Qualla: Macclesfield Canal

Macclesfield Canal: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Case, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1824, when the gentlemen of Macclesfield finally placed an advertisement in the Courier proposing yet another canal scheme, the world had already begun to move on. Stephenson's Rocket was five years away. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was being surveyed. At the very first public meeting at the Macclesfield Arms, someone in the room raised his hand and suggested they build a railway instead. The committee took a vote anyway. They chose canal. They were wrong, in the long run, but they were also right: the thing they built, a Thomas Telford canal of cuttings and embankments and elegant snake bridges, is still here.

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Image: Daniel Case | CC BY-SA 3.0

Macclesfield Canal: Sixty Years of Trying

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Akke at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.5. The Macclesfield Canal was a long time coming. The first proposal arrived in 1765. A more serious attempt followed in 1796, when Benjamin Outram, then engineering the nearby Peak Forest Canal, surveyed possible routes. But the financial euphoria of Canal Mania had ended, and ther...

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Image: The original uploader was Akke at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Macclesfield Canal: Telford's Straight Line

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Thomas Telford surveyed the route in 1825 and proposed a 26-mile canal level all the way from Marple to a point beyond Macclesfield, then dropping by a single concentrated flight of locks to meet the Trent and Mersey near Harecastle Tunnel. The act of Parliament passed on 11 Apri...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Macclesfield Canal: Twelve Locks in One Mile

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mayalld at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. All twelve of the Macclesfield Canal's locks are squeezed into the Bosley flight, where the canal drops 118 feet in roughly a mile. Unusually, each lock has twin mitred gates at both ends rather than the single upper gate typical of narrow canals. Below the bottom lock, a fine st...

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Image: Mayalld at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Macclesfield Canal: Snake Bridges and Mills

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Farrand, CC BY-SA 4.0. The canal is famous for its roving bridges, the elegant single-arched structures that carry the towpath from one bank to the other without requiring the boat horse to be unhitched. Locally, they are called snake bridges. The towpath slopes up over the bridge and curls back under ...

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Image: Peter Farrand | CC BY-SA 4.0

Macclesfield Canal: From Coal to Pleasure Boats

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maurice Oly, CC BY-SA 4.0. The canal was sold to a railway company by 1846 and passed through successive corporate owners: the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, the Great Central, the LNER, and finally British Waterways. Commercial carrying continued, remarkably, until 1954. The High Lane Arm...

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Image: Maurice Oly | CC BY-SA 4.0