Exploring secrets of the canals

The team is nearing the end of a project to investigate the material and cultural heritage assets of Manchester’s canals. The European Waterways Heritages (EuWatHer) project is a two-year EU-funded project across four countries. The UK team at Brighton is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

They have looked at everything from developers’ brochures to 19^th century novels to understand what resources are available to local groups wanting to develop their canal heritage. The EuWatHer project will create a tool kit for community groups, local tourism teams and canal management bodies across Europe to use.

The heritage of minor canals and rivers is an under-used resource across Europe, as an earlier project by Brighton discovered with research by Professor Andrew Church, Professor Neil Ravenscroft and Dr Paul Gilchrist.

A canal in Yorkshire enjoyed by local people

Abigail Wincott

Abigail Wincott, Senior Lecturer, Broadcast Media & Broadcast Journalism in the university’s College of Arts and Humanities, is undertaking EuWatHer with Dr Gilchrist, and with Professor Ravenscroft as lead.

She said: “Many groups have great hopes their historic canals can help them with everything from economic regeneration to community resilience and green transport.

“There are many problems facing communities hoping to exploit their waterway heritage including perceptions of canals as crime-ridden or polluted and the loss of many old structures and even whole streets which have been demolished to make way for large-scale regeneration projects.

“We found that Manchester’s heritage development has been dominated by the cotton industry, influencing the design of new buildings and shaping decisions about what to protect and what to demolish.

“This industrial heritage not always celebratory – many accounts tell of poverty, exploitation and pollution, but far from addressing social wrongs, these prurient portrayals can end up reinforcing ideas about the majesty and power of rich industrialists and landowners, while the majority of ordinary Mancunians are reduced to a faceless and passive crowd.

“They also reinforce the idea of canals as dirty and industrial, while they actually have a long history as a focus for leisure.”

The Brighton researchers have worked with local groups, designing and producing three multimedia heritage trails for Ancoats, Holt Town and Ashton-under-Lyne.

Avoiding the usual tales of the cotton industry, one trail has an ‘invisible heritage’ theme featuring sounds and smells of Manchester past, like a 19^th century corruption scandal, involving sewage. Another is an entirely ‘underground’ heritage trail, pointing out the location of underground rivers, canals and even pubs.

The team hope the points of interest will tempt even knowledgeable locals to walk the canals and learn to love these under-appreciated parts of Greater Manchester.

The trails are available on the Izi.travel website and mobile app, and will soon be released on a bespoke app, designed by colleagues in the Netherlands. The materials have been uploaded to a database and GIS maps, which can be handed over to local organisations to continue to produce their own heritage itineraries and allow them to capitalise on the unique heritage of Britain’s canal network.

Rochdale canal