The Sankey Brook Navigation Bill was promoted by wealthy Liverpool merchants and the Act was authorised in 1755. The Bill had an easy passage and it is thought to be the only time a canal was authorised by Parliament without anyone petitioning against it.

Advantage was taken of a loophole in the legislation of the day which allowed for existing waterways to be improved and straightened for navigation purposes. The depth of the Sankey Brook varied by several metres depending on weather and rainfall conditions (as it still does today) and it followed a narrow and winding course. It was unsuitable for navigation except for a short section downstream of Sankey Bridges at Warrington and a new canal, the Sankey Canal, was cut along the edge of the valley.

The Sankey Canal was carrying coal by 1757, making it the first true canal of the Industrial Revolution and the first modern canal in England.

The Sankey Brook Navigation Company persuaded the Liverpool Port Commissioners to release their second Dock Engineer, Henry Berry for two days a week and he was appointed as the Engineer to construct the Sankey Canal. Henry, along with Thomas Steers (who had been Liverpool’s first Dock Engineer) played a part in building the Newry Canal in Northern Ireland which was the first canal in the British Isles.

The Sankey Canal was built primarily to take coal down from the collieries in the Haydock and Parr area to serve the growing town and port of Liverpool (including its chemical industries)via the River Mersey and the Cheshire salt industry via the River Weaver. Iron ore and corn were important incoming cargoes.

The industries expanded rapidly and spread along the line of the canal to St Helens, Haydock, Newton le Willows and Widnes, which were small villages until this period. The Sankey Canal can be credited with the industrial growth of the region.

The ability to move large quantities of goods quickly and cheaply (compared with packhorses and horse drawn wagons) made the canal a commercial success and it was at the forefront of a transport revolution.

The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater owned some collieries in nearby Worsley. He was aware of the Sankey Canal and probably knew the people connected with it. The Duke’s Bridgewater Canal was opened in 1761 from Worsley to Manchester and was later extended to Runcorn and Leigh. Its engineering feats captured the public’s imagination and to an extent, the Bridgewater Canal has historically overshadowed the significance of the Sankey Canal.

The Sankey Canal was built for ‘Mersey Flats’, the sailing craft of the local rivers (the Mersey, Irwell and Weaver) and the Lancashire and North Wales coasts. All the roads in the canal’s path had to be carried over on swing bridges to allow for the tall masts of the flats. When the railways came, they too had to cross in a similar fashion – except at Earlestown, where The Sankey Brook Navigation Company objected to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway Company’s intended route and insisted that any structure across the valley must provide a minimum clearance of 60 feet (18 m) above the water to allow fully-rigged Mersey flats to pass underneath.

George Stephenson erected his massive viaduct and embankments for the country’s first intercity passenger railway from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, leaving 21 metres (70 foot) headroom for the flats’ sails. The Sankey Viaduct (known locally as ‘Nine Arches’) was the World’s earliest and largest railway viaduct. It became a Grade 1 listed structure in 1966.

In 1757 England’s first double or ‘staircase locks’ were built on the Sankey Canal at Broad Oak, St Helens. A second set was built at Parr when the canal was extended in 1775 and known as the New Double Locks (as opposed to the first, or Old Double Locks near Foundry Wharf in St Helens).

The immediate commercial success of the Sankey Canal followed soon after by that of the Bridgewater Canalled to the ‘canal-building mania’ across the country. There were extension schemes proposed for the Sankey Canal:

• A link from the Sankey to the Leeds & Liverpool Canal near Leigh (to the north-east).
• A link the Sankey to the Bridgewater and the Trent and Mersey via an aqueduct over the River Mersey at Runcorn (to the south west).

These would have provided access to the national canal network but the canal’s owners were content with their local freight traffic monopoly and the circuitous route to Liverpool. In the event a short extension was built in 1762 from Sankey Bridges to Fiddlers Ferry (to provide better access to the River Mersey) and in 1775 into St Helens town centre itself.

The next major change came as a result of railway competition when the ‘New Cut’ extension was opened from Fiddler’s Ferry lock to Runcorn Gap (later renamed Widnes) in July 1833. The World’s first rail-to-ship interchange facility was created alongside the canal when the St Helens & Runcorn Gap Railway opened Widnes Docks on the River Mersey in August 1833 (known today as Spike Island).

The Sankey Canal became known as the St Helens Canal after 1845 when the more prosperous canal company took over the St Helens and Runcorn Gap Railway Company to form the St Helens Canal and Railway Company.

The canal was a commercial success for over 100 years but it became expensive to maintain and operate, including dealing with the corrosive effect of chemical pollution on iron fixtures and fittings and also because of the number of swing bridges and lock keepers required to operate the canal.

Canal traffic declined after the 1880s due to the spread of a dense network of railway lines and sidings serving the collieries and factories in the area. The terminus in St Helens was truncated in 1898 when Canal Street was built over it to allow for the expansion of a glass manufacturing factory. By 1918 very few barges made the full journey to St Helens and in 1931 the canal was closed to navigation north of the Sankey Sugar Works; fixed bridges quickly replaced the old wooden swing bridges. However the canal mostly remained in water because it formed part of the Sankey Valley drainage area and water still needed to be abstracted for industrial processes.

The canal was originally built to take coal down to the River Mersey and Liverpool but the final traffic was quite different and in the opposite direction, this was raw sugar cane coming from Liverpool Port for the Sankey Sugar Works at Earlestown. The switching of the sugar traffic to road haulage in 1959 ended all commercial traffic on the canal which led to its full closure in 1963.

At the time of its closure the canal ran through a heavily scarred and partially derelict post-industrial landscape. During the 1960s and 1970s the historic and pioneering Sankey Canal was not widely appreciated as a recreational or economic asset for the area. Unfortunately the lock-keepers cottages were demolished and some sections of the canal were filled in, or obstructions were created by road and railway embankments. Decisions were taken locally to divert some watercourses along the canal without considering the hydraulic impact on the wider Sankey Valley drainage catchment.

However, that’s not the end of the story!

Reversing and correcting past actions is entirely possible but there are several engineering challenges to be overcome to return the canal to water and allow navigation by boats again.

Thankfully some sections of the canal have been saved and returned to water. In a notable move, a group of anglers persuaded Newton Le Willows Urban District Council not to fill in the full length of the canal through its district with household refuse; some of the prettiest sections of canal are now those fishedat Penkford Bridge,Bradley Lock and Hey Lock.

Since the 1980s considerable progress has been made to reclaim and re-develop brownfield sites along the canal corridor. Wildlife ponds and pleasant green spaces have been created and recreational trails have been built including the Sankey Valley Trail (from St Helens to Sankey Bridges) and the Trans Pennine Trail (from Sankey Bridges to Widnes).

For more on the history of the canal please see Sankey Canal – Wikipedia or you can go to our Fundraising page and find out how to purchase one of our booklets.

For a Virtual Tour please see Pennine Waterways – Sankey Canal