Phill Rawlins Online - Manchester aviation and transport photography

Around Barton Aerodrome

The airfield in its surroundings: the hangar and apron, the canal, the swing bridges and the flat Salford land the aerodrome was built on.

Below are photographs taken around Barton Aerodrome. Click on any image for a larger version.

The airfield in its setting

Sunset over the airfield at Barton, with the control tower and parked aircraft silhouetted
Last light at Barton. Aircraft parked on the grass with the control tower on the left and the taxiway markings in the foreground. This is the closest surviving frame to the “last landings” view the original page intended to show.
Aerial view of the hangar, apron and grass airfield at Barton with two helicopters
The hangar and apron. Barton from the air: the hangar, the concrete apron, the force helicopter on its pad and the grass airfield beyond.
Aerial view of the swing bridges and aqueduct at Barton
The swing bridges at Barton. The Bridgewater Canal crosses the Ship Canal here on the only swing aqueduct in the world, with the road swing bridge alongside.
The swing bridges at Barton opening to allow a ship through
Bridges open. The road bridge swung round to lie along the bank, waiting for a ship to pass.
Aerial view of Peel Green between Eccles and Barton
Peel Green. The land between Eccles and Barton, with the Ship Canal and the M60 close by.
Aerial view of Mode Wheel Locks on the Manchester Ship Canal
Mode Wheel Locks. Upstream of Barton, the last set of locks before the terminal docks at Salford.

What is around the aerodrome

Barton sits on flat ground between the Manchester Ship Canal and the Bridgewater Canal, with the M60 motorway and the A57 close by. It is an entirely man-made landscape: the canal cut through here in the 1890s, the motorway arrived in the 1970s, and the aerodrome itself was laid out on what had been farmland in 1927.

The most interesting thing to photograph around Barton is not the airfield but the canal next to it, and in particular the pair of bridges at Barton. The Swing Aqueduct carries the Bridgewater Canal across the Ship Canal in a trough of water that swings through ninety degrees, and it is the only structure of its kind anywhere in the world. Beside it, the road swing bridge does the same job for the A57. Both were built to replace Brindley’s 1767 aqueduct, part of which survives.

About this page

Around Barton was linked from the Barton Aerodrome page from the beginning but was never finished: for its entire life it served a 404 message instead of photographs. It has now been written properly, using the images that survive in the archive.

The original version of this page was intended to carry six photographs of the airfield itself, captioned as two views of the control tower, the Pemberton hangar with the aircraft packed in, Barton from the air, last landings, and a view across the aerodrome. Those six files were never captured by the Internet Archive, and no copies are known to exist. Rather than substitute unrelated pictures for them, this page shows what does survive and says what is missing.

Can you help? If you hold copies of any Barton Aerodrome photographs from 2002 to 2004, particularly of the control tower or the Pemberton hangar, please get in touch. This page was built to display them.

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