The Rochdale Canal is in Northern England, between Manchester and Sowerby Bridge, part of the connected system of the canals of Great Britain. Its name refers to the town of Rochdale through which it passes.
The Rochdale is a broad canal because its locks are wide enough to allow vessels of width. The canal runs for across the Pennines from the Bridgewater Canal at Castlefield Basin in Manchester to join the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire.
As built, the canal had 92 locks. Whilst the traditional lock numbering has been retained on all restored locks, and on the relocated locks, the canal now has 91. Locks 3 and 4 have been replaced with a single deep lock, Tuel Lane Lock, which is numbered 3/4.
History
The Rochdale Canal was conceived in 1776, when a group of 48 men from Rochdale raised £237 and commissioned James Brindley to conduct a survey of possible routes between Sowerby Bridge and Manchester. Brindley proposed a route similar to the one built, and another more expensive route via Bury. Further progress was not made until 1791, when John Rennie was asked to make a new survey in June, and two months later to make surveys for branches to Rochdale, Oldham and to a limeworks near Todmorden. Rennie at the time had no experience of building canals.
The promoters, unsure as to whether to build a wide or a narrow canal, postponed the decision until an act of Parliament had been obtained. The first attempt to obtain an act was made in 1792, but was opposed by mill owners, concerned about water supply. Rennie proposed using steam pumping engines, three in Yorkshire, eight in Lancashire, and one on the Burnley Branch, but the mill owners argued that 59 mills would be affected by the scheme, resulting in unemployment, and the bill was defeated. In September 1792, William Crosley and John Longbotham surveyed the area in an attempt to find locations for reservoirs which would not affect water supplies to the mills. A second bill was presented to Parliament, for a canal which would have a tunnel and 11 reservoirs. Again, the bill was defeated, this time by one vote. The promoters, in an attempt to understand the mill owners' position, asked William Jessop to survey the parts of the proposed canal that were causing most concern. Jessop gave evidence to the parliamentary committee, and on 4 April 1794 the (34 Geo. 3. c. 78) was obtained which created the Rochdale Canal Company and authorised construction.
Rennie's estimated cost in the second bill was £291,000, and the company was empowered to raise the money by issuing shares, with powers to raise a further £100,000 if required. The estimate was for a narrow canal, whereas the act authorised a broad canal, and so the capital was never going to be adequate. The summit tunnel was abandoned in favour of 14 additional locks saving £20,000. Jessop proposed constructing each lock with a drop of , resulting in efficient use of water and the need to manufacture only one size of lock gate.
The canal opened in stages as sections were completed, with the Rochdale Branch the first in 1798 and further sections in 1799. The bottom nine locks opened in 1800 and boats using the Ashton Canal could reach Manchester. Officially, the canal opened in 1804, but construction work continued for three more years. A branch from Heywood to Castleton opened in 1834.
Operation
As a result of having no summit tunnel, there were more locks, and the summit pound was very short, at just . To the north and east, 36 locks descended to Sowerby Bridge, while to the south and west, another 56 locks descended to Castlefield Junction, on the edge of Manchester. The summit pound is above sea level, and is one of the highest summit pounds in Britain. Blackstone Edge Reservoir, covering and Chelburn Reservoir, covering , were the first two reservoirs built to supply the water for all these locks. They were completed in 1798, and Hollingworth Lake, covering , was finished in 1800. It was lower than the summit pound, and so a steam pumping engine was installed to raise the water into a feeder, which connected to the summit. The feeder was about above the level of the lake, and the pumping engine was used until 1910, when the installation was demolished. The (47 Geo. 3 Sess. 2. c. lxxxi) enabled the Whiteholme Reservoir and the Light Hazzles Reservoir to be constructed, to ensure that supplies remained adequate as trade increased.
Because of its width, the canal was more successful than the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and became the main highway of commerce between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Cotton, wool, coal, limestone, timber, salt and general merchandise were transported. Between 1830 and 1832, the canal carried 539,081 tons per year, which generated £40,123 in toll revenue. In 1839, this had risen to 875,436 tons, generating £62,712 in tolls, but the opening of the Manchester and Leeds Railway in 1841 caused a significant drop in trade. The following year, £27,266 was earned from the carriage of 667,311 tons, and although a programme of toll reductions succeeded in restoring the trade, the income remained at a similar level for many years. The highest volume of traffic was in 1845, when 979,443 tons were carried.
In 1839, the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal opened, which provided a link between a private branch of the Rochdale Canal and the Mersey and Irwell Navigation. It had been built because around 30,000 tons of goods a year were being transferred between the two waterways by cart, through the streets of Manchester, and the charges for this service did not meet the costs of providing it. It opened on 20 September, but was not a success, as the enabling Act of Parliament had also authorised the Bridgewater Canal to build the Hulme Cut, which linked their canal to the Irwell by three locks, and provided a more convenient route. The eastern end of the canal, with its connection to the Rochdale Canal, closed in 1875, the rest was disused by 1922, and it was abandoned in 1936.
In 1855, the company agreed the terms of a lease with four railway companies, with the largest stake of 73 per cent held by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. The railways paid £37,652 per year for a 21-year period, which allowed the canal company to pay a 4 per cent dividend to its shareholders and still have £15,000 for maintenance work. During the lease period, traffic increased a little, from 754,421 tons to 878,651 tons, and toll revenue also increased, from £23,048 to £28,579. At the end of the 21 years, the arrangement was continued for another fourteen, and four final half-yearly payments of £15,000 were made by way of compensation when the agreement ended. One surprising development was that Hollingworth Lake became a pleasure resort, with steamers operating on it six days a week in 1865. Allegations of "immoralities which it is stated take place in connection with the dancing stages at Hollingworth" in November of that year were strenuously denied by the company in January 1866.
By cutting tolls, the canal managed to retain trade and remain profitable. A series of administrative changes took place, sanctioned by acts of Parliament. The title of the company changed from the Company of Proprietors of the Rochdale Canal to the Rochdale Canal Company, and they were also empowered to sell water. In 1905, cargo moving between the canal and the Bridgewater Canal at the Manchester end amounted to 418,716 tons, most of it connected with the Manchester Ship Canal trade. During the First World War, the government took control of the canals, and when they were handed back in August 1920, the Rochdale was in financial trouble. Sunday and Saturday afternoon working was no longer acceptable, wages had risen and working hours had reduced. In 1923, the Oldham and Rochdale Corporations Water Act 1923 (13 & 14 Geo. 5. c. lxxvii) paved the way for the transfer of its eight reservoirs, Blackstone Edge, Easterly Gaddings Dam, Higher and Lower Chelburn, Hollingworth Lake, Light Hazzles, Warland and Whiteholme, to those corporations to supply drinking water. They received £396,667 for the sale, of which some was paid to the Manchester Ship Canal, since it would no longer receive water from the Rochdale, and made a net profit of £298,333. They could still draw water from some nearby streams and could also draw some from the reservoirs under certain conditions.
Apart from a short profitable section in Manchester linking the Bridgewater and Ashton Canals, most of the length was closed in 1952 when the (15 & 16 Geo. 6 & 1 Eliz. 2. c. xxxvii) was obtained to ban public navigation. The last complete journey had taken place in 1937, and by the mid 1960s the remainder was almost unusable. Construction of the M62 motorway in the late 1960s took no account of the canal, cutting it in two.
Restoration
When an act of Parliament was sought in 1965, to authorise the abandonment of the canal, the Inland Waterways Association petitioned against it, and when it was finally passed, the (c. xxxvii) contained a clause that ensured the owners would maintain it until the adjacent Ashton Canal was abandoned. In early 1971, a boat rally was organised on the canal, and later that year, there was public debate over the high cost of a project which had infilled part of the canal to create a shallow water park, when restoring the section for navigation would have been cheaper. Discussion of the relative merits of restoring the canal or the Huddersfield Narrow Canal in 1973 led the formation of societies to promote both schemes in 1974. The Rochdale Canal Society wanted to see the canal fully re-opened, as part of a proposed Pennine Park. The Ashton Canal, which joins the canal above lock 84, reopened in 1974, and the nine locks on the Rochdale Canal between the junction and the Bridgewater Canal were restored at that time.
The canal benefited from the activities of the Manpower Services Commission in 1975, when £40,000 was allocated under the Job Creation Scheme to fund work on the Rochdale town section of the canal. The following year, another 150 jobs were created when a further £208,000 grant was made. Despite the progress, there were plans to sever the route with a low-level crossing by the proposed M66 motorway in 1979, and to build a supermarket on it at Sowerby Bridge in 1980, both of which were met with opposition. One benefit of the Job Creation Scheme was that the perception of the restoration changed in official circles. The local council was responsible for the young people employed on the scheme, which ran for twelve years, and found itself having to negotiate with the canal company. At its height, there were 450 people working on the canal, and since no-one could work on the scheme for more than a year, several thousand people learnt practical restoration skills, and many retained an interest in canals afterwards. The section from Todmorden to Hebden Bridge was completed in 1983 and opened on 20 May.