Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
After a playground on the right comes a lock with a dry dock on the left, still in use.
Relaunching of small craft is difficult because of the high sides. There is a lower section on
the left but it is within a Canal & River Trust area that is kept locked. The next-best option
is the far corner of a wharf on the right next to Trencherfield Mill. The current mill was built
in 1907 to spin cotton imported to Liverpool and brought by canal. It has been converted to
apartments but retains the world's largest working steam engine at 1.9MW, which drove an
8.1m, 70t flywheel, powering 84,000 spindles in the mill and used until 1968.
Some of the old Weavers' Triangle buildings
.
Opie's Museum of Memories in the mill features 40,000 images of 20th century social his-
tory. Regardless of its history, it was George Orwell's
Road to Wigan Pier
, written in the
1930s, that made the town's name. Displayed between the A49 bridges, it develops a joke
by George Formby Senior in a comparison with the piers of Blackpool and Southport. Ge-
orge was born here, as were Roy Kinnear, Ted Ray, Frank Rendle, Sir Ian McKellan, Angus
Fraser, Sir James Anderton and Joe Gormley.
Parbold Hill is 120m and topped by the Grade II Parbold Hall and Ashurst's Beacon, built
in Napoloenic times to be able to warn of French invasion. Reeds build up beside the reach
past Priors Wood Hall, crossed near the end by the A5209 as it drops down from Dangerous
Corner.
The branch is followed by a cricket field before the Preston to Hunts Cross railway passes
over. Burscough was a packet-boat staging post, had stables and was where many of the boat-
men lived. Another historical survival until recently was an Easter Pace Egging procession, a
local version of a mummers' play.
After a stand of pines, the B5242 crosses Heaton's Bridge, beside which is the Heaton's
Bridge Inn. A notice warns of shooting in a beechwood alongside, at the back of which is
