Of locks, and underground chambers, travelling the Rochdale Canal

Travelling along the Rochdale Canal by boat from Castlefied to Piccadilly is as you would expect totally different from walking the stretch along the towpath.

Now I have walked its length loads of times from the years when it was an overgrown neglected place to the popular walk of today.

Back then it seemed a bit of adventure.  Chances were you would be the only one on the canal and the loneliness was added to by the state of the buildings along the way.  Most were tall some derelict and all seemed to have turned their back on the canal, so that apart from a timber yard the rest had their entrances on the street side.  No one you thought wanted to know about this relic from the past.

And on a grey wet morning those same buildings made the place just that bit more desolate and not somewhere where even the adventurer in me choose to be as dusk came on.

The boat offered a totally different experience.  First you were with people all of whom knew  what they were doing which I suppose my contribution to the journey was limited to helping push the lock gates open and then close them.

And then there are the locks themselves which are a pretty neat way of getting a boat to go up and down hill.
We were going up from Castlefield to Dale Street and that meant I think eight sets of lock doors to open and close.

Once in the lock at the lowest level it is impressive how the water cascading into the chamber does its business and fairly quickly you reach the height of the towpath and you are on your way again.

More than anything it is the power of water that gets you.  It comes into the lock at some speed.

But it is also that even when the locks are closed there is a constant transference of water.  Some of it from side gullies from the lock above to the next one below, and in other cases just back falling over the lock behind..

I can’t remember how long the journey took but much longer than if I walked it.  But then that is the attraction of hiring a boat and doing the canals.  You can stop if you wish after the lock manoeuvre and wait the next one out for a while moored to the side of the towpath and reflecting on the amount of effort and the degree of progress on a lazy boating holiday.

But all of this would have been much romantic tosh to the people that worked the canals.  They carried everything from coal to fine bone china and lived on the water, often with large families.  And they endured those journeys come sun or snow, or heavy rain when the surface of the water seemed to boil to those bitter frozen moments when nothing on the canal could move.

I was reminded of this by the picture of the two boats entering the last stretch of the way along the Rochdale before entering the Dale Street Basin.  At the rear are two women busy themselves with what I take to be domestic chores and in one is a young girl, probably born on the barge and destined to grow up on it.  What is all the more remarkable is the date.  For it is 1955, and most of the Rochdale has been closed but these two families are still making a living, travelling the one bit of the canal still open and prosperous.

Their journey like ours would have taken them through the heart of the city, past timber yards, the rebuilt railway viaduct at Deansgate, under Oxford Road and on taking in a power station the park by the old school and via London Road into the Dale Street Basin.

What I am not sure of is the last part of the journey which today takes you underneath the modern office block now known as 111 on the corner of London Road and Ducie Street.

It is built over the canal and the massive concrete pillars which the building rests on are all around you.  It is an odd and a little disconcerting experience and reminds me of that part in The Third Man where the amoral criminal Harry Lime is pursued by the authorities through the sewers of Vienna.

It is another of those places that where once I would have boldly gone in my 30s armed only with an old Pentax K 100 camera today I judge it to be a place left well alone.

So that’s the end of the journey which began as a wish to share some of the photographs of the canal by Eileen Blake from 1974 and turned into an  extended ramble.

Pictures; from the collection of Eileen Blake and Andrew Simpson, “narrow boats passing under Aytoun Street,” L Kaye, 1955, m54251, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council 
and under 111 Piccadilly by courtesy of Pennine waterways, www.pennincewaterways.co.uk/
And the other stories on the canal at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Rochdale%20Canal