The St Helens Canal from the footbridge
Introduction
The photograph on this page of The St Helens Canal from the footbridge by Ian Greig as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
The St Helens Canal from the footbridge
Image: © Ian Greig Taken: 25 May 2012
The fenced off areas of the canal bank are unsafe. The Sankey Valley or St Helens Canal runs 15 miles from St Helens to the Mersey at Widnes. In 1755 an Act of Parliament was passed to make the Sankey Brook navigable as far as Broad Oak. The engineers constructing it found it more practical to build a separate canal. This opened as far as the Old Double Lock in 1757, predating the first section of the Bridgewater canal (which claims to be the first modern canal) by six years. It closed 1963 when trade died off. The Sankey Canal Restoration Society is working to get it re-opened.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
53.386782
Longitude
-2.61956