Society Activities and Events
Section 4: The 250th Anniversary Walks
by Dave Smallshaw
As last year commemorated 250 years of the waterway, and, as part of our desire to engage with our local communities, we planned a series of public walks which stretched throughout the summer of 2007. It has to be said that some of the walks were poorly attended but a mitigating factor probably lay in the appalling weather that practically every designated day last summer was allotted.
The idea was to create circular walks that included part of the waterway, its feeders or its proposed routes and link it with local history relevant to the days when the canal was active. The walks were as follows:
The Canal beginnings.
From the Ship Inn via old coalfields and tramways to the feeder reservoir at Carr Mill and the Black Brook.
Industrial Parklands. The sites of more modern industries like the coalmine at Bold (below, pit-head gear re-used at Bold), old and new Burtonwood, the Sankey Valley, Newton Common and Bradley.
Photo: Dave Smallshaw
Green Fingers.
Bewsey Old Hall and lock, Winwick Quay, and new Warrington.
Widnes Waterfront.
Spike Island, The chemical sites, West Bank, Widnes Docks and the shoreline to Pickering's Pasture on the proposed Sankey canal extension route .
The Newton Heritage Trail.
The Society's attempt to forge a circular walk from the various footpaths around Newton and Earlestown. The walk included, Castle Hill, Newton High Street, Earlestown Railway Station, Earlestown Town Centre, Newton Common and its racecourse, nearby collieries, old burial mounds, the canal to Bradley and then, via the Newton Brook, to Newton Mill.
These walks are to be written up in the form of a publication in due course to which will be added a few short walks that cover more isolated parts that have had immediate or lateral influences on the canal during its existence.
If there is demand for any particular walk again in the future, or any of the Sankey Canal Link walks then we may run individual walks again.
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