Where the Lancaster Canal meets the Leeds Liverpool Canal

 Over the last year or so I have tracing the route of the Old Tramway - that is all on another website.

The tramway was built to connect to the two sections of the Lancaster Canal, which was built to connect Wigan with Lancaster and Kendal, and undoubted had a big hand in kickstarting the industrial revolution in Preston.

Today, I explored where the Lancaster Canal meets the Leeds Liverpool Canal.

Construction of the Leeds Liverpool Canal started in 1770, well before the Lancaster Canal, which was not started until 1792. Nevertheless, it was the Lancaster Canal that was built between Westhoughton and Chorley, and the Leeds Liverpool Canal then built connecting spurs to that, and paid tolls to use it. This was later an annual fee, and later still it just became part of the Leeds Liverpool Canal.

I guess at some point it got widened. The Lancaster Canal is mostly a fairly standard width, while the Leeds Liverpool Canal is significantly wider - so much so that it was able to continue to operate successfully into the twentieth century.

The remaining part of the southern section of the Lancaster Canal was pretty much destroyed in the early sixties by the building of the M61.

This image shows where the canals split, the Lancaster on the left, the Leeds Liverpool on the right. The latter ascends rapidly through a series of seven locks up Johnson's Hillock.

It is about five minutes walk along the tow path from the junction to where the canal now stops.

This is the end. There is a road across the top about three meters above the canal, but no sign of the bridge that would have been there sixty years ago. On the other side of the road, the land is filled in.

It is not easy to see, but the canal would have headed off beside the tree line in the image above.

Heading south, it is quite a different story...

Though now considered the Leeds Liverpool Canal, it is in good condition and well-maintained.