Leigh

Leigh is 11 miles west of Manchester. I have to be honest, it is not somewhere you would go to visit - but if you look closely you can see signs of its former importance in the industrial revolution.

It boasts two canals, though as they meet here end on, to a casual glance they look like just one. A branch of the Leeds Liverpool Canal approaches from the west.


This bridge seems to be the end of it. Not the original one here; this one was built to allow trams to cross the canal.


Looking the other way, this preserved crane indicates where a branch of the Bridgewater Canal arrived.


While the two canals are still in good order, the railways are all gone. There was quite a network in the area with lines heading east to west from Manchester to Liverpool, and other lines going south to north, and numerous other lines to serve mills and collieries. It is all gone now, some converted to roads, but one has been converted to a guided busway that heads towards Manchester.


The start is where Leigh station used to be - it closed in 1969. No sign of the station itself. Leigh is one of the largest towns in the UK with no railway station.


The one bit of the line remaining is an isolated section of elevated trackbed.


There were also stations at Pennington, Westleigh (or West Leigh) and Atherleigh, now all lost under the A579. The Railway Hotel, which was near Westleigh station is still there, though it closed in 2022, so its days may be numbered too.


Just to the west of the A579 is Pennington Flash. A flash is a lake that forms when the land has subsided due to mining. They are common in Cheshire because of the salting mining, but less common with coal mining. It has been turned into an attractive park and wildlife reserve.


Another old railway is in evidence here. An old embankment drops down below the water line.


The park is quite extensive.... and popular with geese.


The north of the park is bounded by the Leeds Liverpool Canal.


Getting into the town itself, buildings of note are few and far between. In fact, the mills, what remains of them, are probably the most impressive.

At the east end of the town is the office and entrance building for Alder Mill, at the end of Clyde Street.  It says 1907 on it, but as that is the year the mill opened it might not be the year this bit of it was built. A photo of it with the main building still extant can be see here.


The other side of Chapel Street is the Georgian Court. Not sure when this was built, but it was after 1969, so built in a Georgian style, rather than actually Georgian.


Heading west along Chapel Street, there is the Purple Naan, formerly the Three Crowns Hotel, which closed in 2019.


This building is on maps from 1845-48, but I cannot find out anything about it. I would guess the bit that juts out from the roof line on the right had some kind of branding on it originally.


 This area was known as Bedford originally, but has now been absorbed into Leigh.

On the other side of the road is St Thomas Church, which seems to be closed.


But the nearby St Joseph Roman Catholic Church is still going.

The adjacent hall is quite impressive.

Leaving Chapel Street, and going south, on the north side of the canal is Mather Lane Mill.


The mill itself, and the warehouse on the other side of Mather Lane are both listed.


Further buildings on the other side of the canal seem to have been part of the same mill.


Back to Chapel Street, heading west it becomes Spinning Jenny Way, a modern road passing through where the gas works and Albion Iron Works used to stand, to get to where King Street meets Twist Lane. The invention of the spinning jenny is disputed, but could be by local man, Thomas Highs. Meanwhile, Twist Lane seems to have be Twiss Lane in the nineteenth century (or the cartographers recorded it wrongly).

King Street runs north to south, cross the canal at the bridge discussed right at the start of this post. At the junction with Twist Lane is this curious building, know locally as the "Half Tram Building".


It was built as a waiting room and crew mess for the tram company LUT (I have not been able to find out what LUT stands for). Half was later demolished, I guess when Spinning Jenny Way was built.

Looking north along King Street. This was the original main street. Everything to the right, out of view, was demolished to make a bus station. The pub in the centre is the George and Dragon, built mid seventeenth century.


On the corner of King Street and Twist Street is the rather bigger Eagle and Child. The history of the place seems a little murky, with various contradictory stories. The CAMRA website tells me it is permanently closed, while the Leigh Journal claimed it was close to reopening end of 2024. It was the Bar Quaye, but I think the Eagle and Child before and after that. I think it was built in 1895, on the site of an older inn, possibly called the Cock Inn, built 1795

So that is it. Some mills, some pubs that closed in the last few years. But the canals are fine.




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