The First Anniversary Walk

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Sankey Canal, our own Dave Smallshaw arranged a programme of walks along and around the canal for the Society. The first walk took place in mid-April and a select dozen or so gathered behind the Ship Inn at Blackbrook near Haydock on a sunny Sunday lunchtime.

After a brief introduction we took the recently resurfaced path through the trees to Stanley Basin, one of the main transshipment points on the canal's Blackbrook Arm. The basin resembles a pond more than a basin now, though the entrance arm from the canal is intact. We noted the quality of the brickwork lining the adjacent Black Brook close to where the tramway and railway crossed the brook from the basin wharf and made their way up the hill towards Pewfall.

The railway to Pewfall colliery lay in the scrub to the right of the path that ascends the hill, while the path itself is also on the line of some form of tramway that took a slightly more easterly course northwards. There was an engine pit situated close to Stanley Hall at the foot of the tramway, and to the left of the foot of the railway stood Copperhouse Row; cottages for employees at the nearby copper works on Stanley Ground. We climbed the hill, noting the large pond (or small reservoir!) at the top of the hill, and speculating on the possible use of the converted barn-type structure next to it, adjacent to the tramway. The path opens out a little more, albeit with the noise of the recently-built Haydock bypass alongside. The path eventually swings west, away from the line of the tramway and joins the bypass/Liverpool Road close to where the colliery railway would have crossed.

We walked up Liverpool Road, and after what seemed like an eternity managed to negotiate a succession of pedestrian crossings to get across the East Lancs Road. Continuing up Liverpool Road we noted a line of trees in the rape field to the left which seemed to mark the line of the old tramway again; the woodland here used to be more extensive and was known as Waggon Road Plantation, a clue if ever you needed one. We then cut right after 200 yards or so into Slag Lane, at the end of which the line of the colliery railway can be picked up again heading north on the edge of a farmer's field. This appears to be a well-used permissive path. After about three hundred yards you reach a point (marked 'A' on the map) where the footpath bears right towards the road where the cap of an old mine shaft can be seen (right). The apparent line of the railway can be seen continuing north for quite a distance though in reality it actually bore left into the trees only 150 yards or so further on.

At this point it is worth turning round 180 degrees. Some time in the second half of the 19th century a link was made from here with the railway network in Haydock. The line from Pewfall (now behind you) would have swung left, away from the existing line, and evident in the field edges, towards the East Lancs at Florida. Once that happened, the line we have walked up from Blackbrook became redundant, though towards the very end of that century it seems that the owners of Garswood Old Hall opened up the bottom length (below the Haydock bypass) and created their own spur to the Hall.

From the capped shaft we walked up Liverpool Road a short distance, noting a fine pair of semi-detached houses on the outskirts of Pewfall, which had 'railway company style' writ large over them; they were probably for the managers of the colliery. A footpath goes off to the left just after the houses and skirts a field towards a fenced-off mine shaft. In the field to the north there is another capped shaft and this was the heart of the old Pewfall Colliery; you should be able to make out the walled embankment for the (enlarged) colliery reservoir (marked 'B' on the map). The railway continued north to cross Robinsons Lane (now Garswood Road) to terminate just beyond Arch Lane.

We followed the path along the field edge to Garswood Road where we bore left, then right into Garswood Old Road. About 100 yards in was where the tramway crossed (marked 'C' on the map) but the field to the south has been so heavily ploughed it was impossible to detect anything. The road led to Garswood Hall and thence on to the old deer park by what is now Carr Mill Dam, but it is now accessible only as far as the minor road to the hamlet of Hollin Hey, just across the L&NW railway line between Wigan and St Helens. Having crossed the railway bridge, where the road runs out we continued down the obvious footpath between two fields. At one point there appears to be a railway embankment on your left. This was the old colliery line from Blackley Hurst Colliery on the outskirts of Billinge, part of which, near Carr Mill Dam, has been utilised by the current Wigan-St Helens line. At the end of the field a stile takes you into a small piece of woodland through which a brook, the Goyt, babbles merrily; the Rivington Aqueduct water pipe passes under here, supplying water to Merseyside from the reservoirs at Rivington. On the other side of the wooden footbridge, the path passes between fields of rape-seed with Billinge Hill ahead, and ultimately drops you out at Chadwick Green for a well earned pint at the Masons Arms.

After a quick snifter we head south-west down Carr Mill Road which quickly degenerates to a well used track past the ornate buildings at Otter's Swift (above left) to the upper reaches of the dam by Caleb's Wood. Having crossed the dam on a bund we immediately bore left and crossed back again on what looked like a low canal aquedeuct, but is infact the Rivington Aqueduct again; the water pipe encases in concrete (above right). Bearing right at the end we then followed the path along the edge of the dam through to where it meets a more solid roadway by the boat club headquarters. To the left, behind a cottage is a railway embankment with an ornate crossing of what at first glance would seem to have been a carriageway. The railway is the short section of the Blackley Hurst colliery line that remains in use today and the 'carriage way' is in effect the end of Garswood Old Road; the boat club behind is on the site of the partly-flooded deer park. Beware of trying to get a closer look at the bridge; the cottage occupants aren't too keen on people trampling on the flowers in what may or may not be a lawful extension of their garden.

From here the route across the dam wall is obvious enough; immediately beyond the spillway is a path down which passes under the 'new' viaduct (left) and alongside the canal feeder. The original colliery railway would have crossed the feeder a little below the present viaduct, somewhere just before where the East Lancs now crosses on substantial abutments. We passed the little footbridge which leads to the Stanley Mill Contour Canal and after a couple of false leads eventually bore right up a hand-railed path to the terminal basin of the Sankey's Blackbrook Branch. The two basins formed a 'Y' shape with the canal line, though this is not wholly obvious on the ground today. The left-hand basin mainly served Laffak and Stanley collieries, while the right-hand basin was the destination for the aforementioned Blackley Hurst colliery line. While half returned to the feeder canal path, the rest walked down the canal to where the feeder enters, and crossed over on stepping stones (below). Thus we proceeded en masse to the remains of the slitting mill and inspected the lower reaches of the contour canal behind.

[This article first appeared in the Towpath Action Group Newsletter Spring 2007]

Andy Screen

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