Heavy Lifting

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Anderton Boat Lift

With nice sunny days and good weather on the canals, we have made very good time, and have arrived back in Anderton on Thursday afternoon, so we had time to schedule a trip down and up the Anderton Boat lift.

The boat lift was an engineer’s answer to how to move boats from the River Weaver which was used to bring cargo to and from the ocean ports, and the Trent & Mersey Canal which ran almost beside the river. The problem however was that where rivers tend to flow through the lowest part of the land, the canals were always higher as they were man made and built on a level plane between the low and the high, with cuts and tunnels through the hills, and embankments over the low areas. The result was a 50 foot difference between the canal and the river. The other options were an expensive and water wasting flight of locks, or an inclined plane which was expensive to build and run.

Entering the Lift

The boat lift is pretty simple; you build a metal tower supporting two watertight chambers (Caissons) that would hold two narrow boats each. You drive boats on one caisson at the river height and drive boats on above at the canal. The weight of each caisson is the same so it took very little power to utilize hydraulics to pump water from the bottom caisson which caused the top one to drop and then natural hydraulics took over, making them exchange heights. A huge engineering feat for it’s day, but it worked perfectly from 1875 to 1908, when the hydraulic system broke down and was replaced with a system of electric engines and heavy counterweights. This worked until 1983 then the whole thing jammed and was shut down. Unfortunately it sounds like the lift was operated originally with very little routine maintenance, and this caused problems. Fortunately dedicated volunteers rebuilt the whole thing and restored it back to the original hydraulic system only using oil rather than river water.

Looking WAY Down

The lift is not quick; it took us over two hours to go down, turn around and come back up. It is however a pretty impressive experience to drive your boat into a container of water and be lowered 50 feet down inside a big black metal structure. We went down in a caisson by ourselves, but coming back up we were with two smaller power boats out for a weekend on the canals. 

The lift is lovingly worked and maintained by a dedicated group of volunteers who keep it working smoothly. There is no cost to use the lift unless you wish to reserve a specific time and then it is only 5£ per trip. I am glad we got back in time to experience it

Filling The Day

We had almost two full days in Anderton before we pick up the boat and begin our actual boat trip, This gives us time to find everything and get supplies for on the boat as well as giving us some room incase of delays etc. As a result, we had a day here with nothing planned to do.

The day began with an “English Breakfast”, and anyone familiar with these knows that it is an overwhelming meal which results in having no room for food all day. It did however give us time to plan how to fill and unplanned day. Fortunately, the cheerful waitress at the B & B had a couple of useful suggestions, including a castle, and Regis simply cannot pass up a castle visit.

 

Going UP!

Going in.

Our day started with a visit to the Anderton Boat Lift. This is what happens when you challenge Industrial Revolution engineers with a problem. The Canal which was used to transport pottery and goods around the Midlands, was 50 feet above the River Weaver which connected to the ocean. Both were busy transportation routes, but goods transferring between the two had to be unloaded, carted up the hill and reloaded (And vice-versa of course). The solution to this problem was to build a “lift” to take the boats from the one to the other. Simplifying it a bit, the boats are floated into a tub of water, which is then lifted or lowered by hydraulics to the other level. Two of these tubs operate side-by-side, thus creating a balance and actually used very little energy. Originally operated by water hydraulics, this proved to be very corrosive due to the salt and chemicals in the water due to industry in the area. The system was converted to counter-balanced weights powered by electric motors, but this finally jammed and shut the lift down. It sat rusting for years, but has recently been restored and is now operated by oil hydraulics. We watched a couple of boats being moved up and down, and it is a fascinating process which we hope to fit into our schedule at the end of the trip.

What a View

Next we took Regis out to her castle. This was an amazing visit. The Beeston Castle sits on a beautiful 40 acre hill with a view over 60 miles of English countryside. You can imagine how this 4000 year old castle could control the entire area. Unfortunately it was not invincible, and lost to a siege and was mostly demolished, so is mostly a ruin now.

Pretty well exhausted from a day with nothing to do, we required a visit to a nice English pub for a good beer and some pub food to recover from the day.