It ran from Parkhead Basin at the southern portal of the Dudley Canal to the Wallows Wharf to serve the Earl of Dudley's coalfields (Old Park and Wallows Collieries) and the northern part of his (now demolished) Round Oak Steelworks, where a short railway ran to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. The Dudley No. 1 Canal ran close to the southern part of that works. It was also known as Lord Ward's Canal although there is an identically named branch from the northern portal of the Dudley Tunnel. Baron Ward was another title of the Earl of Dudley.