More Narrow Canal Wanderings

There are few things more likely to pique my interest than a nice bit of brownfield. If it has that wartime look - red brick, dodgy mortar, utilitarian fittings, lashings of concrete, indeterminate purpose - I can pick over it for ages.
These anomalous structures are to be found by the towpath at Greenfield. I suspect they're something to do with a waterworks, but that's a guess. If anyone can fill in the details I'd be grateful.

A thing at Mossley. Quite nice as such things go, and tucked away at the back of some terrace houses, rather than making a big gesture outside a town hall or petro-chemical company headquarters where such things are usually sited. The nearby telephone wires lend it a Festival of Britain feel.

A mill at Mossley. All human life is there, as the News of the World used to say. Some alarming subsidence, too. The café looks good, though it's an effort to get to, and there are signs to another one in the vicinity.

Saddleworth Pounds

Some things are lost forever. Others go to sleep and are only awoken with much effort. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal slumbered from the 1920s and was officially closed by the LMS railway in 1944. LTC Rolt, canal and rail enthusiast and sometime ghost story writer piloted, but often dragged a boat through in 1948, and a coal merchant was reputed to use a short section into the 1950's but by then it was broken down, dried out and largely filled in until re-opening for business - the leisure business that is - with the new millennium. Look it up, it's interesting stuff. We're heading westwards, towards the Standedge canal tunnel.

This is the new marina that backs onto Tesco at Greenfield, accessed by a lifting bridge from the canal. The fenced off area has "Deep Water" warnings, presumably from a former mill pond behind it, but it looks dry and ripe for development. Note strategically placed tree looking forlorn against the thriving feral saplings to the rear. "Pots and Pans" war memorial in the distance.


The Saddleworth villages are commuting hotspots to Manchester with prices to match, and Uppermill is no exception. The red plastic installation may be a bank repair or a textile artwork.


Railway, canal, river - the usual Pennine Valley business. Less common that each are intact.


Poo bin and Victorian industrial monumentalism. A moment's silence for all the viaducts that didn't survive Beeching's mischief and institutional myopia, please.


Disused mill seen through a line of chancer saplings. The Arthur Rackham tree on the left looks suitably disapproving of the upstarts. Canal bank to front.


Past trades arts feature under new bridge. Shame it's not an exhibition space, I bet lots of artists would like to work with those reflections.


W.H. Shaw, Diggle. A pallet works for 37 years, closed now. Ruritanian clock tower and hillside. Previously Dobcross Looms, now to be a school.


Pallets, extinct.


If these weren't railway sheds, they should have been.


Warth Mills (1919), now home to a variety of businesses including skip hire, a perennial of the post industrial landscape.


Also a café in there somewhere.


The ducks are standing on the entrance to the Standedge canal tunnel. The train enters a little further on.


Reverse view.

Re-alignment

Marsden. Dead platform on your left. Alight here for the past, mind the gap. The goods yard metals thwarted by birch trees, the impermanent way ends in the car park. 
Over the cut and into the tunnel. Vinyl advertisements taunt the souls of navigators, an abyss of 3 miles and 60 yards into Lancashire. Electrification is on the agenda.

The express gets a lick on. Two seas to gather and no time to wait. The shutter turns the timetable to Ogham.