There is something quite magical about rivers, streams, and canals, and more so when they run through our towns and cities.
Often access to them is made difficult by the surrounding buildings and at some point many disappear into a tunnel and are lost, while a lot of those once busy canals have long ago been drained and their route only indicated by the odd bridge or modern foot path.
But the deindustrialization of places like Manchester, now offer up the opportunity to get close to our rivers in a way not possible since the Industrial Revolution consigned them to sources of water for steam engines, handy sewers, or in a few cases navigable routes for transporting goods.
And so, it is with the River Medlock which Andy came across while looking for old pubs on Fairfield Street.
So, having found what was once the Bridge Inn, he took to looking over the stone parapet at the slow-moving water below.
In the distance you can just make out the tunnel that takes the river under what is now North Western Street.
Now, I will take some time out to track the story of the Bridge Inn. It was serving beer and good cheer under its landlord, a Mr. William Walker in 1840, and eight years later turns up on the OS map, complete with a brewery situated directly behind it.
The map also reveals a row of properties running along the bank of the Medlock. In all there were 24 of them, and fourteen were back to back houses, of which seven faced onto the river and the remaining seven onto Coronation Square.
And while Victoria Terrace consisted of 4 rooms the remaining properties were two and three roomed.
You can still walk Coronation Square, one side of which runs along the side of the former pub and the other beside a tall brick wall beyond which is a small lorry park.
But of Mr. William Walker I can as yet find no more. He is there in the rate books for 1840, and is shown as the owner and occupier of the Bridge Inn which commanded a ratable value of £58, but try as I might I can’t find him on the 1841 census.
All of which will require a lot more detective work, as will locating those 12 back to back houses off Coronation Square.
Needless to say, given their location beside the river they are too modest to appear on directories of the period, leaving me just to contemplate the slow tedious job of working my way through the census returns for this bit of Manchester.
The short cut is usually to pick other people from the rate books, look for them on the census and by degree wander across the pages to Coronation Square, but alas so far I gave drawn a blank with all of them.
But by a happy coincidence, a few days earlier my friend Linda Rigby gave me a slim book by the Greater Manchester Planning Department on “Giving the river valleys a breath of fresh air”.
It is chatty little document covering five of the river valleys in Greater Manchester, describing each and looking to the future of each.*
It is an optimistic piece but sadly there is no date, which leaves me falling back on a guess for its publication, sometime between 1974 when the Greater Manchester Council was established and 1986 when it was abolished.
It is a planning document I shall return to, if for no other reason than to compare the descriptions and forecasts for the future with the way things have turned out.
But it doesn’t include our bit of the River Medlock as it twists and turns through the area behind Piccadilly Railway Station, so I shall leave it on the table, along with a story of the Bridge Inn in the 20th century, for tomorrow.
So that is it.
Location; Manchester
Pictures; Fairfield Street and the Bridge Inn, 2020 from the collection of Andy Robertson, Fairfield Street in 1848, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1848-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and pages from “Giving the river valleys a breath of fresh air” GMC Planning Department, date unknown, courtesy of Linda Rigby
*Croad/Irwell valley, Tame valley, Mersey valley, Etherow/Goyt valley, and the Medlock valley, Giving the river valleys a breath of fresh air” GMC Planning Department, date unknown
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