A vanished pond and a sinister story

Now I am just an old romantic, and so I would love there to be something in the story of Sally’s Hole.

It was a pond on the edge of the meadows just to one side of the old road that ran from the village across Turn Moss to Stretford.

Tradition had it that a young woman was drowned there. I leave it up to you to weave the story of the deceit and betrayal of a young woman in love left abandoned, or just a tragic accident in the early evening when she lost her footing beside the pond.

The spot is secluded and it is easy to feel that something is not quite right about the place.  On a wet autumn afternoon with the light fading and the leaves heavy with rainwater you begin to feel very alone.  But landscapes change and Sally’s pond was not always shrouded in undergrowth.  For most of its existence it was just an open space, a stretch of water more than likely created by farmers hollowing out the clay which then filled with water.

Its end was equally mundane.  Sometime in the late 1960s it had become a dumping ground for old bikes prams and the odd milk crate and was filled in.

The hollow can still be seen through the trees just beyond the stumps.  And the stumps themselves have passed into folk memory.

My friend Tony and Oliver the son of Bailey the farmer both remember freewheeling down to those very stumps on warm summer days and of the time one lad miscalculated and took his bike and body into the stump.

There were plenty of these ponds across the township.  Some I guess were natural while others were the result of extracting marl and clay.  Plenty of these marl and brick pits existed into the last century around the Longford Road area, and in the 1840s there were sixteen of various sizes and depths along part of Oswald Road.

Now they are all gone, but the hollow that was once Sally’s Hole is still there if you know where to look, and who knows perhaps one day the people who manage the meadows might decide to reinstate it.  Now that would make the old romantic in me happy.

Location; Chorlton, Manchester

Picture; Sally’s Field, J Montgomery, 1958, copied from a 1945 photograph, m80104, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The secrets of Turn Moss and the Isles …….. marl pits and water filled ponds

Now, we have lost most of the features of our rural past, here in Chorlton.

The Old Road, 2016

But just occasionally there are still a few hints of that past.

Of these there is the Old Road which stretches out from Chorlton across Turn Moss and on to Stretford.

I call it the Old Road, but most people will know it as Hawthorn Lane, although on official documents from the mid-19th century it was called Back Lane, while parts of it were also referred to as the Cut hole Lane and Town’s Bank.

It is somewhere I have written about in the past and keep coming back to.*

Once it will have been used by farmers transporting produce to the Duke’s Canal and the raised roadway underneath the canal’s aqueduct, bears witness to the need to protect pedestrians from passing wagons.

Even now, if you walk the route there is a sense that you are walking a country lane, with the overhanding trees, the remnants of hawthorn fences and the twisty nature of the lane.

And it is filled with history, starting with the site of Sally’s Hole, a pond which dates to at least the 18th century was only filled in, sometime in the 1960s.

The Old Road, circa 1900

That said, the scene on either side bears little witness to what it would have one looked like.

The mass of trees, and bushes would have been absent and instead the area was very much open land with the od avenue of trees.

And had you walked the lane two centuries ago you might well have caught sight of the “marl men” engaged in extracting marl from pits which was used to spread on the land.

Marl which contains carbonate of lime was a cheap substitute for lime and spreading it on the land would enhance the land’s fertility for up to twelve years.

Writing in 1899, H T Crofton in his book on Stretford, drew on older authorities who recorded that “most of the old pitsheads yet extant in the fields have been quarries whence marl has been obtained.

In marling, the gaffer of the pit, who controlled the falls and excavations, was called ‘My Lord’.  Passersby were solicited to contribute to the marling or shutting, or feast, at the conclusion of their laborer’s”.

Marl Pits, 1853

These pits could be quite substantial and involved clearing the top soil and then "‘shooting the pace’ which involved “making a broad way of a very easie ascent and descent for the convenience of fetching out the marl”.**

The degree to which this was a lucrative business can be seen in one legal dispute concerning the extraction of marl during the 17th century and the large number of pits in the area around Oswald and Longford roads, which was known as the Isles due to the larger number of pits and lazy watercourses which stretched out across the land.

The 1853 OS map shows plenty of these, and according to H T Crofton the area around what was once Firs Farm was similarly dug.

Most filled with water, and in time must have been a source of concern for parents.

Next; Firs Farm

Pictures; The Old Road, 2014, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the Old Road, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection and detail from the 1841 OS Map of Lancashire courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/


*The Old Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Old%20Road

**A History of the Ancient Chapel of Stretford H T Crofton, 1899

Today I walked the old road ........ part two

The road twists and turns following the old field divisions and natural obstacles before running up beside the river bank.

Junction of the Gore [Chorlton] Brook, 1963

This was our first warning of the power of the Mersey. For here there is no gentle river bank sloping down to the water’s edge.

 Instead the road hugs a towering bank built and added to over the centuries as the main defence against a powerful threat to the lives and livelihoods of all those who lived beside it. Generations of farmers have laboured to construct this natural wall to repel the flood waters of the Mersey.

The village and the isolated farms were all built beyond the flood plain. Even so this was not always sufficient protection. The Mersey has on countless occasions risen and breached these towering banks sometimes even sweeping away the defences themselves.

It was for this reason that the weir was built. Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

Not that it always worked. Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heightened river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain.

 In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while later floods proved to be even more destructive. It was, wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”


Painting; Junction of Gore Brook and River Mersey, 1963, M80140, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Montogomery is incorrect, at the point where it joins the Mersey it has become Chorlton Brook

Today I walked the old road .......... Part One

Today I walked the old road.

It is little more than a narrow paved track but for centuries it was one of the main routes out of the village to Manchester. Along this road went the farmers with their wagons loaded with agricultural produce destined for the Bridgwater Canal, villagers wanting to join Chester Road which led on into Manchester, and cowmen driving their cows back from the Meadows to the farms around the Green.

It was called Back Lane and it started by Hardy Lane ran down past the parish church, across the Meadows and ended just beyond the Duke’s Canal. Over the years parts of the road have changed their name and there are now houses along some of its course. Our chosen route would take us from the green past open land all the way to Stretford.

In some ways little appears to have changed in the last 150 years. Just as then hawthorn, oak, hazel and ash trees line the road and the banks made from countless years of leaf deposits trapped under the hedgerows are still there. My companion pointed to hazel trees which showed evidence that they had once been coppiced. It is a skilled job and one that I guess had not been undertaken here on our road for perhaps half a century.

In the distance rooks swooped back and forth, around their nest. Nothing quite prepares you for one of these. High up in the bare branches they seem as natural apart of the tree as the branches themselves. And there, just past Sally’s pond stood the old oak tree, perhaps the tallest tree on our road. More than likely those bringing the news of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar would have passed it on their way into the village as would an obscure soldier fired by missionary zeal to preach the Methodist message.

Picture; the old road from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Old Road in the 1890s

Now the Old Road has always been special to me. 

It ran from Hardy Lane down past the Brook into the village by the church and then off across Turn Moss to Stretford.

Over the years it has had many names and bits of it have been renamed from time to time.

Strictly speaking it was never known as the old road for there are equally old roads, lanes and track ways which ran out of the township.

But unlike the others it has retained much of its rural character.  True if you start at Hardy Lane you are presented with a modern road followed by the “stumps” which lead into the ville and the stretch past the school, round the church and along Ivygreen Road is pretty urban, but where it becomes Hawthorn Lane it still has the power to transport you back to the early 19th century.

Here it becomes a narrow twisty lane with the remains of hedges along its path, the 18th century weir clearly visible through the trees and finally the raised platform underneath the canal built to protect travellers from the farm wagons passing on their way to Stretford.

All of which makes this picture and those to follow over the next few weeks rather special.  They capture something of the charm and magic of the old road.  This one is from around 1890.  Despite the fashions of the couple staring at the camera which dates it to the late 19th century it could be any time over the last few hundred years.

The horse and cart add to the almost timelessness of the image, but hard by where the road ran into Stretford was a modern railway line, and just over a mile and a bit in the other direction was new Chorlton with its rows of recently built houses catering for the middling people who travelled into town from the newly opened Chorlton train station but still lacked the idea of living on the edge of the countryside.

Location;Chorlton

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Back along the Old Road

This is another story of the old road.  It is one of those places I keep coming back to, partly because to walk it is still to get a feel of what Chorlton would have been like.

It ran from Hardy Lane, down past the Brook, skirted the church and green before running off across Turn Moss to Stretford.

In its time it would have been a busy place and made more so with the coming of the Duke’s Canal which offered a quick service  from Stretford for passengers using the fast boats and farmers taking their produce to the Manchester markets.

I am a romantic but even I am realistic enough to know that what you see now is not what our traveller in  1841 would have seen.  For a start there is really only the stretch from Hawthorn Lane to the canal left to walk along, and that is very different.

Today it is a pleasant walk bordered for a great part by trees and hedges with limited views of the meadows and playing fields.  It is secluded, quiet and a bit magical.

In 1841 it was more open and while there were trees along its course and an orchard, the land on either side was more open and afforded views across to Turn Moss Farm and back towards the parish church in the village.

And my enthusiasm for the road has rather blinded me to Edge Lane which after the railway station was built was the obvious route to use and of course this is where the fine houses began to be built.  All of which I guess pushed the old road into a quiet track way used by those who farmed either side of it and the odd traveller intent on an alternative way to Stretford.

But all that misses the point that once it was my old road which would have taken you directly into the heart of Stretford which as Lawrence pointed out to me was further south clustered around St Matthew’s.

Edge Lane runs further north and any one leaving the village would first have had to walk away from the direction of Stretford to join the lane and then turn back towards it.

Not so the old road, which led directly out of the village straight towards Stretford.  And I have to say I suspect it was not that much of a popular destination before the opening of the Duke’s Canal.  Look at any map before the late 18th century and the place is not even mentioned.

All of which was to change when it became  a major centre for the processing of pigs for the Manchester market as well the manufacture of black puddings and  gained the nicknames of Swineopolis and Porkhampton.    During the 1830s, between 800 and 1,000 pigs were slaughtered each week and sent into the city.  By which time the old road may well have been just a back water earning it's name as Back Lane.

Picture; from the collections of Andrew Simpson and Lawrence Beedle

The cemetery, …..doing the essential walk and making it historic .... no. 3

I have cheated here, because this was really party of Andy's second walk, but the small cemetery by Hawthorn Road on the way to Stretford is a wonderful place and deserves a story to itself.

I first discovered it in the company of my old friend Dave Bishop in 2010, when we walked the Old Road.*

Amongst the graves are those of a group of paupers.

Location; Stretford

Picture; the cemetery, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson


*The Old Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Old%20Road

Hawthorn Lane, ….. a canal and a very old building ….. doing the essential walk and making it historic .... no. 2

Now today Andy walked one of my favourites.

It once meandered down from what Hardy Lane, across the township of Chorlton-cum-hardy and by degree over Turn Moss before ending up in Stretford near the parish church.

I misnamed it the Old Road, and over the years have written about it on countless occasions.*

And for those who like me have been drawn back to the place, it has the prize of both running under the Duke’s Canal and giving access to the towpath, from where you can look across the water at the Watch House.

Andy was there yesterday for his “essential walk”, and as he always does, he took his camera, sending over four pictures and adding, “One of the pictures is the Watch House. Reputed to be the oldest building in Stretford ; once a farmhouse it was there before the canal was built

Location; Hawthorn Road

Picture; down by the Duke's Canal, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson





*The Old Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Old%20Road

A mystery and a lonely place ........ the pond that was Sally's Hole

Few places in the township have attracted a mix of fascination and fear as Sally’s Hole.

 Throughout the early 19th century parents frightened their children with the story of Sally who had drowned in the pond.

 It was situated along the old road and the place even now has something sinister about it.*

I last walked past it in the winter of 2009. In the distance rooks swooped back and forth, around their nest. Nothing quite prepares you for one of these. High up in the bare branches they seem as natural as part of the tree as the branches themselves. But it was Sally’s Hole that we had come to see.

Today it is easy to miss, having been filled in at the end of the 1960s. It is just a hollow depression surrounded by trees just at the start of the lane. And yet arrive at a certain point in the day, perhaps in the later afternoon in February with the light fading fast and it becomes quite eerie.

The popular myth is that Sally drowned there and there is no escaping the sense that all is not quite right. Logically this has more to do with the trees which crowd in obscuring even more the limited light and the fact that there is no one else about. The stillness is overpowering and perhaps for a minute you are prepared to believe anything and everything about this dark overgrown and forgotten place.

But history and the knowledge of the area is a strong weapon in banishing anxiety. Until quite recently the pond was in open land with no trees to overwhelm the place and it was just one of a number of ponds across Turn Moss fed by small streams running from the old Rough Leech Gutter and the Longford Brook.

And here is the perfect explanation for the longevity of the story. For just like today with parental warnings of stranger danger ponds were places that had to be avoided.

And as if to underline this hazard I came across a series of newspaper stories of children who drowned in the much deeper stretches of water created near the old brick works in what was the Isles and now is the area around Longford and Oswald Roads.*

*Manchester Guardian 1920s

Picture; Sally’s Field copied from a 1945 photograph by J Montgomery in 1958, m80104 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council.


*Just after the start off Hawthorne Lane, beyond Ivy Green on your right. A slight depression surrounded by tress. 

On the old road in 1950

This week it is more of the old road,* which snaked from Hardy Lane down past the Brook, round by the parish church and out past the green and across Turn Moss to Stretford.

I have chosen a picture taken in 1950 from what was known as the Briscat.  It was a three acre piece of pasture which back in the 1840s had been part of the land George Whitelegg rented from the Egerton’s.

I don’t suppose that it had changed much in 11o years and the buildings in the distance belong to Turn Moss Farm which had been there from the 18th century.

It is sadly a bit different today.  The farm buildings have gone and the land is a mix of playing fields and woodland.  But you can still walk along the lane and get to the spot where W. Jackson took the photograph.

The houses on Hawthorne Lane run out by the stumps and from here on you could be walking the old road back in the past.  There just beyond the stumps on your right was Sally’s Hole and immediately opposite was meadow land known as the Marsh, and a little further on, on the same side was the Briscat.  Back in the 1840s all of this would have been pasture of meadowland with few trees.  All of which makes this 1950 picture such a valuable record of the continuity of farming which has been lost

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Old%20Road

Picture; W. Jackson from the Lloyd collection

Looking out of Chorlton, the old road in 1930

I am back on the old road for the last picture in the series, and we are on the border of the township.*

Today this means nothing but back in the 19th century this was where Chorlton ran out.  Looking down the lane to right was Hawthorn Field which was the only arable field along this part of the old road and a little behind us and on our right was Sally’s Hole.  This according to tradition was where Sally had drowned, not that this deterred the young of the village from playing there or their parents from using it as a tip for unwanted items.  This was a state of affairs which finally resulted in it being filled in sometime in the late 1960s.

The date of the picture is 1930 and it is almost impossible today to place this scene along that last stretch of the lane.  Back then it you  look out on the open fields which were still under cultivation.  Now the same view is obscured by trees and bushes behind which are the foot ball pitches of Turn Moss  the managed brush land which is the modern meadows.

But just a little of what it had been like is firmly still planted in living memory.  My old friends Oliver Bailey and Tony Walker remembered bike rides along the lane, looking for berries in the hedgerows and long uninterrupted days with not an adult in sight.

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Old%20Road

Picture; by T.Turner the Lloyd collection

A picture a day .... walking the old Road 2009

A picture a day

During this week of July I have decided to feature a picture a day, drawn from the collections that span a century and more of Chorlton

Picture; from the collection of the Andrew Simpson

On a wet grey day in the summer of 1840

It is one of those wet grey July days, which is miserable enough but somehow is made worse by the humid blanket of heat that hits you when you open the back door.

So a double whammy then, rain, heat and not a lot to do but watch the slugs munch the flowers.  But then I am inside looking out from our dining room window.  How different for those people who laboured in our township just 170 years ago.

It is as many of you know a preoccupation of mine given that I have spent the last few years researching the lives of the people who lived here in Chorlton in the first half of the 19^th century.

And so today given the weather I thought I would reflect on the work of those men who plied their way across the Greater Manchester, transporting everything that you might possibly want.

“These were the itinerant traders who might wander into the village selling anything from cloth to leather.  They would call at each house on the Row.   At the first hint of interest they would drop the heavy load and begin pulling out a variety of whatever they thought would sell to the customer.  The same well worn route was also tramped by the tinker who repaired pans and sharpened knives and scissors on a foot driven grindstone.

But a more regular and consistent visitor was the carrier.  He had evolved in the age before the railway, and could be relied onto carry almost anything anywhere.  Usually he worked the route from the villages and hamlets into the town and back.  He acted as a shopping agent taking orders from people and buying the goods in the nearby town.  He too dealt in the everyday household things but also the luxury ones like tea or coffee and even books and newspapers and he also took country goods into the town for sale, as well passengers.

A carter and his horse worked almost all the year round and each season brought its own problems for man and horse.  The cold winter months with the ever possible threat of snow and hard frosts might make any journey a trial but equally the long hot summer brought horse flies which hung around the horse and irritated all in close contact. 

But I suppose for me it would be those wet days when the rain came down as thin drizzle turning at times to just a wet mist.  The hedgerows and leaves would be full of the stuff and in places the spiders’ webs looked like so many tiny pearls strung out on fine necklaces as the water droplets clung to the strands.  All of which is fine but the drizzle gets everywhere socking into clothes which hang heavy and coat the horses with the same thin layer of moisture which becomes no less pleasant as the rain gives way to that sticky heat.  And in the narrow lanes it was next to impossible not to brush up against those hedgerows and coat your clothes with more of that accumulated water.”*

And at the end of the journey, back home, there would be no escaping the powerful smell of damp clothes which permeated the house and added a little more to the misery of wet summer days.

But enough of this, the weather will improve, the sun will shine, the slugs will be contained and I will be out again looking for the remnants of old Chorlton in the sunshine.

*extract from the book Chorlton-cum-Hardy, A Community Transformed due out in later in the year details available at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; “A wet July morning” and "The old road leaving the village for Stretford, a route used by itinerant traders, carries and villagers” from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Along the Duke's Canal mixing the past with the present

I am a romantic and have long wanted to take a journey along the Duke’s Canal from Stretford into the heart of the city at Castlefield.

It is the same journey that some of our farmers and market gardeners would have taken in the 1840s and 50s.  Now in the absence of a barge Ben and I decided to walk it.  Ben is my eldest son and  it seemed a nice way to spend an August morning.

The Duke’s Canal had been built in the 1760s and by the early years of the 19th century was transporting large amounts of food from Altrincham and Stretford to the city where it would be sold in the Manchester markets.

We decided to do it properly so started on the old road which once upon a time ran all the way from Hardy Lane, down past the Brook, skirted the old parish church before heading out of the village and across Turn Moss to Stretford.  Now I have already written in the blog about the old road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20Roads
Stretford was an important staging point and handled food not only from our township but also the bigger market of Stretford, and the canal also offered a fast passage boat which transported passengers.  All of which can also be read in my book on Chorlton out in September.
Nor was this the only traffic for coming in the opposite direction was the night soil which had been collected from the city’s privies to be spread on the land as manure.

Now once on the towpath the walk was mostly along an industrial stretch with a few residential properties and on past United’s ground.  Had we done the same journey in the 1840s it would have been open farm land until we reached Throstle’s Nest with its Paper Mills and the River Irwell to the west and the Botanical Gardens to the east.  And I guess we might have just caught a glimpse of Henshaw’s Blind Asylum which would have been more welcoming than what was to follow.  For now we were reaching Cornbrook with its brick fields, chemical works and cotton mills.

But here were Pomona Gardens one of the big amusement parks on the edge of the city which was the last point where anything green dominated.  “Pomona Gardens was one of those boisterous gardens of fun. It boasted a similar mix of attractions to Belle Vue, including ‘the magic bridge, Gymnasium, flying swings, bowling green, rifle shooting, romantic walks and a promenade for both adults and juveniles as well as boat trips on the Irwell’.  In the summer of 1850 it pulled out the stops with its ‘Splendid representation of the ERUPTION OF MOUNT VESUVIUS, as it occurred in 1849, the most terrific on record’. Here was the ‘magnificent Bay of Naples, painted and erected by the celebrated artist Mr A.F. Tait, and extends the whole length of the lake covering upwards of 20,000 yards of canvas and is one of the Largest ever Erected in England’*

Now with the passage of time much of that industry has gone and we passed open brown sites and blocks of modern city dwellings built for people who again wanted to live close to the city.

As luck would have it as finished the walk it rained.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*from Chorlton-cum-Hardy A Community Transformed http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Today I walked the old road ........ Part Five

Journeys end was the Duke's Canal. But what the canal had been to the late eighteenth century the railway was to the nineteenth. After all as one writer said they were a device for making the world smaller, and their impact was immediate,
“..swifter than a bird flies … you cannot conceive what the sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible …when I closed my eyes, this sensation of flying was quite delightful and strange beyond description…”
Not that most of the people travelling on our road would have been able to afford the prices on the railway. Later, train fares did come down but in the early years of the Manchester South Junction & Altrincham Railway the people of Chorlton and Stretford might wonder at its brash speed and magnificent power but could only look. They might however have been employed on building it because while the really skilled work was done by navvies there was still casual employment for local farm labourers. Some may even have worked on the bridge which took the railway over the old road.

It still makes for an impressive sight, the two forms of transport which not only assisted in transforming the Industrial Revolution but which were about to wrench Chorlton out of centuries of isolation. The station at Stretford brought people with money who began to buy houses along the route from the station towards the village. Thirty years later another railway line with its station on the edge of the village was going to spark a second building boom on land which had been agricultural.
Picture; replica of the locomotive Planet 1830, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Today I walked the old road ......... Part Four

Our walk terminates at the Duke’sCanal which was built in 1765 to ship coal from the mines of Worsley to the homes and factories of Manchester. So successful was the venture that the price of coal dropped and the Duke was assured a handsome return on his investment. It also carried farm produce into the city and here at Stretford in 1849 the canal helped carry 873 tons of produce which rose a year later to 1,783. Much of this would have been food and much must have come by way of our road from Chorlton. It was a two way traffic with barges bringing night soil from the city to use on the farms.

The building of the canal would have both fascinated and struck terror into the surrounding local villages. The navvies who built the canals and went on to build the railways were tough often violent men who sometimes accepted part payment in alcohol. Many local people went in fear until the men moved on. They lived in temporary camps beside the canal and according to many contemporary accounts were lawless places.

What is certain is that our road became that much busier as more heavy traffic made its way from Chorlton under the canal bridge. And this might explain the raised pavement under the tunnel. Nowhere else did we encounter a pavement and I suppose out on the open road if faced with a heavy farm cart the traveller could jump into a nearby field. But here under the canal no such option was possible and a raised pavement offered protection.

Standing under this canal we reflected on the sheer volume of water above our heads. But then Cut Hole Aqueduct had successfully held that water in place for over 240 years so why should we worry?
For those with money who had travelled down our road it was possible to take the passenger boat into Manchester. In 1841 the cost from Stretford to Manchester was 6d for a front room and 4d for the back room.

“They were fitted up with large deck cabins, surrounded by windows, .... so that a person could be under cover and see the country. They were drawn by two or three good horses at the rate of six miles an hour.”

Having arrived at the canal, passengers could wait in the Watch House. Here an employee would watch for the passenger boat and ready the fresh horses so that little time would be wasted in the changeover.

Today I walked the old road .......... Part Three

We had been following the old road and been talking about the massive earthworks which protected us from the Mersey. In a further effort to curb the river and control the ever present danger of flooding they built a weir in the bend of the Mersey just beyond where Chorlton Brook flows into the river.

On a cold bleak and rain swept morning it was possible to sense the importance of the weir. Stretching out from the wall was a deep and placid pool of water home to ducks and broken by bunches of water plants. 

But with just a little imagination how different it might have been on a stormy night when the river swollen with rain water burst over the weir. And almost on queue my companion talked about his own scary moment earlier in the year when after what seemed to be weeks of rain the river rose and topped the protective banks, leaving him scrabbling for safety. And indeed these historic floods were quite sudden. One such event left a farmer just enough time to release his horses from the cart and stamped them to higher ground, while on another occasion one man was forced to take refuge in a birch tree till the following morning. As destructive as these floods were they did deposit silt from the river onto the land which the farmers prized. In normal times it was the practice to “open the sluices or floodgates in order to get the advantage of such sewage upon the land as the river affords, thus saving the trouble and expense of carting ‘management’ there.” Later as our walk took us along the banks of the Mersey we walked through flood silt which had been left by the river earlier in the year when it had nearly topped the bank.

Painting;Higginbotham's field in flood 1946, painted in 1963, J Montgomery m80092 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Informationand Archives, Manchester City Council.