Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
High-level passage gives views across the rooftops to the right while peaks such as Nab
Head, Kerridge Hill with the 5.5m Grade II White Nancy Waterloo monument and Tower Hill
dominate to the east. Bollington was once supported by its cotton mills and another stands si-
lent on the right of the canal, the four turrets festooned with aerials on top of its tower mock-
ing its quietness. A local resident was Terry Waite.
Hovis Mill, the original source of flour for Hovis bread and later for the wrappers, stands
beside the canal as high-class apartments, its moorings now used by Freedom Boats. There
were 71 mills in Macclesfield for the silk industry, including Paradise Mill which closed in
1981. This was the world's leading production centre of silk and women working in the in-
dustry were nine times as likely to die of lung diseases in the mid 19th century as people in
agricultural districts. Macclesfield Heritage Centre features silk and Sunday schools. A heavy
retaining wall flanks the hill on the left, repaired after a 2008 collapse, its base surrounded by
heather. It was repaired again in 2012, local residents having had their cars trapped in their
garages for months because of the settlement. Bridge 41 is much higher and wider than other
bridges, without a constriction of the canal, but it is built in similar style and probably took a
tramway across.
The Cloud rises above the Dane Aqueduct
.
At Oakgrove, the Fool's Nook provides food and beer. The low lifting Royal Oak Bridge
crosses the canal. The hillside on the left is wooded for a while. A large house by the canal
has its opening windows plain while the others are leaded, an effect that looks incongruous.
The canal has been lined with reedmace sporadically but as the ground falls away to the
right, taking the canal with it, the rushes close in and narrow the otherwise wide canal for the
first time. The canal was designed so that all the locks come together in a flight of 12 at Bos-
ley, built with stone from the Cloud. They have mitred top gates because of the depth of the
