Welcome to the official home of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal Society

The official opening of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal has happened!

Here you can see the first boat entering the new deep lock.

For full details on the opening of the canal, click here.

For photos of the event, click here

Key Facts

• Canal Authorised by Act of Parliament in 1791
• Surveyed and Engineered by Matthew Fletcher
• Opened in 1797 - Salford locks completed in 1808, linking the canal to the River Irwell
• Length: 15 miles 1 furlong
• Summit level from Bolton to Bury; 17 locks descend to Salford: a drop of 187ft
• Maximum size of boats: 68' x 14' 2"
• Principal traffic was coal from numerous canalside collieries
• 20 tramroads linked the canal to other collieries
• Major features: Damside Aqueduct (demolished), Prestolee Locks (2 staircases of 3 locks), Prestolee and Clifton Aqueducts, steam crane at Mount Sion, Ringley lock house, quarter-milestones
• Originally designed as a narrow canal - widened during construction in order to be able to link with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Red Moss
• Extensions to Red Moss, Haslingden & Sladen proposed but not built
• Fletcher's Canal built c. 1791; connected to the MB&BC c. 1800
• Canal became a railway company in 1831, and built the Manchester to Bolton line in 1838. The canal passed to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway in 1847
• Sections became disused from 1924; major breach at Prestolee in 1936; canal formally closed in 1941 & 1961; last use in Bury in 1965
• Canal Society formed 1987
• Canal protected by Salford, Bolton & Bury local authorities in their Unitary Development Plans
• Restoration announced by British Waterways in 2002, work began in 2006