very nice cycle way through this sort of Valley from uh campill on that side uh sort of stocking for this side and it’s called barol Valley apparently and have to say the sign maybe it’s new but it’s not been uh vandalized anyway go along here and head off towards um well what it be called gy common dire ction Chapel end rather than go over the hills and see where this Railway ends up all praise to the internet for given us access to these old photographs I love this one it’s credited to a local historian Peter Lee and it says here a 1900 photograph of Ali Railway tunnels repair gang led by John stain the mr’s charge hand he is the tour man in the bow of hat and beard who subsequently died in 1904 following a stroke while W working on the tunnel he’s bued just inside the gates of St wilfred’s churchyard at this time the tunnel entrance lay much closer to Arley it was opened out into a cutting in the 1940s to overcome damage from Cy subsidence here is a map from 1902 that’s the entrance towards the tunnel over in in Eon underneath the roads right the way here off towards Bingham this way but this section was troubled with subsidence so they made the cutting bigger close to the road as you can see on this modern map of the tunnel [Music] these barriers or pinch points are here to stop cyclists going racing around all over the place and indeed completely stopping motorcycles and they’re very effective as you can see it’s bind weed it’s a right nuisance in the garden but it’s it’s a very Petty flower yeah there all the flowers seem to be out it’s July mid July and uh yeah all the wild flowers right looks very [Music] nice I got to pick my root quite carefully here because with all this vegetation uh the nettles in particular are right nuisance and I’ve only got me shorts on on morning morning morning looks like I should have brought a dog with me on the right here we can see the lower section of campill estate with a lot of new houses being built because the old ones really needed a lot of renovation I think a lot of the money came from the European Union as well to do this and on the left hand side here there’s quite an area very wet ground with mosses and re beeds and flowers must be a Haven for wildlife well here’s the Quarry with the water in it and along this foot path with the water and ponds to the right and the woods and the marsh to the left all the way along this very nice cycleway to books Hill getting ever nearer to the quest of my journey today and I’m hunched with Park Drive this is all a bit industrial and this is one of the foot paths look it says it’s a foot path and uh it goes through there well I’m not going to do that not with them legs I’ll go a bit further up the road and find an easy place to fly the Drone and have a look at everything without my wading my way through the brambles Nettles and goodness knows what else with a burst of creativity they named the places around here with a great flourish along here was a cottage and they called it the cottage and they called the farm up here on the hill pointing Hill Farm anley actually the map just says Hill Farm well there you go right now I’ll say this while I’m here you can see this hill just come up this is one of a number of Hills so it’s difficult for the railway to negotiate all these which is why they built the tunnel so let’s have another look at the map because Jim likes a map here’s the railway going west and it has to negotiate a bit of a hill on this Junction with Ansley so the tunnel goes underneath there it’s trying to get across there but this area is quite up and down e so the railway go south past shoke Reservoir near coal onto Birmingham back in the day 40 years ago when I was in my 30s I used to teach at St Giles middle school as was then in bedworth and I lived at Hartsville so I came this way um on my bike cycled 8 Miles there 8 Miles back and it was up and down all these Hills I didn’t do it absolutely every day but quite a few days winter and summer I could do it then I couldn’t do it now right here I am at Ansley I part me bike up locked against that lampost and there is a foot path over here which I think I can access here we go only to be greeted with it says warning ball in field I think I’m going to call their Bluff go for it well I can’t see a bull in the field however there is evidence so maybe it’s after all that there were cows so I’ll just uh make my way over here there is a bit of a foot path going through look so if the coast is clear looks pretty good to me no I can’t see any animals at all right well the railway line apparently is underneath this lot and goes over there so the tunnel starts over here and you can see we’re on quite a bit Hill and this is where this is where the railway had to negotiate this well this is a whole lot easier than waiting through Nettles and brambles just get the Drone up and let’s have a look and see where this tunnel is ah and here we are this is it the railway approaching this hill and quite a neat entrance to the tunnel that goes underneath this hill and so swinging around we can see the entrance to this tunnel and this case an exit look on Q there’s a little train coming from Birmingham going towards Nan and off towards Lester and if we swing around we can have a look back over the landscape over the site of the old cery and Nan in the distance I do recall back in the day 40 years ago when I was cycling through this area going to work you could clearly see the old color workings before it became this industrial site obviously what of got to do now is go back to the entrance to this tunnel and follow the line that the railway goes underground right across to the other side of the hill and see where it emerges on its way towards Birmingham well the route of the Railway underground seems to go underneath these trees missing these houses and just goes the other side of this car Sals site and then emerges with this quite big cutting because the tunnel was further on and it was made eventually into a bigger cutting because of the uh instability of the land and again on Q here’s a train emerging from the Western end of the tunnel heading off through this cutting and then on towards Birmingham and all places West the tunnel had a bit of a checked history because the clay soil was a little bit unstable so it collapsed a few times and as I say they extended The Cutting at the far side and this is a photograph from 1900 look at them and this is a repair gang and unfortunately the gentleman in charge a certain John stain died on site having had a stroke but they look like some tough fellas I bet you somebody knows somebody who worked at haunchwood cery which is to tell because there were lots of small pits around and Haun of Cy was down there uh which is where that industrial state is and uh some of the old houses down there um were there to house the workers at the at the Cy and I got a feeling this big EXP M of land here might well have been a spoil tip for the rubbish that they didn’t want to use and wasn’t cold so if that is the case yeah I’ve always wanted to have a look at this right just got to negotiate the gate again I’m more than happy to walk into the middle of this roundabout and have a look at this magnificent pit head wheel that would have of a cable let’s have a look at the edge of it yeah look at this that’s where the cable would have gone to uh Hoist the lift up and down the shaft both containing men and coal and uh equipment or whatever yes quite a magnificent piece of engineering a tribute to the many miners who worked in our local coal mines they worked underground in darkness so that we may be in warmth and [Music] light o this is the perfect place I think to uh stop and uh sign off but what uh interesting history to the area the coal mines the railways going through I seem to recall a story and somebody might correct me on this but it sounds pretty good that when they were building this Railway and dug into the ground here and it was so happens that this tunnel has a bit of a history to it because uh it collapse a few times on account of there’s a lot of clay underground here uh they had to close it fix it and the section behind me um the tunnel went further along they had they but it was so uh insecure they took the tunnel top off and made the embankments much longer and it was the story was that um one of the engineers in the Victorian times in the 19th century came through here on the train and noticed the uh soil was very clay likee and he was thinking ah we can make bricks from that because in the Victorian times in Britain there was a huge amount of building going on industry wealth generated from not only this country but the Commerce with the British Empire as well so the money was pouring in and Bricks were needed and so uh Stanley was a gentleman and his brothers if there were other Bri makers as well actually but they were one of the main ones and um so the story goes there was Clay to be had here and it was noticed by somebody when the railway was dug out and uh so there was coal there was Clay so they made bricks and they made of pottery items um Ceramics chimney pots tiles and all sorts of stuff and it was a huge business um so that’s part of um uh the story to the history of this area in fact I will one day do another video about Stanley and the work that he did in Nan as a brick maker particularly going up and down manot Road where he built some magnificent houses up and down there and indeed the chase hotel which is just down the road from us was built for his uh nephew I understand also on manicott road is this house that Stanley built for himself it’s now an old people’s home and indeed my mother spent her last days here and in the gardens there’s a little Memorial to Stanley and it says Reginal Stanley 1838 to 1914 local businessman and entrepreneur who did much for the prosperity of Nan built manac Court 1894 to 1895 and lived here until 1909 now before I go I must say uh my history I touch upon this local history and there are other people who undoubtedly are sitting going no that’s wrong this is right you got the details wrong well I don’t go into too much detail because I don’t really know and um so if anybody wants to correct me please do I’m just touching on what is around I think sometimes you can go deep into the history and give you lots of details and um you know people are not always interested in every single piece of minui of what was going on but uh yeah this Railway coming through and going under this tunnel and the story behind it and the coal mines I think it’s quite fascinating okay thank you very much now then I’ve got uh I was here before when I first got my electric bike and because we’re on a hill here and you could see we were quite high up I could check out how high we are um I’m going to go back down what is the arbory road and it’s a long straight downhill for the most part so it shouldn’t take too long to get back home it’ll avoid all those ups and downs of those Hills so this is Ansley but down there is Aly new Aly an old Aly and this is the Aly tunnel despite the fact it’s next door to Ansley it’s all very conf confusing I’ll tell you what though P around the corner the um H what’s it called is uh flagged up recently as one of the best pubs in the area the the Nelson just around here very good so I’ve said that going to put it in a video might get a kickback for it okay listen you will see me next time okay all the best take care [Music]