Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal

Bill Morgan

“It must have been about 1938 that my father first took me walking in the Irwell Valley between Agecroft and the giant locks at Prestolee. I seem to recollect that walks would take place whether summer or winter! Actually the Ringley stretch of the canal in winter, covered in ice and very rural, was a memorable sight - even to a youngster. We would go along Rake Lane and down Pepper Hill, crossing the Fletcher Canal at the Clifton end of Pilkington’s Pottery. Once we had crossed we were on the towing track poised betwixt the canal on the one side and the deep cleft of the River Irwell on the other. The Pilkington side of the canal had, as its main feature, those giant size kilns and the one chimney stack. Although Pilkingtons are still in business there technological innovation and modernisation has largely changed that landscape, only the chimney remains. After about a hundred yards we came to the hump backed bridge where the Fletcher arm joined the main canal from Salford to Bury and Bolton. My father would sometimes comment that he remembered seeing folks fishing on that stretch of the river - when he was a lad! It was necessary to cross the humpback in order to gain access to the towing path of the Clifton Aqueduct. If my memory is correct the canal was dammed in the middle of the aqueduct due to the breach which had occurred a few years previously at Prestolee. I was quite fascinated by the size of the dam on the aqueduct itself and the depth of the dry section on the Ringley side of the dam. Once across the river we could either turn left for Kearsley or right for Agecroft. Of course, at that juncture, the main attraction for me was the great railway viaduct - the "Thirteen Arches”. If a train was due we would wait and the sight of one crossing at that great height was thrilling. There were signals on the viaduct, the old fashioned semaphore type, much more interesting than the modern lighting signals, and one waited with baited breath for signal arms to mysteriously move. [Some fifty years were to elapse before I was given the opportunity to enter that sanctum which is the signalbox at Ramsbottom station.] Will we ever again see trains, or possibly trams, crossing that wonderful viaduct? However, to return to father and son’s peregrinations. Actually one didn’t just have a choice of the two routes. There was another one which veered off under the extremity of the viaduct and led eventually to Phillips Park. That was a ‘shorter walk’ which would eventually take us to Prestwich Parish Church and the Number Six bus which plied the route between Radcliffe and Eccles. However, the favoured route was along the canal to Ringley! On the right hand side of the pathway was the canal and beyond it the tree covered hillside which mysteriously sheltered the old Lancashire & Yorkshire rail route to Accrington and Colne. Some distance along the canal the railway veered right into a cutting and soon passed through the hamlet of Outwood where there was a coalmine which, for a time, was the workplace of my father’s cousin - Uncle John Taylor! [Uncle John was born at Lower Foggs, Darcy Lever, in 1879. His father, John, was a miner and I think that he worked at the nearby Outwood Colliery. John’s wife, Sarah, was my grandfather’s sister.] To return to the canal! Eventually we would reach Ringley with its lonely Parish Church of St Saviour nestling in the trees by the canal bank, as it still is. We would wander round the village, look at the stocks by the old bridge, and gaze in wonder at that marvel of industrialisation, the Kearsley Power Station, which stood only a few hundred yards from the village centre. The power station has now gone and, once again, the landscape is relatively undisfigured. One can certainly wander around the churchyard seeking Uncle John and Aunty Esther’s grave without those impressive symbols of modern times, the immense cooling towers, looming over one’s reminiscenses. However, there is one feature which I don’t remember my father talking about. Perhaps the backcloth of the cooling towers dominated our attention to its exclusion. I’m referring to that marvel of eighteenth century water engineering, James Brindley’s underground feeder to drive the water-wheel at Wet Earth Colliery. At this point the river passes round a great curve and the route chosen by Brindley neccesitated him routing his waterway under the river itself by means of a syphon. This feature has now been located and the eventual destination of the waterway, the colliery itself, well excavated by archeologists. Beyond Ringley the canal continued to Darcy Lever where it was lifted through a considerable height by the impressive chain of locks at Prestolee. We too would hoist ourselves up that hill and, within a matter of yards, reach the point where the canal divided at Nob End. One branch continued to Bolton reaching its destination at Canal Wharf which was just below the hill on which Paley and Austin’s great Parish Church of St Peter now stands. The author was Organist of Bolton Parish Church from 1959 and in those days the canal wharf was still a reality with its somewhat rundown buildings standing at the edge of the canal terminus. Unfortunately this final stretch of the canal is now almost totally lost beneath St Peter’s Way. From Nob End the other arm of the canal continues to Radcliffe and Bury. It is only a short distance from the locks to the point where the catastrophic breach occurred in 1936. The vestiges of that event are still there to be gazed upon, parts of barges etc can be easily identified from the canal bank which is at a considerable height above the river. From this point the canal is in water as far as Radcliffe and there are stretches where it is still possible to conjour up that idyllic rural past.” Bill Morgan 11/04/00