What's left of The Sankey - England's Oldest Industrial Canal
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ย. 2021
- The first in a two part-series looking at the Sankey (or St Helens) Canal, England's oldest artificial waterway from the industrial era. Opened in 1757 as a method for getting coal and other goods from the town of St Helens to the port of Liverpool, its brief was to make the little Sankey Brook more navigable for larger boats to use. But instead the engineers decided to build a completely separate channel next to the brook, thereby creating the first true canal in mainland Britain. In later years it was extended to Fiddler's Ferry and Widnes but closed in the mid 20th century and infilled along much of its length.
In this video we'll follow the line of the canal from St Helens town centre, all the way to Warrington, taking in a number of historical highlights along the route: the two oldest lock staircases in Britain, the old Winwick Quay, and the famous Sankey railway viaduct, built by George Stephenson to carry the historic Liverpool-Manchester Railway across the Sankey Valley.
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Winwick - pronounced "winnick" 😉
Great video, great to see my hometown of St Helens.
Fun fact... The Liverpool - Manchester railway intersects and goes underneath the Widnes - Runcorn Gap railway, which was the first railway-over-railway in the world.
Looking forward to the next video
Definitely tropical fish in the hotties my uncle caught some and gave them to my sister and I in the 60s
Great video! By the way, I'm still singing "Everybody Loves Runcorn" periodically, as I'm sure many of your other viewers are as well.
Me too 😂
FANTASTIC INFORMATION
So before 1757 the fastest thing in Britain had just one horse power - a horse! I traced my roots on Ancestry back to the dark ages recently, so it seems crazy how technology sprang up comparatively only yesterday, and yet so quickly overgrown and forgotten.
17:09 it's pronounced "Winnick" Olly. Thanks again for a great video. You could do a similar vid on the nearby OLd Quay/Runcorn and Latchford/Black Bear Canal which is in a similar state...some sections in water some filled in but it's an excellent subject. Just a thought mate. Best wishes and take care
There is only a tiny bit in lower Walton left if the black-bear and I suppose paddy meadows fills up a bit
@@amacca2085 the whole stretch from 20 steps lock to the mersey is still walkable and there are a few clues to the expert observer like Olly to find interesting.
That was great Ollie, thanks! Your production skills are fantastic mate... Already looking forward to Pt 2
All my favourite places to walk the dog 🐕 lots of bats under that Railaway bridge by Newton too. So pretty, such a shame they haven't preserved the old locks and the canal all through Sankey Valley would be great for recreational use to canoe etc. Learning SO much about places I know and places I don't know. Love this page ❤️
Win WICK LOL. Cute. Great video, I love our little town, Newton so much history.
we used to swim in winwick lock when i was a kid some 50 years ago. at one time the "otties" was full of tropical fish , a pet shop went out of busness and the owner dumped the fish in the canal and they thrived , we used to fish for them with a milk bottle on a piece of string
back in the day Davie, its like another world now.
My grandad was lock keeper at Hume lock. Mum and her brothers grew up there. We visited as children before he died.
Excellent,my old stomping ground.
Great really interesting. Win Wick pronounced Winnik 😁. Liverpool to Manchester I think was actually Manchester to Liverpool from the country’s first station in Manchester 😂🖐👍
When I walked the route of the Huddersfield narrow canal from Ashton (greater Manchester) some years ago I would not have believed it could be in water again. However with some new channel diversions for modern road development avoidance it is now a very popular route for the boating fraternity, and is a driver for new popular canal-side Mill apartment developments and other businesses along its route. Sadly the Sankey's isolation from the main canal network is against it.
It is a disadvantage, but if the canals were used again for transport of goods, it would be very beneficial for the industries that still line ht route. The canal in many areas would need a fair bit of work to get up to scratch, maybe widening in many areas, but it would be more viable than reopening rail links that took over the canal, many of those railways that run along side the canal are not longer in operation.
Apparently this being looked at as a means to move goods in areas were railways aren't in place to do so.
Really interesting video. The Indianna Jones of old canals 😉
Thanks a million. My uncle used to tell me about a place where the first railway in the world passed over the first industrial canal. Never thought I would ever see it as I now live in Aus and he has sadly died. I do remember the hotties when I was a kid. It steamed most of the year.
Excellent presentation. Sad to see most of the lock construction now rotting away.
Another belter there mate.
Just a thought, on the subject of canals, have you thought about the Hollinwood Branch that leaves the Ashton Canal at Droylsden and heads through Littemoss, Crime Lake and originally ran through to Hollinwood where it was meant to join the Rochdale but never did. It has features such as the aforementioned Crime Lake, the remains of the coal tipper on the Bardsey Branch and of course that section originally went to park Bridge. Features such as the pumping engine that Henry Ford took to the museum in Dearborn, USA.
Awesome to see my hometown St Helens. The bit near the World of Glass had sprays of water all along it and they looked amazing early in the morning. The canal looks a bit sad (too much litter) on certain sections and some stretches have disappeared completely
Wonderful video.South Lancashire has such a rich industrial history.Glass in St Helens,wire in Warrington and chemicals in Widnes.You did pronounce " Winwick " incorrectly though.The middle w is silent ( Im an exiled Warringtonian ).
Lol 2 of them are Cheshire 👍
@@unclebulgaria1132ha thanks for that, I never understood why Warrington wolves were called the wire. Now I do.
Glass in Warrington as well
Great intro. Always love a good canal story and this was spot on. Your use of maps and old B&W photos really helps move the story along. Your skill improves with every video you do, music, narration, editing and information "history." Thanks for your HOURS of work you put into your videos. Stay safe, Stay strong.
Fantastic.....thank you so much for making the video......sad as it is.
Was down that way back in the early 80s what a change....Great video..thanks....
I live next to Sankey Brook. Where the disused canal starts, following upto bewsey lock.. They are doing alot of maintenance work round there atm. When you film part 2 give me a shout I will come say hello. If your round bewsey lock 👍
Great video sir. I used to work in the North West a lot a few years ago and came across a lot of the places featured in your videos, so it's nice to see some context and history.
Whilst i know that you can't preserve everything, it's a shame that the town planners of the 60s and 70s didn't give much thought to preserving the remains of the Sankey considering the importance of the canals in kicking off the industrial revolution and it being the first of its kind.
Thank you for the wonderful educational video. Tremendous research. From North Hampton New Hampshire.
Each video you do I can see your production techniques improving. Another really interesting video. Thank you.
Greatly enjoyed whilst peeling spuds!
Looking forward to the next video. I grew up in Penketh and Sankey and that part of the canal is a huge part of my childhood.
Always a pleasure to learn more about history from you. Brilliant job. Have a fantastic weekend wishes to you from across the pond. 🌹
I knew this was coming from your FB post a few weeks back 😃.
Points to note - the hotties were part of Pilkington’s glass process from cooling the plate glass. In the 70s (so the urban myth goes), a closing pet shop released tropical fish into the canal which thrived in the warm water.
Also thanks for clarifying that it was in water before the Bridgewater - important point for a local lad that !
Hi Ollie, Another great Video. I remember the canals in St Helens by Pilkington's. They said there were tropical fish in the canals were hot water was discharged. No idea if this was true. Enjoyed your history telling. Take care.
I’ve been in the canal at Sankey Valley park more than once as a kid, me and my mates used to tell our mums that we pushed each other in 😂 how I’m still here to tell the tale I don’t know because it was absolutely filthy!
Brilliant video. I grew up and spent most of my life in St. Helens. At blackbrook you were a few minutes walk from my mam and dad's house. Its been a few years since I've been down the canal, still looks the same as when I used to play down there as a kid!
This is great! I grew up in Great Sankey in the '70s and '80s. My wife's mum worked at Pilks and I remember mates from school fishing in the 'otties for great big fish. Looking forward to the next part.
Excellent :)
Brilliant film and lovely weather too. The phrase 'use it or lose it' comes to mind and I wish St Helens Council/Planners would get this. Although, give them their due, they have included the 'St Helens Canal' in their current regeneration plans.
I enjoyed that, thank you. I live in Warrington and often cycle along the Sankey canal. I will pay a bit more attention to some of the history hidden gems from now on!!
My uncle brought us some fish he got in a work hat. They turned out to be guppies and gourami babies. Lots of tropical fish dumped in, survived near the outlets, plus it never froze over. Cool vid
What an amazing video as usual!
Can't wait for part 2!
Super history video. I love "Enginuity". Keep using it...
Great video buddy.
Fairly local for me this, its one of my favourite cycling routes between Carr Mill Dam and Widnes. Strangely I've never been around the bit between Chalon Way Car Park and Sutton Brook Greenway, I'll have to have a look.
Great to see a other video uploaded. Love them.
Fascinating as ever and nicely presented.
Thank you very much for uploading this footage.
Very well presented video with lots of interesting local history.
Great upload as usual. Thanks.
Nice seeing the history relating back to Northern Ireland. The Lagan canal is an interesting one from over here too, if you ever fancy a trip! Great work as always!
Great video Ollie! Looking forward to 2nd part!
Cycled from Widnes to Newton le Willows back in 2008 as part of my LEJOG holiday. Nothing much has changed it looks like. I still remember the itchy feeling I got from water splashed on my calf around the Sankey viaduct, probably left overs from some past industrial process. Which might also explain the weir in the locks, to aerate the water?
Great video. I'm so glad to see someone doing a vlog on this historic and interesting canal.
I walked it just before Covid after meaning to do so for about 40 years. My first experience of the canal being catching tropical cichlids on the Hotties section by Plkington's works. It was stuffed with them and I caught around 70 of them in an afternoon.
As a boy in the 70s I used to pushbike from Warrington to the Hotties and fish for tropical fish, never caught so many fish before or since, no boredom on the bank. Great fun.
As usual Great video !
Brilliant and informative 👍👍👍
I think canals are fascinating. We don't really have any in Australia because we didn't reach that level of industrialization until after the canal period was over.
Very interesting!
A great and very interesting video. Looking forward to the next part. Great stuff
Love your videos. So well researched and very informative. Looking forward to part 2
Well done, i have enjoyed watching this, and look forward to seeing more.
Thanks for a lovely informative vlog 👏🏻
Thank you for another fantastically informative video, always great to see a new upload from you!
The railway line that runs parallel to the canal at Penketh is apparently the original Manchester to Liverpool line and over 100 years old, I came across a story mentioning an incident where a railway engine crashed into the canal after some plonker left the swing bridge open and it couldn't stop in time. The line used to pass under the station at Bank Quay but it currently ends just before it.
Great video, very informative, keep up the good work 👏
Superb and well researched as always. Keep it up.
Great video, my father used to work at Sankey Sugar in the early 70's
Used to swim in Hulme lock when we were kids. Thanks for the video Olly👍
I just want to say I appreciate all your work researching and creating these video's mate, really interesting!
As usual an enjoyable , interesting , well researched and presented video.. thanks
Thanks for another informative & well presented history of my home county.
Looking forward to the next instalment. Great work ❤️ x
Thank you for another enjoyable video, aim looking forward to part 2. I used to live in Widnes as a student over 25+ years ago, much has changed since I left.
Brilliant video. Very informative. I didn't know the sections in St Helens still existed. Think I'll be doing some expolring soon. Thanks.
I must say I really enjoyed watching your video and found it both interesting and very informative. Keep up your good work. Steven Parker, Heritage Explorers.
Brilliant
Fascinating tour thanks. Brings back very vague memories of SCARS, the Sankey Canal Restoration Society, must have been late 1980s.
can't wait for part 2 as I cycle along the parts of the canal from Spike Island that follow the Trans Pennine Trail sometimes, but I have never visited the upper parts of the canal before, must go and have a look
Looking forward to seeing the 2nd episode. I left Warrington in 1959 to go to Australia asan 11year old with my family. The St Helens canal as we called it then, ran past the foot of Dallam junior school, and i remember seeing boats going along it back in 1958. In hindsight i must have seen the very last of these boats but did,nt know it at the time. One boatman let me have a look into his living area, and I remember it being so small. he was carrying Sugar if I remember rightly. I also went to Bewsey secondry modern school, near Bewsey locks, which was also the back gate to the Burton wood air base. The Sankey brook was called the Stinking brook in those days, probably because of industrial effluent being dumped into it.
Just realised I need to watch part 1 first. 😂. I love watching your videos, so knowledgeable and so much history on our doorstep. Keep up the videos, loving them. Del 👍
Cheers thank you!
nice vid mate -
Yes that was very interesting thank you very much, Do you know if anyone ever put any plans in to reopen it at any time is that white bits where is stored in the 80s
This was a very enjoyable video to watch, and the video was very well made. I love anything to do with canals myself. The engineering involved back in those days was fantastic. Its amazing to think really, that apart from the Manchester ship canal, where they did have mechanical diggers available to them, that pretty much our entire canal network was dug out with very primative hand tools! and the same goes for the railway age afterwards, I will be looking forward to part two, cheers.
Thanks very much!
Up to the 1970,s there was a lovely old pub called the Ship Inn alongside a row of terraced houses. Had they survived demolition they would have been a wonderful sight to behold.
Hi Ollie. Just like to say a big thank you for creating and posting your vids. I'm off ill this week with a bad cold and have binged on most of your videos. I particularly like this one, The Sankey Canal, but also loved watching Exploring the Forbidden Manchester Ship Canal, Flat Hunting and The Opening of the First Great Railway. Keep up the good work. it's really appreciated as you can tell by all the positive comments. p.s. I think a good topic for a video would be The Ship Canal and associated Rivers. On maps you can see the old course of The Mersey and some Oxbow lakes. You can make out the old River Mersey below Warburton Toll Bridge.. It's interesting how the Irwell and Mersey join the Ship Canal for a while then the Mersey reappears again. Also wondered why the river at Warringon isn't called the Irwell as I've read at the confluence the Irwell was the greater. Also interesting is the Runcorn and Latchford Canal which is mainly traceable on the ground. I think it was lost when they built the Ship Canal.
Great video Ollie! I live in the St Helens area and it's great to see you here! The works at the start of the video are from Pilkington Watson Street works, I think the sewage at 3 minutes is also from Watson Street works.
Good job bud 👍
Thanks !
Super video, content, cinema photography and narration. Your graphics and rostrum camera work has come on leaps and bounds and is way up there alongside those with full production teams. If ever you plan a video around North Notts. I'll willingly act as your camera holder 😁
Loving your video. You have instegram i can follow you mist have great pictures.❤
I remember talking to "Johnny the lock man" at Hulme lock
GREAT video Ollie; well researched and so good I had to watch it twice! Imagine that, in an age where we are looking for better transport links and greener trade routes, back in the day our ancestors discovered the idea of transporting goods using the power of the wind! Who would have thought it?? Imagine the benefits of restoring this historic waterway and plugging St Helens and the surrounding district back into the national canal system. What a waterway and what a great green way of transportation it could once again become.....I'm going to share this and your next video with my friends at St Helens Council.....is there any call for green transport these days??.THERE ARE OPPORTUNITIES BEE HERE NOW! (y)
Water transport was preferred to the muddy bumpy cart tracks. Fragile items (ie glass, pottery) could be carried without breakage, and the one horse engine could tow more in a barge than in a cart without it getting stuck or battered to bits
Great video Olly, Winwick’s second w is silent BTW 👍
Great video, I guess you’re already aware how to pronounce Winwick. Where the viaduct is backs onto Earlstown, not Newton-Le-Willows. Just south of the viaduct was some a sandstone escarpment locals called ’mucky-mountains’. I remember tackling the climb up ‘the chimney’ as a 7 year old. The old WW1/2 armaments factory, I think was Vickers was half way between mucky mountains and Earlstown
st helens my hometown though i now live in droylsden. i know this canal very well ;-)
Thanks for this great video, no one has really covered the Sankey that I know of. It has a great history and they are always talking about re-opening it - why do i always get the feeling we have met in person ? I grew up in Garswood and went to school in Ashton in Makerfield
Thanks very much. I think I just have one of them faces. I'm from Oldham, unfortunately
Great video I live near the bewsey lock end, lots of history here its a shame it's all in disrepair
you might want to look at your viaducts as the one in Sankey Valley Park is the one decribed as the first Viaduct with a lift up centre expance and the Sankey viaduct is the second built. Wiki is a bit sketchy about the descriptions but you do you homework well. You missed the Hotties being generated by a pet shop that closed and the fish being tossed into the canal just at the side of the glassworks that generated the hot water for the fish to survive. Tropical fish in a canal, yes and i visited it as a small child (10yrs old) and it was a local attraction. But great video and a lot of facts i hadn't looked at.
Great clip mate! I'll message you a link of somewhere nearby that may be of interest.
Hi, been subbed for a while on personal account M B. what do you film out and about on. Is it just a go pro? I've been mucking around with canon but I think I might just get better results using my GoPro when walking about rather than flying. Trying to start a second channel toy flying one for my lowland leader stuff. Thinking less is more sometimes.
First I’ve seen of your videos & I enjoyed it, so will watch the rest of them. You’re obviously not a local lad though are you? 3/4 way through you mentioned Winwick quay & lock, but just for your info (not having a go at you) the 2nd ‘w’ is silent, so it’s actually pronounced ‘Winick’. Great video & hope I enjoy the rest just as much.👍🏻👏🏻
Another canal I didn't know about, what with your vids, the Whitewicks et al it does make me wonder with the advantages restoration of canals brings (tourism/business, housing, ecology, water management etc.) why local and central government don't put emphasis on bringing these heritage transport links back to life as I see only positives from their regeneration, or am I only seeing it through rose tinted spectacles?
There was actually a basin End at Blackbrook which has been destroyed by the rangers who have created a mess in what was an open waterway.
The water in the Hotties was so warm there was a lot of tropical fish there the local people said a couple of fish must have been thrown in and they had bred. there.