What was this massive chamber for ?

In this video we are in Manchester looking at the Moss brook. We follow the moss brook into an underground culvert in this urbex video. The culvert leads to a massive chamber with a flood control penstock. The penstock is a kind of flood gate that can control the flow of the moss brook in times of flooding. The moss brook can be diverted into a diversion tunnel that leads down to the river Irk. The area is Collyhurst in Manchester. Downstream of the moss brook was a lot of Victorian industry bleach works and engineering works. This Victorian industry needed protection from floods so in the Edwardian era around 1907 this flood control was built. We see the Moss brook in full flood and we understand why the whole victorian flood defence was built. We also go to look at the penstock control mechanism via a manhole shaft. We also look at a seewer overflow pipe, part of Manchester’s sewer system. This is an underground urbex video exploring Victorian underground sewer and flood culverts.

[Laughter] Hello my name is Martin welcome back to another video yes we’re going underground again I’m going to give you lots of information this is a culvert of the mossbrook in Manchester and also known as the moson brook further Upstream but for the purpose of this video we’re going to call it the

Mossbrook um we’re about to go in here where there’s a chamber and we’re going to look at some fantastic Edwardian flood defenses very that’s where we going uh and it will open up eventually into a chamber so you see we’ve got a fair bit of a fast glow but nothing to worry

About too much uh stone that was possibly an original bank and then we go to brick a possible bridge that or a possible end of the original C and they’ just extended it it’s boing a bit that to be honest with you Bo a bit today’s

Team as per usual we’ve got mark Sparky pants from Sheffield the drain Maestro we’ve got Roy and we’ve got a guest today Aaron who’s come with us to see what this is all about is this your drain virginity bean pop he’s never done this before so he’s a bit like I’m

Fascinated B anyway let’s crack on so we’ve seen this sort of thing before but it certainly took some years to create that hasn’t it that’s beautiful in there So bit of a man on coming up now obviously full of rubbish nice uh you can’t see that there’s a nice spiders web there Maxi get the light you can’t see where you’re walking so it’s difficult very difficult but we’ve got some surface water coming in just ahead

It’s been raining when it rains rains now we’ve been here before I have to admit to you so some of you that watch the old videos May um have seen this before but we’ve not been in this way and I want to I kind of know more about it

Now things like this on the ceiling which we don’t know we’re obviously original access points and that’ll be very old because obviously definitely active Point okay so where are with this week well we’re in Manchester and we’re looking at this northeast area here so there you go that’s for your reference

We’re looking at this area here moson Brook sort of go does this kind of thing let’s zoom in on this area and I’ll give you more insight into what’s going on okay so this is the part of Manchester that we’re looking at the brook starts up here in the failsworth area near the

Rdale canal at the Confluence of the bower Brook and whole bottom Brook so it kind of does I’ve not pro I’ve not plotted the entire route because it’s difficult to plot and for a lot of the time it is underground okay so it kind of does this and it runs down here this

Way uh let me have a look this way and then down here out underneath rdale Road and joins the river irk down here just off um colus road so it is a tributary of the river irk and just to prove that I have crawled all over this Brook

Here’s the lower end of it where the Moss Brook meets the river irk that is the irk you’re looking at there and then as we turn around you’ll see the outfall of the mossbrook into the river ir and that is artificial that that would have been an industrial move an industrial

Culvert because it wouldn’t have always just entered there entered further Upstream but again it’s been tampered with and uh various Mills have utilized it hence that brick outflow there but anyway let’s crack on up here it’s known as the Mosen Brook in this area cuz this

Is the moson area of Manchester at some point the locals have renamed it down here as the mossbrook but it is the same water course and it sort of does this all right so there you go we’re going to be interested in this area down here and we’re going to be concentrating roughly

Looking at um some of the architecture and some of the old history around the rosdale road area some of it will be familiar to you cuz we have looked at this before but there you go that’s the moson and the mossbrook all one and it’s about 3.7 Mi uh in length combined sewer

Overflow here so this will lead at some point to sewer um and you can see it’s the classic Basel jet egg shape style safe self cleaning sewer so we’ll go in take a look see how see how far it goes see it’s light uh sorry about the filming it’s just

Awkward to film in here you can imagine he like walking over um lots of rocks that you can’t see it’s killing Him got glov on here so no nice obviously and there’s like a Mist in the air it’s hor I know it is doing you want to go in used to be leaking this bit silty in here no no I’m saying it’s not S I know what you me you’re not it’s great isn’t

It lovely in it you see the boys are with me Jesus it’s horrible no what are we doing you want to go in I know maybe I should have waited the things we do the things I do for you while you sit home watching on your uh W it’s been here for

Years right you can’t get to the old chamber now can you so it’s blocked off is it there’s a blockage almost not worth going any further to happened oh they Chang it blocked off with what though um some pipes issued so it’s just all full of Dey he’s

Blocked so what Roy will do Roy Roy’s been down here a long long time ago and he’ll send us some footage of how it used to look I have just I’m have to just reverse out I’m have to reverse this is going to be a Rend start so if

We would have carried on we would have been met with this you see there we’ve got like a little Dam in front of us and a chair chamber this is what we’ve crawled up is a sewer overflow pipe so it’s only a pipe designed to carry

Sewage water in times of flood here is the chamber um that we we would have gone into and we would have appeared at Arch a there that you can see just on the other side there um so there you go it’s just and you see there there’s the

Sewer and that if that overflows and gets flooded it goes up over the lip there over the little wooden Dam and then down and into the mossbrook and then this picture here is just another angle uh on the chamber but you understand where we would have come out

Now classic Victorian sewers for you you go back to this manhole chamber and turn around I’ve just turned around here now yeah what coming out backwards think you triy fing Better Days making it right me this did you like trip Jesus sound cleaning so you can see now as we approach a chamber Right I need to put my gloves on now well may may not be able to hear me but I might have to voice this over but the pen stock can come down this here come flood that’s the idea and he goes over that side and he goes over this side

Here where we’re going to go and he runs down a set of stairs and then out towards uh the river IR Okay so we’ve actually got uh a graphic a drawing of the uh the chamber that we’re in courtesy of Roy so thanks very much for

This so don’t knock it all M cons right so this is the chamber that we’re in looks more complicated than what it is probably we’ve walked this way and this is the MOs mossbrook it’s called it the moson brook but you know they’re one of the same so the moson brook or mossbrook

Runs this way down here underneath the pen stock and out into a tunnel as you’ve seen from this view here the whole purpose of this is for the mossbrook to be able to overflow so we’ve just climbed up here onto this wall here uh you’ve seen us do that

We’ve climbed out of the the actual Brook itself onto this wall if it was to overflow so if you was to close the pen stock or the thing couldn’t cope and it was to overflow the water would go over the wall here and down these steps and

It would go over the wall here and down these steps and it would all run this way these two here these these two pipes are actually underneath the the the river bed so the water that runs down here would run down the two pipes out here join the water running here down these

Steps into the diversion tunnel that eventually runs down to the river irk so that’s how it works so they probably could have closed the pen stock closed the pen stock off to the tunnel here and then diverted the whole thing a different way to the river irk or in

Times of flood it could just overflow either side run underneath here run down here and then that way now there you go that’s an explanation of the chamber here in the corner we’ve got a little Archway to a manhole shaft and the manhole shaft we have to climb up it

And it goes this way and it eventually comes over here and we can stand above the pen stock and look at the pen stock control so that’s what we’re going to do now we’re going to go in here not the most Pleasant to C but fine

But seeing you here to seeing you here you whatever smells very earthy very earthy now one thing people said to me in these places is H does it smell no it’s not a sewer this is a cul this is there’s some sewer overflows overflows that feed into this but they

Don’t flow very often so it smells just earthy and it’s essentially just stream water so I’ve never been down there I mean look at it look at the look at the way the the brick work meets up there look at the way the brick work meets amazing uh some old Timbers there

If we go down here this is the penol control uh look at that and as much as we think it’s not used very often it looks in pretty good Nick it looks like it move that if you uh use those handles uh but um okay so this would take two people to

Wind it there’s a handle there handle there and obviously as always we’re not going to mess with it we’re not going to touch it totally respectful we’re just here to look at it to Splendor at it we would not mess with infrastructure like this cuz you’ve seen what it does and

You just wouldn’t want to mess with this and for our old safety we don’t want to mess with it so there you go control for pen stop 37 there beautiful little CH I’ve seen this before pictures but never been here it’s fantastic light the shaft nice and

Steady okay so we’re done the manhole shaft what we’re going to do now is walk down these steps here down the steps you’ll probably see the these two pipes just coming out and we’re going to go down these steps here and take a look at part of this tunnel

That runs down to the river irk I will show where it eventually outflows to the irk but we’re not going to go all the way cuz that was in a separate video so that’s what we’re doing down the steps down a second set of steps and towards the tunnel that leads to the

Irk here you go see And then and these are the two pipes that run underneath uh the the bed of the mossbrook um these drain the The Far Side chamber that I told you about so it overflows on the other side runs underneath those two pipes and down these stairs and this is the way it goes

If if they need to divert it so that’s where we’ve come from dodgy steps and then when people come they leave things here the iron St is Fantastic and we’re now heading down towards a split or would have been a split and then further down river for the boys ring yeah that was originally man so what we think this is this is bricked up this part and we think it was uh going

To be some kind of uh other cber flood control thing uh and obviously that’s where we just come from the drain fair is still here she’s been here a while she’s here last time I came blesser and you can say that’s just a I don’t know if there’s anything behind that or not

And and then of course we’ got the uh obviously you always got to be prepared for guest so you your Li down a little bit down a bit there you go you got chandelier there just in case we have guests really I suppose so this tunnel goes on and it’s

About 25 minute walk down to the river irk and this obviously was where the mosbrook would have been diverted to out on the river irk where does it come out well here you can just see in the corner there to the right a little tunnel peeping out I’m going to show you that

Tunnel closeup this is all from a previous video that we did but this is where when diverted the mossbrook comes out comes out of that tunnel there and that’s what we’ve just been stood looking at um so there you go a diversion for the mossbrook but why

Okay so that’s that the diversion tunnel done we’re going to come back up the steps now and here you’ll see us facing the two pipes that run underneath the riverbed of the uh mossbrook and like I say Sun bright spark decides that we’re going to crawl through here to this side

And you’ll see this set of steps overflow steps and we’re going to come up here eventually end up on this side of the mossbrook and then if we walk down here we can walk across the Rick KY bridge in front of the uh the pen stock and we’re back

Here and of course there’s our two pipes there that just joined from the other side of the the Overflow chamber as a look down it and some bright spark decided we we’re going to go through and take a look Roy oil yeah this is the other side of the wheel and if I remember rightly we now have to go over the uh rickety bridge now we’re going to go over the rickety Bridge uh Bridge of Death now when I came 4 years ago it was all right as long as you do

That what he’s doing oh no go around to the side if you want the counter weits on the uh tank St is well there incredible right so not ideal walk the not too definitely that’s going obiously no one have to maintain this in is well there you go that’s the

Uh the rickety bridge that we came across last Time so the only thing left to do now is to go underneath the pen stock and look further Downstream obviously Roy and um Marcus have just been underneath taking a look we did it in twos in case the pen stock just happened to come down there was

Some of the on the other side that could get to safety so let’s go and take a look a little bit further Downstream H and I’ve got a lot of things to show you now this is interesting right so this goes on a bit and we had to walk and walk and it’s

Getting a bit deeper and you can see it’s a bit smaller eventually on the left hand side here we get to another CSO combined to overflow we’re not allowed to go in there there that’s class’s infrastructure it’s um modern day sewer um so I’ll can show you that

View there coming back into the mossbrook so there you go and this carries on now down down down uh underneath rosdale Road um and it comes out near eggington Street which I’m going to show you soon where does it come out I’m going to show you now where

This comes out there you go comes out in the middle of a wall underneath rosdale Road in what I can only described as a kind of a Viaduct you can see it’s quite a modest flow and you’ve got to look at it from a distance cuz it’s very

Difficult to get to and there you go there’s a picture of it close up when I went I did actually go down there now the ideal situation is we come to the uh we walk all the way down we stand in that Circle there and we take a photo

And we wave at you the difficulty is the following that tunnel in there behind that where the where the water comes out is at a downwards trajectory it’s quite slippy and if you were to slip out of there you would drop about not that far you would drop about six foot s foot

Onto some very very um harsh rocks it’s the original riverbed of the uh of the mossbrook there and you probably break an arm or a leg so we can’t really go down and stand at the edge where the mosbrook comes out and look out because if we slipped off we’d be breaking arms

And legs would have to be roped on or roped and anchored to something here’s a wide angle photograph that Roy took many moons ago the place hasn’t really changed and you’ll see that rosdale road is up on a kind of a Viaduct if you like and this spans what would have been the

Original Valley of the mossbrook at this point you’ll see there’s all sorts of remains of buildings around here let’s take a look at what we’re looking at okay so what was going on Downstream that required such uh a big effort in flood uh defenses flood control and the the ability

To divert the uh the mossbrook we’re going to use eggington street as a reference here’s the modern day map let’s just go to uh 3D because it’s just nice is it there’s eggington Street there okay and you’ve got rosdale Road this section of rosdale Road on a

Viaduct you wouldn’t believe it to be honest with you because if you drove down here you wouldn’t realize you’re on a Viaduct this is a deep deep valley now I’ve shown you a gap through the fence there the mossbrook comes out in the wall in order to understand why you

Would put in such a complex flood defense mechanism I need to show you the industry that was in this area um looking at it now you would not think anything of this area at all but clock fixed George Street Clock edgson Street let’s just go back to the 2D uh model

There and we’re looking at this little corner here between rosdale Road and Edinson Street let me go to the the old Maps Okay old Maps there’s rosdale Road there’s eggington Street and we’re looking at this corner don’t forget let’s zoom into that corner there’s Fitz George Street by the

Way that’s Fitz George Street so if you look at this corner just look at this this deep valley was full of works and uh factories so there’s the Moss broke just peeping out here there was some complex SLE and utilization of the brook here because if

You look at this here and you look at these circles here they’re obviously doing something because they needed the water factories here with chimneys a tarping Works when’s this map from 1840s 1890s I would guess 1840s CU I don’t think the railways on it Bridge Mill all

Right now I’m going to show you uh some footage of down here when I went down here I precariously went down here and managed to to get along here the remains of all this are still there it’s incredible I called it the land at Time Forgot in a video quite a while

Ago so here it is this is about um 2018 2019 just where the the mossbrook comes out you can see look the foundations there of old buildings the walls are still there um and I’ve got some black and white photos to show you down here in a bit

Incredible what’s left they’ve just done a basic demolition job really you see if you fell there you’d fall you’d probably break your uh break your back probably anyway look at that wall Windows all windows still there it’s incredible the uh what is left of these old mills that

Were down there and let me show you this black and white footage okay so these are incredibly rare pictures of down in that little Valley at Bridge Mill and the tping works you can see the slle mechanisms there and the way there’s water being utilized this picture here is showing that’s in

The viaduct of rosdale road so there were recesses where there was kind of like spaces for work there’s another picture here look at this there’s the outfall in the background that is normally up in the wall but then there’s another drop down on the wall so you can see this was a

Complex thing um I can’t fathom how it all R it was very difficult for me to work out how this all ran but what we’re building to is that the brook has been utilized when it comes out of that hole in the wall it’s then further utilized for all these buildings and and

Factories and now you can see why there may be a need to control it in times of flood um let’s just crack on with the maps those pictures unbelievable by the way I will never work out exactly what was going on I wish I could go down

There well let’s crack on with the map the Moss Brook seems fairly um innocuous it’s not too much of a big river it’s only a small brook uh could it do any harm well I’m going to address that as well so stay with me let’s just zoom out

A little bit and the brook disappears now into another Culver that we did a video on we went into this Culver here and it goes all the way down here now I lose it now you’ll see now there’s the mossbrook works which it seems to go go underneath it goes underneath all these

Streets here Bingham Street Windsor Street bronville Street and it reappears here so it’s been underneath the works and so so it’s done this all underneath here from here so if this Brook floods there’s quite a bit of damage it can do brook reappears here just um the railway

Is here now so this is pre- Railway the brook re is here and it runs down here and it join joins the river irk that is the river irk this entire area has been studied and studied and studied by me in many many videos mossbrook works by the

Way has long since gone and these streets here you you could you almost couldn’t imagine that they were there cuz let’s flick back to the modern day Maps that’s the area we’re looking at slightly different angle on it but there’s Fitz George Street yeah so those streets were here so you had bronville

Windsor Bingham Street and all the industry was down here and then you add that the mossbrook works was down sort of this area here absolutely incredible when you look at it now absolutely incredible when you compare with how it used to be so there

You go so a lot of damage it can do now regarding the damage and regarding flooding let’s take a look at this so we’ve seen the industry that was Downstream of where we are in the Moss Brook a reasonable Brook relative relatively small flow so back to the

Cruxs of the video why bother putting in that big pen stock the chamber the overflows and why bother trying to divert it in cases of flood well the next F pictures I’m going to let’s speak for themselves the courtesy of Roy taken a few years ago he had the presence of

Mind to to video this when it was happening this is why the flood defenses are in place and thank you Roy whoa look at that I think those two clips demonstrate everything we’ve been talking about that’s why there’s a pen stock that’s why there’s an alternative route for the Brooke to go

Unbelievable anyway to recap we’ve been underneath the pen stock we’re now walking back towards the chamber so approach back now underne P 37 we’re back with the guys that Was right so there you go nice bit of uh you wouldn’t think all that was just inside that Arch a nice bit of Edwardian flood control I say Edwardian because some of those pictures are from the turn of the century early 1900s maybe borderline Victorian Edwardian fantastic

Marcus good liked it good Champion Roy’s been before Aaron did you like it your first uh really good yeah so he’s broke his duck there anyway there you go hope you enjoyed that the Moss broke again the Moss the brook that keeps on giving sorry there was no Brew we didn’t have

James so he’s not here to make the Brew we ain’t having a brew I’m not doing it anyway thanks very much for watching take care and I’ll see you in the next video bye for Now