Swivel Bridge 90 Over Macclesfield Canal - Scholar Green, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 06.580 W 002° 14.858
30U E 550363 N 5884735
This small swivel footbridge is on the site of a larger bridge originally built as an accommodation bridge for a nearby farm.
Waymark Code: WMR14V
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/26/2016
Views: 11
The Macclesfield Canal
The Macclesfield Canal was one of the last narrow canals to be built, indeed, it was very nearly built as a railway! A variety of ideas were proposed and the present canal was approved by Act of Parliament in April 1826. The route of the canal was surveyed by Thomas Telford and construction was engineered by William Crosley. The completed canal was opened on 9th November 1831 at a cost of £320,000.
The route takes the canal from Marple Junction with the Peak Forest Canal in the north 26¼ miles to the stop lock at Hall Green near Kidsgrove passing along the side of the most westerly Pennine hills through High Lane, Higher Poynton, Bollington, Macclesfield and Congleton, all in Cheshire, and Kidsgrove in Staffordshire in the south. Nowadays we normally regard the last 1½ miles to Harding's Wood Junction with the Trent & Mersey Canal as a part of the Macclesfield Canal although it was built as a branch of the T&MC.
link
The Bridge
There were originally 13 swing bridges on the canal, only one of which was a road bridge, all the others were accommodation bridges. Only the road bridge and two others including this one now survive on the canal.
In this case it is a much smaller bridge than normal only intended for pedestrians. This
website
tells us that it was originally removed by British Waterways sometime in the 1970s. However the bridge was on the site of a public right of way so Cheshire County Council insisted that a new bridge should be built to preserve this right of way, and it was built in the late 1990s and is only wide enough for single file pedestrians.
The bridge has small castor type of wheels to allow it to move. However it now appears to be chained in the closed position. Even if it does still work there seems to be no way of operating it from the towpath side of the canal.