The Canal
"In 1790 there was a proposal for a waterway to link Manchester with Bolton and Bury. The canal was to start at the River Irwell at Manchester. One of the land owners, Matthew Fletcher, was the original technical adviser and he was a mining engineer turned coal owner. At a meeting on 19 January 1791 the last amendments to the draft Parliamentary Bill were made. The Bill received its royal assent on 13 May 1791.
The canal was opened in 1796 from Bolton and Bury to the Oldfield Road terminus and extended to the River Irwell in 1808. This extension necessitated the building of 5 locks. Originally the canal was built with narrow locks but during construction the locks were altered into broad locks when there was a proposal to link the navigation to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal which was still being built. The scheme, known as the Red Moss extension, was to go through Red Moss, a few miles from Bolton, and drop down thirty locks to Wigan. The idea was that the size of craft to be used on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal would have been able to use the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal. This was not to be, as the route for the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was changed but the MB&BC was operated as a broad canal.
Coal carrying was one of the main reasons for building the canal. A lot of the mines were situated very close to the waterway so that loading was direct from pit head to boat. Lime, limestone, manure, stone, sand and slate were also carried on the canal. Prior to the construction of the railway between Bolton and Manchester passengers and parcels were carried on the packet boats. Later timber was carried in boats and by floating it on the water. Night soil was loaded onto boats from carts at Frederick Road bridge in Salford and was shovelled through doors in the bridge parapets into the boat below. Unlike the tradition on most other canals the boatmen did not live on the boats; they lived "on the bank".
In 1830 there was a proposal to convert the canal into a railway. In 1831 at the first general meeting of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Navigation and Railway Company, the line of the proposed railway was varied in order to retain the canal. In 1838, forty years after their introduction, the packet boats were sold as they were proving to be uneconomical and their speed damaged the canal banks. Also in 1838 the company completed the railway and commenced passenger trains between Manchester and Bolton.
In 1846 the Company was taken over by the Manchester and Leeds Railway Company, and the name of the company was changed in 1847 to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company. In 1936 there were two serious breaches of the canal bank and traffic fell drastically.
In 1941 Parliamentary powers to abandon the breached sections were obtained. Navigation was restricted to a 4½ mile stretch from the Bury terminus to Ladyshore and from Salford to Clifton. More of the canal was abandoned in 1944.
In the immediate post war period, like most canals in this country, the remains of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal were nationalised.
In 1955 in the "Report of the Board of Survey" (British Transport Commission) the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal was "a waterway having insufficient commercial prospects to justify their retention for navigation".
A British Transport Commission Act of 1961 abandoned the rest of the canal. Right of Navigation ceased in 1962 but some traffic continued in Bury for a short time.
Parts of the canal have been filled in over the years and sections have been sold to a variety of owners."
In 1987 the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal Society was formed to try and restore the canal for leisure use. They have cleared parts of the canal and restored some of the towpaths for walking and cycling. A small section at the Manchester end of the canal has also been restored and new locks constructed.
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The Lock
This lock is known as Middlewood Deep Lock and is so deep because it replaces the original locks 1 and 2 and is the third deepest lock in England.
It is at the start of the short restored section of the canal at Manchester. Originally there were two locks where the canal joined the River Irwell but after the canal closed they were built over by the building of the Salford Inner Relief Road.
In order to restore this section of the canal a new tunnel was built from the River Irwell under Trinity Way and a railway viaduct and then this single new lock raises the canal to the height of the original locks 1 and 2.
There is a lot of development ongoing in this area and at the moment is is not possible to walk from the lock to the Irwell, nor for boats to use the lock, but it is planned to reopen this area of the Irwell in 2020.