One canal ..... two photographers ...... and a gap of 42 years

Now I think you will have to have a long memory to remember just how grim and derelict was the  stretch of the Rochdale Canal which ran from the Dale Street Basin through the heart of the city to Castlefield.

In the late 1970s I often walked it, armed with just a camera, mystified at why so few other people found it a fascinating place.

Often I was totally alone, and pondered on who might help me if I slipped and fell in.

And while I took a series of pictures I never bothered to research the buildings which stood beside it, and now many of them have gone.

All of which makes for a nice follow up project to the series of blog stories I ran in December.*

These were about that grim, derelict canal, and sit nicely beside a collection taken by my old friend Andy Robertson which record the waterways transformation.

Of course, the now and then images do not exactly replicate themselves, but they are close.

And the first two are looking towards Oxford Road, separated by 42 years.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; the Rochdale Canal, 2021 from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 40 or so years ago …… walking the Rochdale in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures