The Forgotten Waterway of Manchester and Stockport

The Forgotten Waterway of Manchester and Stockport

Please Sponsor me Here for my Walk 1,000 Miles Challenge for the @wiltsberkscanaltrust

https://www.justgiving.com/page/stephen-court-1707940484073

Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYByDH3Jbos0kFWrvIlmzYw/join

Today we take a walk down through the industrial heartland of Manchester, from near to sportcity the fantastic complex by Manchester City FC and the Etihad stadium, Co-Op Live Arena and the training complex we walk away from the Ashton Canal through Clayton and Openshaw towards Stockport and the Gorton Reservoir and outdoor centre following the yellow brick road. We explore Old Bridges, Aqueducts and discover lots of original parts of the canal including cobbled towpaths and old docks. The area is complete with cycle ways following abandoned railways on the Fallowfield loop which takes in the canal route, could this be a future green highway for people moving around the city? Could a new marina revitalise the area and bring millions into the local economy. Could Man City help to fund it?

This really is a fascinating area and one with massive opportunity to help revitalise an area that’s pulling out of its post industrial decline. Please do follow the links below and see if you can help this fantastic project.

Manchester and Stockport Canal Society – http://www.mscs.org.uk

Manchester and Stockport Canal Society Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068238694666

Fund Britains Waterways petition – https://www.change.org/p/fundbritainswaterways

All drone footage shot with a DJI mini 3 Pro.

All camera footage shot with an Insta360 RS ONE Inch with Rode Go mic and Lavalier.

Fund Britains waterways – https://waterways.org.uk/waterways/sites/fund-britains-waterways-overview

Keep canals alive (canal and river trust) – https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/support-us/our-campaigns/keep-canals-alive

Rail Map Online – https://www.railmaponline.com

Waterway Routes – https://www.waterwayroutes.co.uk

Please follow me on socials

Twitter/X – https://twitter.com/CourtAboveCut?fbc…
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/Courtabovethecut
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089090800654
Threads – https://www.threads.net/@courtabovethecut
TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@courtabovethecut?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
BlueSky – https://bsky.app/profile/courtabovethecut.bsky.social
Email – CourtAboveTheCut@yahoo.com

today we have restored canal in front of us restored in the 70s you’ve got an abandoned canal through here this is a Stockport arm and this goes to a potential Marina Mile and a half down the routs I’m in Manchester we’re walking away from the EAD which is Man City Stadium and we are on the Ashton Canal we’ve got lock 10 just behind us there we’re going on to lock 11 what you may not know is this bridge here is the original entrance into the Stockport Canal which is now the Manchester and Stockport Canal society and it’s quite fascinating this bridge you’ve got this section here which is obviously bricked up this used to be a loading dock here and they would carry Goods through there and behind on the other side which we look at in a second were a bunch of old Railways and tramways running down to a chemical works so here we are and it still exists the actual Junction coming in it started in 1968 where there was a big dig on here and it was all open as Canal is opened in 1974 and this was kept so you can see here where the canal starts and where it’s going to go down this direction here now unfortunately a lot of the end of the line has been built on but there are very real possibilities of restoring this line about a mile and a half to gon Reservoir which we’ll go into on this video unfortunately on this bridge there is some damage on this side where this wall is gone now I believe a few years ago it was starting to fall CRT were involved and obviously this is CRT water and I believe the rest was just sort of pushed over for safety but if you come down into here you can see where this was this would have been sort of a dock here and Rail lines here going down to the Chemical Works in that direction and down through here you can still see the other side of this bridge here you go and this would have been like so this was n’t a canal in here this was this was dry wall wouldn’t have been there there had a load of goods through here and taken them onto the tramways across to the chemical works so you can see just over here is a junction and the canal kind of came across in this direction and it curved around here now it goes into this tree line and the tree line is quite prevalent all the way down this canal the canal is fought anyway that it ran into sort of an embankment over here we’re just going to take a little walk across just a little tiny bit further along and it I can show you where we where the it’s believe the retaining wall actually was so you can see this uh embankment here just kind of drops down and what the thought is is that was actually uh sort of pushed down and flattened out a little bit over the years and now we come up into this Garden which has recently been cleared by the uh by the Canal Trust to have started to sort of manage bits down here this was just completely overgrown and they’ve got these obelisks and these are here to stop uh vehicles from driving down here basically but one thing you’ve got on here which is quite cool we’ll get to this wall in a second is this was known as a yell Brick Road and many years ago the council repaved this whole route through and it was uh it looked from above there wasn’t many trees in the time and from above you could just see this yellow road all the way down through so there’s nice little features in here like the yellow brick road on the side and they’ve also got some sort of canal you can see uh I think that’s a bridge over there over the canal there but this wall here as you can see it’s right the way through here and the thought is this was the uh offside retaining wall of the canal and the canal would have sat down in this little gap down here and it does match with the levels cuz we came up slightly with with the canal just down there so this will need to be rebuilt and this is one of the major projects of the canal to to build this Bank up but if the canal is restored all all the way through and need to be dug out and as we go through you’ll start to see just how much higher the canal actually is now compared to what it was so as long as the soil that’s filled the canal is clean which apart from two places along this entire route uh it seems to be there was a British waterways did a test a few years ago and it extensively tested all the way down here with soil samples and INF there was nothing that dodgy in it at all they might be able to use that if it’s screened to rebuild that embankment and that takes a major cost off of what will be the restoration cost of this project so the Stockport Branch Canal was about 4 mil long just over 4 miles and the restoration they’re looking at takes us to the reservoir at Gorton and it’s about a mile and a half the other side of this has been built on quite badly but as we walk our way down through this video you’re going to see just how feasible this project is the canal was originally built in 1797 and by it was very busy Canal this was all fielded when it was built and a lot of Industry sprung up all the way down through here it carried on to be busy until the 1930s where trade dropped off significantly and by the 1950s this whole Canal channel was gone it was filled it was it was completely impassible uh the canal was eventually abandoned in 1962 as a lot of canals were at that time cuz things were changing with with British waterways and stuff but they’re a trustor form the Manchester and Stockport Canal society and they are here to try and restore this canal and bring it to the attention of people in the area it’s not as well known as some of the Restorations that happened behind us obviously the Ashton Canal like we said you’ve got the hersfield canal which was a major restoration I think in the ‘ 80s uh and you’ve got the peak Forest canal also feed into this canal so coming down from those locks is a lot of water there may be the possibility of putting one or two locks in here so one of the plans is to maybe lift the canal slightly by about 6 in so that the end we’ve just come from you’ll have a short stop lock and you’ll raise the canal and it will stop any water feeding in from all those canals coming down the hill into the Gorton Reservoir you don’t want to drain the canal out is you don’t want to make it a draw on on on the canal behind you and also you don’t want canal water going into a reservoir so you need to limit that as much as possible by doing that sort 6 in in may get around that there’s plenty of height on Bridges as you’ll see down here so it’s it’s a feasible option to do that’s not necessarily going to happen but it is one option so behind me up here is a new housing estate and just down here we’ve got some more probably coping stones from the canal I would say and these are blocking a path again from allowing Vehicles down through and it starts to kind of Point towards what this area was like a few years back in the 70s and 80s a lot of the industry had gone and the the area became quite rough but money has been spent here and you’ve got Manchester City Football Club who like I said are just behind a s on the canal I do wonder why they can’t get involved in this they’re generating a lot of money in the area they’re massively economy around here now and they are pumping money back into the area maybe one day they can get involved and put money towards the community to run down through here and this is the first bit of open space you get here now they could have some Wars in a little calf uh a winding hole here maybe as an option and that would bring in money to the area and add to the local economy I’m not too sure what shops and stuff uh surround this area but it would certainly be a boom to the area and then we come to our first real structures you’ve got an old wall down through here this would have been for the factory on the other side backing onto the canal and that’s been redeveloped up there and there’s Redevelopment happening across the side there but right in front of us is pack hor bridge this is the first bridge on the line and as you can see it still exists and it doesn’t just still exist it’s complete and this is very rare for abandoned canals to the point you’ve even got the copen stones under here and the old cobbled top path along the side you’ve got iron bits up here which were probably cable ducts running through and if you look on this side you’ve still got the old face of the bridge now this bridge was widened they believe at some point on this other side it does have a completely different look but this is still I mean it’s probably nearly 10t in here I’d say of height it might be an exaggeration but there’s plenty of room I can’t touch the bottom of this bridge so bringing a canal through here really isn’t a problem another thing that you see on this route is is very busy there’s cyclists coming down here there’s Walkers you know there dogs as families coming down down here with their kids riding their scooters and this is one of the benefits that canals bring so yes this route exists yes it’s a a green highway but that isn’t brilliant for biodiversity so if you put the Cal through here you create a Waterway through here you’re going to lose some of these trees and that’s a shame but most of these trees have very little benefit to the Ecology of the area you got this tree here for example this birch tree and this will host maybe 20 species in it if you were to plant slowly clear these trees and replace with more native species and bigger species you would get a huge amount of biodiversity gain by the amount of species that tree can handle we’re talking 60 to 100 rather than 20 look how wide this area is here so you’ve got a fairly new Housing Development these were pre-co over here with an old development behind it you got the boundary fence there and you’ve got this wall here now the boundary is marked as here but the council marked the boundary as over there so this could be a large area again for maybe some moing or maybe some Wetlands maybe some habitat creation to offset the trees that you’re going to lose along this route and this takes us to a really cool area very fascinating area up ahead here we have another bridge and again this is a sort of still G type Bridge which was widened at some points but again again it still exists and you can see kind of parts of the original bridge and again we have copon Stones unfortunately we don’t have the Cobble of the top path on this side but you you have to think what’s down below here I bet you this was just filled in and tacked over I bet there’s still a wall underneath that supporting all of that you’ve got a some more coping Stones here look and lots of bits and pieces strewn around through here but this is where it gets very cool in here this used to be gon maintenance yard on the right hand side and now this was Ln for a Depot here just coming through on the right hand side now you can see this sort of arch of stinging that was coming across the toe path would have once crossed here and there would have been a short arm going into here and this would have led into a dry dock uh there was a two booat Dry Dock in there and then enough room for a boat to sort of sit in the channel before this is original in 1864 as you can see up there and this Arch still exists and apart from maybe some repointing looks pretty good it’s obviously been bricked up on this side to stop people from accessing what is now a housing estate on the side there right here would have been a large winding hole and this would have allowed boats to come out and turn and go whichever way they needed to it is for over in that area there there were three wooden sunken barges which were left in when the canal was filled so again look how wide this area is here you’ve got more possibility just after the bridge of more Wetlands or more moing more money to the local economy you how it goes you got a metal fence across here with this new Housing State over there that could be opened up where you’d open that whole street up to the canal side and just really beautify the area but then straight away we’re on to yet another usable feature and this is a gon Aqueduct this wasn’t the original Aqueduct this one was built in the 1920s when the railway company companies were merged into four larger companies they for tracked through here and moved station back so this was widened the original brick Aqueduct was destroyed and this iron trunk put through and this was cleared very recently by volunteers and by the waterway recovery groups and they found in the bottom they found water still below this soil bank here they left this soil in for a reason because if you just keep that covered the iron won’t rust below it doesn’t take long for it to grow back up but the main sort of trees that birch trees and stuff that are grown in here are now gone uh you got the original coping stones and the original top path here as well so he’s starting to notice a pattern here all these structures are there the route is there hasn’t been built on what’s stopping this from happening you need to show your support and you need to make it away you need to become a member of this Canal Trust you need to join their Facebook pages share this story of what’s going on around here on the right here we’ve got King George fifth park now if you imagine this this is another really wide section of the canal through here you could have this Park opening onto the canal and just have this area again as Wetlands or moing and really take advantage of what that Canal route through here could bring to that Park and then we come through to this section here where you actually have some of the old housing stock still existing on the sides here and you could open this up again to the canal imagine that walk going through there was original there would have probably been an opening onto to the canal and this helps the other stage of canal restoration the health and wellbeing now the health and well-being benefits of canals usually sits around the five to sort of eight times the economic value of what the canal is worth they reckon that this could bring 2 million P into the local economy so you’re probably looking let’s say 10 million P to health and well-being saving C the NHS of people getting out and using the green spaces and then we get to our first obstacle and this is this road here this is after the canal and you’ve got some uh new housing Estates and a tower block built in there and they’ve got to somehow get over this there is a possibility they can route in from over the other side and have a road in as a different access point and get rid of that totally but the reality is it may need to be a swing Bridge uh or a lift bridge or something there swing bridge probably be best there plenty of room there most canals work on an assumption that for every one Canal you have you will get 100,000 visitors a year and of that 100,000 visitors the average spend is £10 so about every mile a canal you get about a million pound to the local economy this one is a mile and a half to the restored section so about a million and a half plus you can have a potential of Marina and Moorings which will bring more money in as well then to Abby ha lane bridge which is just here again no obstruction this is still here the canal would have ran through on the left hand side here here you have had the toe path on this side but the old steel girders across here and you have again not all of it but it may be below you have the old cobbles here of the toe path so now we’ve got a really cool pit of the canal here and you’ve got the old canab would have obviously ran through this section here top paath would have been on the other side so on the wrong side of the canal now but P you have the bridge and this is the Aon Road Bridge and it’s still partially exists and what you’ve got is this side you still got all the the whole Bridge here as well as the arch which you can see here now at sometime this was back fied Concrete in but you can see where it’s dropped and you can now see through and that Arch is holding its own weight of the bridge so the arch is still in a perfect condition yeah there’s probably some repairs need to be done to the brick work here where it’s a little bit worn and breaking up but the bridge is there the issue you have on here of course is this side now the parit for the bridge is gone but if you actually look here you can still see the brick work all the way through here of where the bridge would have been so the whole of this Arch is for to survive they can dig out this side then and the canal channel should be just underneath here you will see now though we are at the height of the top of that bridge so there’s a good bit of digging that needs to be done here to bring the canal to the level that it needs to be and this is what I spoke about earlier about the soil samples now this could potentially be used to build the bank up and has £1 million to restore this canal I believe that was a 2020 figure so it might be a little bit more now half of that budget was disposing of infill £55 million pound dispose of something you can use to build the bank up further back so potentially this canal could cost more in the region of 5 to 6 million than 11 million to build and I’m struggling to see why this isn’t happening why this isn’t already a thing why the council everybody involved locally aren’t getting this done now all of this route the whole route apart from some issues potentially on the aqueduct is owned by Manchester City Council one land owner the main issue with Canal restoration is dealing with land owners and they don’t have to do it on this canal so why is this not happening then above here we have the ffield loop which is a very popular cycle track and this concrete bridge was built much later this should be fine their depths are good they might have to dig out a little bit further down for the channel the only problem they going to struggle here is to get a toe path through but if this bridge can be used it’s much cheaper to build a small dug through tunnel on the side than it is to build a big tunnel like this so costs are quite low to potentially restore through this section so this is one of the boundaries and it probably isn’t a boundary and then this takes us up into Gorton Reservoir now this is an old reservoir for for drinking water I believe which is no longer used for that purpose and the plan is to come along here this is the old route of the canal wear in directly in front of us you’ll be a lot lower remember there isn’t much difference between the height of the of the reservoir and the height of the canal so they will need a small lock to lock in to this Reservoir so look at this you’ve got people on paddle bars you got boats you’ve got sailing boats over there there was a motor boat on here earlier when I came across you got so much potential to bring Canal into here you can have the marina in here it’s a they’re looking at maybe a 250 birth Marina which will bring a like I said a couple of million into the economy of the boats coming down through and that only touches a small section of the of this Reservoir the rest can be kept for leisure and you can have paddle boarding canoeing and stuff down the canal from this Reservoir it’s an amazing scheme and it’s such a simple scheme to do there really isn’t anything stopping this from happening £1 million at worst case scenario maybe a little bit more now because of of the economy it’s pocket money to a lot of these councils and big businesses around here but would bring so much in benefit to the local area both in in economy in nature the social economic side is just astounding what this canal can do so again you could add a cafe and sort of facilities up here for anyone Ming up here or anyone visiting which could bring even more money into the local economy and this could become something pretty special quite soon so please do support the trust see what you can do and have a great day [Music]