One of my regular walks takes my into the centre of Sale, Trafford, via Northenden Road and across the road bridge above the Bridgewater Canal and the MetroLink line (formerly the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway). The vistas...
One of my regular walks takes my into the centre of Sale, Trafford, via Northenden Road and across the road bridge above the Bridgewater Canal and the MetroLink line (formerly the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway). The vistas from the top of this bridge provide views along the Bridgewater to the north and south. That to the south is particularly impressive, as the canal, lined for the most part by trees, reaches for the horizon on a straight line of more than two kilometres. On this horizon can seen the hump of Bowdon Hill, rising to just above 60m.
The Bridgewater Canal in ice looking south from the Northenden Road bridge, Sale, on a late afternoon in early December, 2023. Copyright Dr Michael Nevell.I’ve often paused at this vantage point to gaze along the canal, the passing seasons being marked by ice on the canal in winter and a forest of green leaves weighing down the trees in summer. At the end of the year the sun is so low that the light reflects off the surface of the canal on a clear day for hours, blinding the passer by.
So, what is the conundrum I referenced in the title of this blog? It lies in an account of the newly-built canal from around 1768. This was written by Arthur Young (1741-1820), political essayist, travel writer, and agriculturalist, in letter 19 in book three of his A Six Weeks’ Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales, A Six Months’ Tour through the North of England and the Farmer’s Tour through the East of England. These were published between 1768 and 1770.
Whilst touring the Duke of Bridgewater’s ‘great’ canal works at Barton, Castlefield, and Worsley, he followed the line of the canal south-westwards through Old Trafford and Stretford, across the River Mersey and on to Altrincham. In describing the construction of the canal embankment over Sale Moor, he has a sentence noting the long vista south-westwards to Bowdon: ‘Next it is carried across Sale Moor: under the bridge you catch a pleasing view, through the arches of the bridges, in a line, and at the end a church and steeple.’
One puzzle is where Young was standing to get this view. It was clearly by the canal beneath a bridge, but which one? The bridge that carried Dane Road over the canal is a possibility, but south of the bridge the canal then kinks before its more than two kilometre run across Sale Moor, thus cutting off the south-west view. It seems more likely that he was standing beneath the bridge carrying what is now Northenden Road over the canal. From here there is a long view as far as Timperley, where the canal turns towards Broadheath in Altrincham, taking in the canal bridges at Marsland Road and Park Road, both of which were originally built in the 1760s.
The conundrum is where was the church with its steeple, framed by these bridges. The most likely candidate is the medieval parish church of St Mary’s in Bowdon. This lies on a direct line with the canal as it crosses Sale Moor (did the canal surveyors use it as a marked?). However, there are two problems. Firstly, is does not appear to have ever had a steeple (not even the later rebuilt Victorian church). Secondly, although it lies at the highest point of Bowdon Hill, this is on the southern side of the eminence and so it can’t be seen from the canal side in Sale; not even from the Northenden Road bridge. There are no other churches along the route of the canal in the 1760s, so what was Young looking at? His phrasing may simply have been an acknowledgement that the church was on the same alignment as this stretch of canal. Artistically it ought to be visible from the canal, as that would fit the Romanitic view of landscapes prevalent in the mid-18th century. Even without the sight of the church on Bowdon Hill, the view from the Northenden Road canal bridge southwards still catches the breath – at any season.
