Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The valley is followed by the Trans Pennine Trail and contains Sale Water Park and
Chorlton Water Park, with activities in former gravel borrow pits for the M60, which now
crosses with Junction 7 just west of the canal.
Manchester University Boat Club is on the corner by the Bridge Inn. Canoeists travel at
speed, looking the opposite way, and their blades sweep almost the whole width of the canal.
The 19th century St Paul's church stands prominently by the canal - perhaps too conspicu-
ously as it was hit by an incendiary bomb in 1940, destroying the roof and leaving scars that
still show on some of the pews. The cemetery that follows was once fashionable and its oc-
cupants include Richard Pankhurst and James Joule.
The Manchester to Chester railway leaves the line of the canal after Timperley station.
Once the railway was opened in 1849, the packet boats stopped here and discharged their
passengers so that they could travel on to Manchester by the much quicker trains. The line
was electrified in 1930. A freight line and oblique bridge that previously carried another line
both cross.
The Roman road from Manchester to Chester didn't bother with the A56's detour to Al-
trincham. It crossed the canal's line somewhere near the 1897 factory of Linotype, with its
elaborate clocktower, a factory that has played a vital role in the development of printing.
The 1km
2
Dunham Park has 150 fallow deer. It has 180 species of beetle, old trees not
being felled nor fallen timber removed. An obelisk, dating from 1714, terminates one of the
tree-lined avenues in the park. Dunham Massey Hall is a Georgian rebuilding of a Tudor
house, the family home of the Booths and then Earls of Stamford. It has a superb collection
of 18th century furniture, Huguenot silver and portraits of the Booth and Grey families, in-
cluding Lady Jane Grey, Britain's briefest-reigning monarch, on the throne for just nine days.
Thirty rooms are open to the public, including the great hall, dining room laid out for a 1913
Edwardian shooting party, vast kitchen, library, laundry, 18th century stables (containing a
restaurant) and Elizabethan cornmill, converted to a sawmill in the 19th century and working
most Wednesdays. Around the park are an orangery, well house, slaughter house, Edwardian
water gardens, one of Britain's biggest winter gardens and 160 varieties of roses.
The Bridgewater Canal crosses the River Bollin on its highest embankment, 10m above
the river, not so much an aqueduct as a concrete tower block with a flat arch cut into the bot-
tom and a rapid passing below. In 1971 a breach occurred and the water level had dropped
360mm in Manchester before the stop planks could be placed. Meanwhile, the canal water
had carved a 30m gorge in the embankment, carrying sand, gravel and rocks into the river.
A new concrete and steel trough for the canal was opened two years after the event and the
Bridgewater Canal Trust was set up to finance proper maintenance of the canal.
At the river, the canal moves from Greater Manchester into Cheshire and passes Little Bol-
lington, the diminution being added after local government reorganisation in 1974 to avoid
