Phill Rawlins Online - Manchester aviation and transport photography

Around Eccles and Barton

The townships beside the Ship Canal: Eccles, Barton, Peel Green and Worsley, photographed from the air and from the towpath.

Eccles and the villages around it sit on the north bank of the Ship Canal, between Salford and Trafford Park. Click any photograph for a larger view.

The canal at Eccles and Barton

The swing bridges at Barton opening to let a ship pass along the Manchester Ship Canal
The swing bridges at Barton opening. The road bridge swings through ninety degrees to lie along the canal bank, letting shipping through and stopping the A57. See the Ship Canal history for why the aqueduct beside it is unique.
Aerial view of the Barton swing bridges and aqueduct
Barton from the air. The road swing bridge and the Bridgewater Canal’s swing aqueduct side by side, with Barton Aerodrome on the far bank.
Aerial view of Mode Wheel Locks on the Manchester Ship Canal near Eccles
Mode Wheel Locks. The last set of locks on the canal, a short distance upstream of Eccles, where ships are raised to the level of the terminal docks at Salford.

Peel Green and Worsley

Aerial view of Peel Green, between Eccles and Barton
Peel Green. Between Eccles and Barton, with the Ship Canal and the M60 close by. The original page also carried a photograph of Eccles town centre, which has not survived.
The brick and stone monument at Worsley Delph
Worsley Delph. The monument marking the entrance to the Duke of Bridgewater’s underground canals, cut from 1765 to drain and work the coal mines beneath the estate. Boats entered the hillside here and travelled for miles underground.

About Eccles and Barton

Eccles grew as a textile town, with silk weaving, spinning and dyeing before the Ship Canal arrived. The canal then cut straight through the district in the 1890s, separating Eccles from Barton and requiring the extraordinary collection of bridges at Barton to keep the roads and the Bridgewater Canal connected.

Barton itself is best known today for two things: the aerodrome, which was built by Manchester Corporation in 1927 as the first municipal airport in the country, and the swing bridges. Both are covered elsewhere in this archive — see Barton Aerodrome and its surroundings.

Worsley and the underground canals

Worsley Delph is where the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal system begins. From 1765, boats entered the hillside here and worked the coal seams underground, in a network of tunnels that eventually ran for around 46 miles. It was the first true industrial canal system in the country, and it made the Bridgewater Canal profitable enough to change how the whole of England moved coal.

This page and its history

Around Eccles and Barton was linked from the gallery index but never completed, and served a 404 message for its entire life. It has now been written with the photographs that survive in the archive, and the missing ones are noted rather than substituted.