A little bit more of the River Medlock will soon come out into the daylight

Today Andy Robertson has reignited my fascination for Manchester’s rivers, especially those that have disappeared.

He sent over a series of pictures he took at the weekend, adding, “Parts of the Medlock in Mayfield are beginning to be unculverted. If you google MAYFIELD MEDLOCK on Twitter you can see a drone video. Cathy and I went there today sadly minus drone”.*

All very exciting and part of the regeneration of Mayfield area.

And as you do I did call up the video, and then went looking for just when the great slab of concrete confined the river to a stretch of darkness.

I rather think it was much earlier than suggested in the video, which offered a date of 50 years or so ago.

The slab is there in 1933, but had yet to be put in place 40 years earlier and may have been built when Mayfeid Station was built at the turn of the last century.

Either way someone will know, leaving me just to make a note to go looking at more maps, and reread that wonderful book, The Lost River of Manchester.*

Location; Mayfield

Pictures; Mayfield, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Mayfield, https://twitter.com/MayfieldMCR

**The Lost Rivers of Manchester, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-lost-rivers-of-manchester.html

Ashworth, Geoffrey, The Lost River of Manchester, Willow Publishing, 1987