That canal (and yes, it's a sorry state) was the first industrial canal of the Industrial Revolution.
It always gets ignored, whilst its younger sibling, the Bridgwater Canal is touted as the oldest.
The reason behind that is largely to do with the Sankey/St Helens Canal not actually officially being a canal at all.
Henry Berry, assistant to Thomas Steers (builder of the first wet dock in the world, Liverpool's Old Dock, and designer of the Salthouse Dock) was appointed to investigate a way to get coal from the St Helens & Haydock mines to the booming Liverpool. They looked at the Sankey Brook, which was already being used by some smaller 'Mersey Flats' sail boats, but these were unsuitable for bulk coal haulage and the brook mostly too shallow and twisty for any sort of barge.
Knowing a full canal would face huge opposition, Berry and his backers got smart. They obtained an Act of Parliament to make the Sankey Brook navigable, with parallel cuts allowed where required.
They then dug a cut the entire length until the Brook became tidal near Fiddler's Ferry, and ran it parallel. It opened in 1757
A few years later, they extended it to the Mersey proper at Fiddler's Ferry, then later along to Widnes, creating Spike Island.
Sadly, it hasn't fared as well as other canals across the UK in terms of preservation, and in a horrible act of heritage vandalism, large sections in both Warrington & St Helens have been filled in, with swing bridges replaced by fixed (in many cases too low for barges to traverse under even if the canal was re-dug)
The only really navigable stretch is down by Spike Island, and used as moorings. There's fresh worries about the Fiddlers to Widnes stretch, too, with the power station no longer regulating water levels in the area.
Good stuff Nobby, I live in Penketh just a few hundred yards from the canal and learnt some new facts to me.
The canal was in a terrible state when I moved here in 1976 (I know!) with large stretches covered in reeds,undergrowth, and lots of rubbish thrown to the bottom.
In the early 80s a lot of restoration work took place such that fishing returned together with wildlife and the new footpath meant you could walk from Widnes to Bewsey in N Warrington. Around 2000 however the anglers were the first to suffer as fishing was banned after the banks were deemed unsafe and fences erected around them. The canal again suffered from lack of money to keep it in its restored condition not helped when the coal fired Power Station was planned to be closed. This was the canals source of water.
These are Warrington and Halton Councils plans to find a source of water for the canal in the future.
Since the restoration of the Sankey Canal was carried out between Spike Island in Widnes and Bewsey, Warrington, in the early 1980’s it has been kept in water by a supply that has come from Fiddlers Ferry Power Station.
“The original sources of supply had come from the St Helens area – Carr Mill Dam being one of the main contributors of water – but those supplies became isolated as sections of the canal were demolished and infilled in the 1970s.
“Fiddlers Ferry Power Station closed on 31 March 2020 and it is now in the process of being decommissioned. The owner, SSE, confirmed that, as part of the decommissioning, regular pumping of water into the canal will continue until around July and then it will become sporadic until, eventually, there will be no pumping at all.
“At the end of the decommissioning there will be no power station and therefore the water supply that has been relied upon for decades will no longer exist.
“For the past ten years Halton Borough Council, working in partnership with Warrington Borough Council, has been working to address this situation. The most realistic and sustainable solution that has been identified is to use the Sankey Brook as a feed for the canal.
“This will require some major engineering and Warrington Council, supported by Halton, is currently working on this, but it will take a couple of years to bring this about. This means that the current water levels within the canal cannot be guaranteed.
“Halton Council remains committed to the historic Sankey Canal and we would still like to restore it to navigation between Spike Island and Fiddlers Ferry. To that end we will be installing a swing bridge at Spike Island on the site of the iron swing bridge that had first been installed in 1833.
“We are hoping that work will commence on that project this year. We are also currently working up a project to restore the river slipway at Spike Island so that boats could be directly launched into the river.”
PS. The Ferry Tavern situated between the canal and the Mersey is a great pub to visit with some great ales not to mention Glastonferry music events twice a year which are sold out.
