Drawings are of sluices, lock gates, sections through cuttings, spoil carts, tools, with notes and costs. Towards half the volume is concerned with parts for a Watt low pressure single action condensing and pumping engine which may have assisted in the canal operation.

Compiled by Philip Henry Witton, clerk-accountant to the Warwick and Birmingham Canal Company from 1793 to 1800 but engineer from 1797 when he succeeded William Felkin, seeing the canal to completion. In 1795 his salary was increased specifically because the company required him to keep a drawing record.

The canal, authorised in 1793, ran nearly 23 miles from a basin at Saltisford Wharf, Warwick to the Digbeth branch of the Birmingham canal.