“Look on my Works”* ……… and wonder …… a story for Alan

I don’t usually do then and now pictures but sometimes I break the rule, especially when it’s a place I have known for heaps of time.

The Rochdale Canal, 1979

And so, it is with the stretch of the Rochdale Canal from Piccadilly down to Castlefield.

Back in the 1970s I regularly walked it, marveling on how it had survived a combination of neglect and willful vandalism and how it offered up glimpses of what had once been.

The Rochdale Canal, 2023

Like those pipes running along the wall of what had once been part of  St Mary’s Hospital and supplied steam to a host of buildings from the old Electricity  Station.  

Some of the lagging had fallen away and steam rose from the pipes leaving me a tad worried that one day I would cop for a scolding burst.

And further along there were those half sunken boats which were a continuing source of mystery and fed my imagination with possible disasters which had overcome crew and cargo.

The future of the canal always seemed in doubt, and despite its historic significance and its role in shipping water through the city there was always the possibility it would end up being filled in.

But not so and the story of its restoration is there to read. 

Suffice to say it was saved and now boasts plenty of amenities along its towpath of which Deansgate Locks are but one.

And so last Thursday I looked down on that bit of water beside the bars and reflected on the changes on the skyline, which of course is the point of the two pictures, and the rest as they say is for you to "compare and contrast".

Looking down towards Castlefield, 1979

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures, My canal, 1979 and 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!", Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817