Restored Waterwheel – Ashton Under Lyne, UK - Preserved Machines on Public Display on Waymarking.com

The canal was originally built in 1796 to transport coal to Manchester. The canal was very successful in the early days, but competition from railways and roads led to the decline in commercial use of the canal. By the 1960s there was talk of closing the canal and covering it over but leisure boating had become popular and this canal forms a vital link with other canals in a large network.

After campaigning by canal boat enthusiasts and using volunteers the canal was renovated and opened to leisure boaters in 1974. Around the same time this old mill on the canal bank was converted into a local history museum.

The waterwheel was used by the mill to drive hoists that transferred goods to and from the upper floors. The water wheel had become derelict and in a bad state of repair and was renovated between 1987 and 1988.

This wheel is classified as a 'high breastshot' suspension wheel because water entered the buckets from above axle level. It was of a type developed by Thomas Cheek Hewes (1768 - 1832), a Manchester engineer and textile manufacturer, working in association with William Strutt (1756 - 1830) of Derby.

Suspension wheels were introduced to overcome the difficulty of transmitting high power at low speeds. This obstacle was overcome by taking power from the wheel at its periphery, where a segmented gear wheel drove a smaller pinion wheel and thus the secondary shaft rotated at a much higher speed. The shaft supporting the waterwheel then only had to be strong enough to support the weight of the wheel itself. Additionally, the spokes of the wheel could be of considerably smaller section, as they were no longer used to transmit any power. Waterwheels of this type can be likened to bicycle wheels where the spokes are in tension rather than compression. The main drive gear of the wheel had 416 cycloidal teeth and it was comprised of cast-iron segments fastened to the outer face of the rim.

The water to drive the wheel was taken from the canal and then fed by a tailrace to the River Tame which runs parallel with the canal, but at a lower level.

Type of Machine: Waterwheel Year the machine was built: 1841 Year the machine was put on display: 1988 Is there online documentation for this machine: [Web Link]

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