Unloading your coal at Stretford from the canal hard by the Edge Lane Bridge

Now sometime between 1853 and 93 the coal yard by the Edge Lane Bridge at Stretford was laid out and an arm of the Duke’s Canal cut to allow boats to unload their goods.

It lasted until 1936 when the Longford cinema was built and its existence will now have now all but faded from living memory.

I have yet to uncover any photographs of the yard and apart from maps of the area the only reference is from Samuel Massey’s book, which describes “the large yard, abutting Edge Lane , having entrances both from Edge Lane and Chester Road, and equipped with offices and weighbridge, often contained hundreds of tons of coal.  The unloading of the coal and the stacking was done manually, and a daily sight was to see men wheeling barrows of coal up the plank-way.”*

Set against the great sweep of history it is  not much of a story but does point up just how something which both dominated the lives of many people in Stretford and which was so taken for granted can disappear so completely in less than a century.

That said there will be references to it including the minutes of the canal company and the lists of the coal merchants who used the yard, but all that is dependent on knowing of its existence.
Of course there will be those who say so what? And in a sense they do have a point.

This was no fine building, no great work of art was produced there and I doubt that its passing was mourned by any one.  So is a very real sense it is a non story.

But for a few short decades it gave employment to some, supplied coal to Stretford and the surrounding area and was a bit of a local landmark and will be an introduction to some stories on boat building on the canal.

*A History of Stretford, Samuel Massey, 1976

Picture; from the OS for South Lancashire, 1893, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/