Ashton Under
Lyne Canal Opened: 1796
Engineer: Brown
Dukinfield Junction with the Peak Forest Canal to Ducie Junction
with the Rochdale Canal.
6 miles, 18 narrow locks
Peak Forest
Canal Opened: 1800-1964, 1974
Engineers: Brown (surveyor), Outram (engineer)
Dukinfield Junction to Bugsworth Interchange
14˝ miles, 16 narrow locks at Marple
3˝ mile branch to Whaley Bridge Interchange
Ashton
Under Lyne Canal
An early success of the canal restoration movement, this
thoroughly urban canal climbs west-east to Ashton-under-Lyne on
the edge of the Manchester conurbation.
The free labour of gangs
of canal enthusiasts in 1968 (600 volunteers) and 1972 (1000
volunteers) kick started the remedial works. Much redevelopment
has taken place along the canal in East Manchester,
partly as a result of the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
Twenty five years after the Bridgewater Canal
was opened to Castlefield, two canals were promoted eastwards to
the industries of Huddersfield and the limestone quarries of
Peak Forest. Typical of the fragmented processes of the Canal
Mania years, there was a separate Act (1792) for the 6 miles of
the Manchester and Ashton-under-Lyne Canal and its 11 miles of
now derelict branches.
The Huddersfield Narrow and the Peak Forest
Canals link with the end of the Ashton around the Portland Basin
and all three were finally opened at practically the same time
(1800). Trade was further boosted when the Cromford and High
Peak Railway and Macclesfield Canal funnelled extra trade into
the Peak Forest Canal (1831. However, the coming of the
railways reduced trade and the canal sold out to the competition
(1848).
Feature Spot - Portland Basin
Winter on the Peak Forest Canal
Above & below - Bugsworth Basin
Some
information taken from Britains Waterways by Brian
Roberts.
Peak
Forest Canal
Running south from Greater Manchester, the canal towpath links
with hundreds of miles of footpaths up the Goyt Valley, past
reservoirs into the Peak National Park and along the High Peak
Trail. Stunning scenery.
T. Brown’s ‘parliamentary’ survey (1791) of
this canal into the hills of Derbyshire had a major lock flight
at Marple, another at Chapel Milton and ended with a ‘railway or
stone road’ into the limestone of the Peak beyond
Chapel-en-le-Frith. The ‘railway or stone road’ is now called a
‘tramway’ but has never seen trams, nor was it a railway as
understood today but a pioneering ‘plateway’. Instead of the
present day technique of flanged wheels running on I-section
metal rails, waggons or carts with broad wheels were hauled
along flat iron surfaces and were kept on course by L-shaped
upstands on the running plates - plateways.
Bugsworth Basin is an unique canal/tramway
interchange where lime, limestone and gritstone arriving on
tramways from Derbyshire quarries was transhipped to narrowboats
to feed the demands of the Industrial Revolution in the north
west. Closed in 1927 after a long decline caused by losing
traffic to the railways it was finally reopened after 30 years
of hard work by volunteers in 2005 and is a
Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Whaley Bridge, the branch terminus, has a
stone built warehouse and wharf, now used as a base for
restaurant/trip boat. Its two arches, formerly for rail wagons,
sit either side of a covered wharf. Within a few yards is the
start of the first incline on the rail line to Cromford. Waggons
were hauled up by chains powered by a horse capstan at the top
of the Whaley Rise for over 125 years.
The 'Cheshire
Ring' links to the
Ashton
Under Lyne Canal
