Tuesday 17^th March 2020

After watering up and emptying the loo, we left Chester Basin en-route for Ellesmere Port. There are all kinds of stories of boats getting into trouble running into the Port, and only yesterday we spoke to a boat that had kids in hoodies throwing bricks at them from a bridge and running over submerged debris in another bridge hole, most likely yet another shopping trolley.

This is an aspect of this boating life that is unfortunate and boats are easy targets for thieves and scallies and some people do feel vulnerable, which must be awful. However, we do maintain that a lot of the time, it can be down to simply how you approach people and situations and the individual’s perception of risk. So far, luckily, we have had no problems. However, I was brought up in Ellesmere Port and know first-hand what a shit hole the place was, is and always will be, so awareness is key.

Anyway, we have a contingency plan in instances of trouble. I set Brenda, with her tact and diplomacy, on them.

Following last week’s route, beyond the Cheshire Oaks, the outskirts of the Port are reached. Ellesmere Port owes its very existence to the canal. The fishing village of Netherpool was designated as the Merseyside terminus of the Ellesmere Canal. Netherpool was renamed Ellesmere Port with the completion of the Wirral Line of the canal in 1795. Originally, the canal joined the River Mersey. Cargoes were transhipped at Ellesmere Port for onward carriage by sea and ferries took passengers across the river to Liverpool. The construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, severed the junction between the two and the canal now links with the Ship Canal. 

Ellesmere Port continued to be a small place, centred around the canal and extending only as far as the railway line until, in the 1950’s, it became an overspill for Liverpool and the population, and the size of the town, expanded rapidly.

My family moved from Birkenhead, where I was born, to the Port in 1961. We lived at 8 Bridge Street, in what was known as the ‘Old End of the Port’, until the whole area was demolished to make way for the M53 Motorway in 1969, when we moved to Great Sutton which, by this time, had become a suburb of the Port.

Bridge Street circa 1960’s

No.8 fourth set of windows down, Powell’s Bridge visible at end of the street

It is after this Bridge Street that the boat is named and the bridge still exists as Powell’s Bridge 147, although all else has long since disappeared. When our boys were little and we visited family, we used to always tell them to brace themselves for the bump and then tell them that was us passing over our old back kitchen. They believed it for years.

While Ellesmere Port is not a particularly nice place, and doesn’t have much going for it, we, as a family were happy in the Old End of the Port, and it was a great place for a child to grow up in the 60’s with little constraints and a hell of a lot of freedom. My mother, I remember, was the only one who enjoyed the move to Great Sutton, as the house was much more modern than Bridge Street. The house in Bridge Street had no central heating or bathroom, the toilet was outside at the bottom of the yard, there was just the one tap in the house, a cold water tap in the kitchen and there was a massive black, cast iron range that took up the whole of one wall of the front room.    

We had last come into Ellesmere Port by boat about 15 years ago. The canal then was absolutely full of thick weed and passable only slowly and with care and a lot of fouling of the propeller. While the weed has largely disappeared, the route is still not particularly attractive once the outskirts of Ellesmere Port are reached.

It is fortunate though, that the route is open at all. When the motorway was being built, the plan was to fill the canal in and it was only because of the pressure exerted by the infant Canal Museum Society, that a tunnel was put in place for the canal to pass below the roadway, albeit a very narrow tunnel.

After passing below the motorway twice in quick succession, Powell’s Bridge is reached and the museum immediately after. It felt very strange yet exciting, bringing Bridge Street beneath the bridge she is named after, with Brenda popping the cork of a bottle of Prosecco as we passed.

                                        

                                                                                         Powell’s Bridge 147                                                       

                                                                             Brenda popping a cork below the Bridge

At the museum, we dropped down the two locks into the bottom basin to moor safely. There is a submerged wreck directly opposite the bottom lock and passage out of the lock is quite tricky because of it. At first there did not seem to be any available moorings and we finished up doing a complete doughnut in the basin before seeing a mooring only to find, after manoeuvring to get between moored boats, that the space was too small and having to reverse out. We then noticed another mooring space between the derelict ICI boat Cuddington, and another narrowboat, into which we managed to reverse with our back end up against a boom. It is a shame there are so few moorings in what could, and should, be a popular place, when the majority of the basin is empty with booms across, preventing boats entering that part of the basin. Apparently, the empty section is owned by the local council who do not allow mooring. A ridiculous and short sighted mind-set when it is considered how much revenue a canal brings into any local economy.

Moored in Ellesmere Port Boat Museum Lower Basin beside ICI Cuddington

Once the boat was moored, we finished the Prosecco and pondered our arrival in Ellesmere Port. Our intention, once the boat had been launched in Swanley Bridge Marina on the Llangollen Canal in May 2018, was to have travelled to Ellesmere Port and christen the boat under Powell’s Bridge before returning to Middlewich in time for the Folk and Boat Festival. However, the launching was delayed by over 6 months, the boat builder then didn’t come near us for 3 weeks and the canal breached on the Middlewich Branch necessitating a journey of over 100 miles and almost 100 locks instead of just 12 miles and 8 locks. With time constraints, this meant we had to cancel the run into the Port. We had then intended to travel back after the Folk and Boat to christen the boat but water shortages and the continuing breach made it impossible and it has taken this long to complete the journey.

The mooring is on Boat Museum property and a fee is incurred so we walked up to the museum office to pay. Just £4 per night with our CRT membership cards. This includes entry to the museum around which we walked on the way back to the boat. For any canal enthusiast the place is a real must. It was also my playground as a kid and I remember it all so well.  

The museum site is 7 acres in size and includes a glorious collection of canal buildings with double locks between the upper and lower basins, with a further set of locks down to the level of the Manchester Ship Canal.

       

       

The buildings around the upper basin consist of, amongst others, a large warehouse containing the main museum artefacts. These are some fascinating items including the narrowboat ‘Freindship’ last owned by Josh Skinner, the last ‘Number One’ owner-skipper. There are also a boiler and pump room, stables, a working blacksmith, a powerhouse with many vintage engines in running order and a small terrace of cottages.

Ellesmere Port was one of the first hydraulically powered industrial sites in the world when the system was installed in 1873. It consisted of steam powered pumps delivering water under pressure into an accumulator tower that contained two chambers. The water raised a float within the chamber and, when filled, the pressure exerted by the float was piped around the site and operated cranes and winches. While the system itself is no longer in operation, much of the machinery has been restored and much of the original pipework is still in place.  

The double locks between the upper and lower basins are both narrow and wide gauge reflecting the traffic in the past.

The lower basin connects with the Ship Canal through a further lock and used to have a range of warehouses with massive flour mills beside the basin, served by a grain elevator direct from Ellesmere Port Docks. All have now disappeared and the basin is now surrounded with apartment blocks and a Holiday Inn Hotel, all sympathetically built to resembled Victorian warehousing.

In the centre of the basin itself there used to be three huge, brick built warehouses, three floors high and supported on two islands with graceful elliptical arches between, beneath which boats could be loaded and unloaded through trapdoors in the warehouse floors. These warehouses, known as Telford’s Warehouses, were unique to the canal system but were tragically lost due to arson in 1970, supposedly by local youths.

Telford’s Warehouses, tragically lost due to Arson in 1970

In both the upper and lower basins are a range of restored boats. The museum has many more boats awaiting restoration but these are no longer on site being stored in a warehouse on a local industrial site. The museum looks so much better for having had these removed. They used to portray a very sad and neglected looking site.  

In the evening we heard and felt a strange vibration in the air. We could not understand this feeling until we looked outside, only to see the superstructure, funnel and cranes of a large ship passing by on the Ship Canal and towering above the five-story high canal-side apartment block.

Weather: a lovely spring day

Day Total: 2 locks; 8 miles; 0 Tunnels; 0 Swing Bridges; 0 Lift Bridges; 0 Boat Lift; Day’s running hours 3.7 

Overall Total: 889 locks; 1565 miles; 53 tunnels; 61 Swing Bridges; 17 Lift Bridges; 2 Boat Lifts; total engine running hours 1055.8