The Canal
The Macclesfield Canal is a canal in east Cheshire, England, one of the six that make up the Cheshire Ring.
It was the last narrow canal to be built in the U.K. and the maximum dimensions for a boat to be able to travel on the waterway are 72 feet long and 7 feet wide. The maximum headroom is 7 feet and 2 inches. The maximum draught is 3 feet and 6 inches.
The canal was built to serve the mills, mines and quarries of the Marple, Poynton, Bollington, Macclesfield and Congleton areas as well as to provide a link from Manchester to the Potteries and Midlands in competition with the Trent & Mersey, Bridgewater route.
It was completed in 1831 and reduced the distance between Manchester and the Midlands by around 25 miles.
Because the canal was one of the last built it very soon came into competition with the railways and in 1846, only 15 years later had been bought by a railway company.
It did manage to survive in commercial use but after the Second World War went into decline until the 1960s.
The canal remained popular with leisure boaters, especially as it formed part of the Cheshire Ring of Canals. It never closed and still remains popular today.
The Locks
The canal is maintained at two levels divided by 12 substantial stone locks in 1¼ miles at Bosley as well as the (originally double) stop lock at Hall Green. The top level is, at 518 feet above sea level, one of the highest navigable levels in the country. The locks drop the level by 118 feet. Bosley locks are characterised by the unique use on a narrow canal of double gates top and bottom. The stop lock has the further oddity of having double gates at the top and a single gate at the bottom rather than the other way round.
The locks also had a side pound next to the lock used to hold water released when the lock was emptied. This arrangement could save 60% of water compared to a normal lock. However they are more difficult to maintain and only achieve this amount of water saving when boats use the locks in alternate directions. When the number of boats on the canal reduced and it was no longer imperative to save water the use of these pounds was abandoned. This
Wikipedia Page has a working diagram showing how the side pound used to work.
This lock is the highest lock of the Bosley flight and has a stone arch bridge over the tail of the lock. It is a Historic England Grade II
listed building
with the following description. "Canal lock, 1831, William Crosley engineer. Rusticated red gritstone walls to lock, ashlar to spillway; brick patching to lock sides. Semi-circular upper end to lock basin. Stepped quadrant retaining wall to bank west of lock: flight of stone steps to east. Cambered footbridge of cast iron across lock entrance, with later plain steel tubular rail. Two pairs of timber lock gates. Curved wing walls above lock; straight walls below to Bridge 54 (q.v.). Stone-walled spillway west of lock.".