History - The Rochdale Canal was conceived in 1776, when a
group of 48 eminent men from Rochdale raised £237 and commissioned
James Brindley to conduct a survey of possible routes between
Sowerby Bridge and Manchester. He proposed a route similar to that
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 some limeworks near Todmorden. The first
attempt to obtain an Act of Parliament was made in 1792, but was
opposed by millers, concerned about water supply, and it was not
until 4 April 1794 that an act was obtained which created the
Rochdale Canal Company and authorised the construction of the
canal. Further acts of parliament were obtained in 1800, 1804 and
1806, the main purpose of which was to raise additional finance.
The canal was opened up in stages, as it was completed, with the
Rochdale Branch being the first in 1798, further sections in 1799,
and the bottom nine locks opening in 1800, so that boats from the
Ashton Canal could reach Manchester. Officially, the canal opened
in 1804, but construction work continued for another three years. A
1.5 mile (2.4km) branch from Heywood to Castleton was opened in
1834. Because of its width, it was more successful than the
Huddersfield Narrow Canal and became the main highway of commerce
between Lancashire & Yorkshire. Cotton, wool, coal, limestone,
timber, salt and general merchandise were transported. In 1890 the
canal company had 2,000 barges and traffic reached 700,000
tons/year, the equivalent of 50 barges a day. But this traffic soon
faced competition from the Manchester and Leeds Railway (1841). By
cutting tolls the canal managed to maintain business and for a time
remained profitable but by the start of the 20th century it was in
trouble. In 1923 the canal's reservoirs were sold to the Oldham and
Rochdale Joint Water Board. Most of the canal (apart from a short
profitable section in Manchester linking the Bridgewater and Ashton
Canals) was closed in 1952 when an act of parliament was obtained
to ban public navigation (the last complete journey having 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 - With the growth in leisure boating, a campaign was
mounted for its re-opening. The first section to be restored was
the nine locks between the junction with the Ashton Canal and the
Bridgewater Canal, as a result of the Ashton Canal reopening in
1974. The Rochdale Canal Society was formed, and worked hard both
to protect the line of the canal and to begin the process of
refurbishing it, concentrating on the section from Todmorden to
Sowerby Bridge. Nearly 16 miles (25.7km) was opened in this way,
with the section from Todmorden to Hebden Bridge opening in 1983,
and the entire eastern section up to the summit opened by 1990. The
reopened section was still isolated from the canal network. The
next success was a re-fashioned link with the Calder and Hebble
Canal (which had never closed) at Sowerby Bridge, which joined the
restored section to the national network in 1996, and involves one
of the candidates for the deepest lock on the British canal system
(Tuel Lane Lock at nearly 20ft). In 2000, the canal, which had
never been nationalised, passed from the control of the Rochdale
Canal Company to the Waterways Trust, and an £23.8 million
investment package was announced, with funding coming from the
Millennium Commission, English Partnerships, and the councils of
Oldham and Rochdale. As restoration proceeded, boats could travel
further and further west, and the restoration of the sections
through Failsworth and Ancoats were a significant part of the
re-development of the north Manchester districts. On 1 July 2002,
the restored sections joined up with the never-closed section in
Manchester, thus re-opening the canal to navigation along its
entire length
Information form Wikipedia
