The Sankey Canal
The Sankey Canal was originally known as the Sankey Brook Navigation and later as the St Helens Canal. It lays claim to being the first modern canal in England, or the first canal of the industrial age, and indeed it opened before its more famous neighbour, the Bridgewater Canal. To understand this claim, it is necessary to look at how the canal fits into the evolution of waterways. The first artificial waterways in England were constructed by the Romans, including the Foss Dyke between Lincoln and the Trent. In later centuries attempts were made to make rivers navigable by the use of weirs and locks, such as the Exeter Ship Canal, opened in 1566. By the 18th century, rivers such as the Mersey and Weaver were being navigated for some distance, and boats were even getting nearly a mile up the Sankey Brook to Sankey Bridges.
At this time, there was a growing demand for coal by salt manufacturers on the Weaver and new industries in Liverpool, but the only means of transporting the abundant coal from around Warrington, Parr and Haydock was by horse or cart over poor roads.
The idea of making the Sankey Brook navigable was put forward and gained support. In 1755 an Act of Parliament was passed to make the brook navigable as far as Broad Oak. So, officially, this was to be a traditional river navigation, but it is believed that the engineers knew that the brook was too shallow and twisting to be of practical use, so they constructed a completely separate canal alongside the brook. So, even though it was known as The Sankey Brook Navigation, it was, in practice, a discrete canal - the first to be built in England in modern times.
From 1900 traffic on the upper section of the canal dwindled and by the 1930s, the canal above Newton Common had been closed to navigation, with many of the bridges being replaced by fixed bridges.
Sugar was still being carried to the Sankey Sugar Company in Earlestown until the 1950s but after that trade ceased the canal was officially abandoned in 1963.
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Some parts of the canal have been built over or drained but large stretches are still in water.
This bridge is at the end of one of the stretches that are in water, but beyond the end of this bridge it has been filled in.
All canals have means of coping with excess of water in times of flood, often draining the water into a nearby river. This is the case here, when the level of water in the canal became too high it overflowed under the arches of this bridge into the Sankey Brook.
These days the canal has been dammed here leaving a poo of static water. The dam on the canal side has partly filled in 2 of the arches, but they are still visible from the other side of the bridge where the water once flowed into the brook.