River Weaver

The River Weaver is very much Cheshire’s river, running wholly within the boundaries of the county. It rises near Peckforton, running first south-east, passing under the Llangollen Canal at Wrenbury, then east through Audlem just below the locks, and north-east through Nantwich. It becomes navigable at Winsford and continues north to Northwich, where it finally turns west to join the estuary of the River Mersey at Frodsham.

It is probable that small boats have used the lower reaches since earliest times, despite the presence on a 1720 map of 26 fords and three weirs between Frodsham and Winsford.

The Story of Salt

Natural brine springs occur in the area around Northwich, and boiling the brine drives off the water to leave crystals of white salt, a valuable commodity. During a search for coal in 1670 a bed of rock salt was found at Marbury, and before long many small pits had been set up to extract the rock salt along the banks of the River Weaver and Witton Brook near Northwich.

The rock salt would have been taken by small boat, pack horse or cart to Pickerings or Frodsham and then by boat to Liverpool, where it was added to sea water to increase its salt content before boiling it to make salt. There was money to be made from the export of salt, and Liverpool was expanding rapidly as a port. After several unsuccessful attempts, a Bill to make the Weaver navigable as far as Winsford was passed by Parliament in 1721, earlier attempts by the merchants from Liverpool being thwarted by the gentlemen of Cheshire.

The Navigation

Finally begun in 1730, the first navigation works were not extensive. Eleven simple timber locks with adjacent weirs were built in the natural course of the river, giving sufficient depth for boats to carry probably 30–40 tons at a time. Navigation all the way to Winsford was possible 3 years later.

The tidal limit of the river was still at Pickerings, where the lowest lock was built. Boats had to wait there for the incoming tide, and it might take several tides to reach Liverpool – and the same to return. In 1757 the Liverpool merchants asked their dock engineer to look at making some improvements.

Henry Berry, Thomas Steer’s assistant, came to the Weaver straight from having successfully engineered the Sankey Brook Navigation to the St Helens coalfields. His skill seemed to desert him on the Weaver, as his first lock and weir at Pickerings were founded on quicksand and did not last long, water passing beneath the weir, and the walls of the lock moving as it was filled and emptied. A new lock was soon built only a few yards away. The new man-made cut here bypassed a particularly tortuous section of the old river course, significant as until 1790 boats were either sailed or hauled by manpower.

Up to this time the navigation had been under the control of the original three Undertakers, reporting to a body of 86 Commissioners, who sat in judgment in any land disputes. Lack of faith in their abilities led to them being replaced in 1760 by 105 Trustees, drawn from the ranks of Cheshire gentlemen, under whose guidance the navigation was run as a non-profit-making enterprise. Any surplus went to defray the Cheshire rates, being intended to be spent on bridge and road repair.

Saltersford Locks, seen here, were built by the Weaver Navigation workmen themselves, with some extra labour taken on for the duration of the works, but Dutton Locks were built by Glaswegian contractors, and two police constables had to be employed for virtually the whole of the construction period to keep order. Waterways Archive

From 1760 to 1802 new stone locks in hand-dug ‘cuts’ gradually replaced the old timber locks, often considerably shortening the journey by cutting off some of the worst meanders. Where possible they also bypassed the existing stone bridges to save ‘flats’ (the local name for Weaver barges) from having to lower their masts to pass underneath. Instead, swing bridges were built to carry the roads across the new cuts. Waterways Archive

Frodsham in 1720. There was a port here from very early times, with a quay, a salt works and a cheese warehouse, from which Cheshire cheese was exported to London. On high tides small sea-going boats could reach some 4 miles up the river from Frodsham to Pickerings o’ th’ boat, where a small community became established around a wharf and a warehouse. Chester Record Office D5514

Trent & Mersey Canal

As might be expected, the arrival of the Trent & Mersey Canal in 1777 brought changes. Winsford had by this time become the chief inland port serving the Potteries, but the new canal passed right through the Potteries and took away all the traffic. The Weaver Trustees had hoped that the canal would join up with the Weaver at Northwich and use the river’s course to link with Liverpool, but it was not to be; instead it joined the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal from Manchester to Runcorn.

The Trustees responded by building a warehouse at Broken Cross and a road from there to Castle, Northwich, where a second warehouse was built. The idea was that goods would be transhipped between the two waterways by road, but the idea was not a success. By 1790 a new transhipment point had been opened at Anderton, where the river and canal came closest together, although with a 50ft height difference. Chutes and balanced inclined planes were built to handle the traffic, mainly coal and salt.

Frodsham Lock and the Weston Canal

Due to pressure from the traders using the river, a new cut and lock were opened at Frodsham, just upstream of the bridge, in 1781. This was 3 miles lower down the river than Pickerings, and although boats still had to wait for the incoming tide, the tidal window was longer and they could now expect to reach Liverpool on the same tide.

A further improvement was the opening in 1810 of the 4-mile Weston Canal from the river above Frodsham Lock to Weston Point. At Weston Point was a deep water channel which allowed access to the Mersey on every tide. A holding basin with a pair of half tide gates connected with the Mersey, and a stop lock connected the basin to the Weston Canal. The canal joined the Weaver at Sutton Level Lock, the gates here normally being left open. They could be closed in the case of a flood or a high tide rolling up the river and topping Frodsham weir, or the river being drained for maintenance. On completion of the canal Thomas Telford was engaged to inspect the works, and his damning report led to the sacking of the engineer/manager responsible and Telford being engaged as engineer in his place, with Samuel Fowls as his assistant on site. Some of Telford’s drawings for the protection of what was then a sea wall between the Weston Canal and the Mersey survive, and some of this wall can still be identified from the Manchester Ship Canal today.

Improvements to the navigation also involved the digging of extensive new cuts, such as Barnton Cut in the 1830s, to further straighten out the navigation, and by the end of the century the distance from Winsford to Frodsham had been reduced from 26½ to 17 miles.

The salt trade – coal upstream and white salt and rock salt downstream – was highly remunerative. By the middle of the 1800s sums of up to £25,000 a year were being handed over to the county. The Trustees continued to spend wisely on improvements, with new channels being dug, and duplicate locks being built alongside all the existing ones to speed up the flow of the traffic.

These locks were strongly built of Runcorn sandstone, Anglesey limestone and locally made well-burnt brick, the latter being made on site from clay from the excavation or at the navigation’s brickworks at Cloughs, just upstream of Hunt’s Locks. The new locks were built slightly larger than the older ones, so of course the ship builders built larger boats, which would not pass through the older locks. There are records of lock rubbing courses and sills being chipped away to allow the passage of boats that were built just that little bit too large.

Anderton basin showing the chutes and inclined plane.

Frodsham Lock, from a report dated 1781. Waterways Archive

The remains of the last, by now rather subsided, Northwich Lock, closed in 1859, can still be seen just below Town Bridge. Colin Edmondson

Subsidence

Subsidence was a natural result of the salt trade. The early rock salt mines often collapsed; this happened right alongside Northwich Lock in 1759, when half the lock fell in to the river and floated away downstream. Cargoes had to be transhipped across a temporary dam. By the early 1800s the area around Northwich and Witton Brook was dotted with funnel-shaped craters full of water where mines had collapsed. The numerous salt works also pumped brine from underground brine streams, and as fresh water replaced the brine the rock salt was dissolved, undermining the marl above and leading to localised collapses. These collapses were frequent and sudden, and in later years many photographs were taken of holes in the roads and of sinking and leaning buildings around Northwich.

The discovery of a lower, much purer, bed of rock salt in 1790 led to extensive ‘bottom bed’ workings. Water from the surface sometimes found its way into these bottom bed mines, flooding them and leading to closure. Many of these mines were worked right up to their boundaries, so that flooding in one mine frequently led to flooding in the adjacent ones as well. Pumping of ‘mine brine’ soon commenced, and if this left the mine roof without support it might eventually collapse. This led to some spectacularly large holes appearing, which filled with water and became flashes; these joined together to make a lake which eventually measured over 160 acres.

Due to subsidence, Northwich Lock and weir were rebuilt in five different places over a period of 200 years. No sooner was a new one constructed on seemingly solid ground than it would start to sink. Two of these locks were sited well downstream of Northwich at different locations near the confluence of Witton Brook, with a canal being built from the lock parallel to the river and rejoining it at Northwich. It was not long before the ground at Witton Brook also sank, taking the lock down with it, on one occasion falling 6ft in a year.

Winsford too suffered from subsidence. The brine streams followed the same line below ground as the river above and the dissolving of the rock salt where the fresh water entered led to the formation of Winsford flashes and the sinking of a large portion of the town, which was eventually relocated to a safer site at the top of the hill. The bridge over the river had to be regularly jacked up and the courses of stone are now well off the horizontal; adding together all the times it was raised gives a figure of around 32ft of subsidence.

Runcorn & Weston Canal

The Runcorn & Weston Canal was opened in 1859 to link the Weston Canal with the docks at Runcorn, allowing river traffic to reach seagoing ships. At this time Weston Point was merely a holding basin where ships waited for the tide, although the old basin had gained a second entrance, and a new basin had been built on land reclaimed from the foreshore.

The Weaver Trustees looked at creating more accommodating dock facilities at Weston Point, and Delamere Dock, capable of handling the largest ships of the time, was opened in 1868 with great ceremony. Some thought was also given to making the river navigable for small sea-going ships, as steam coasters capable of carrying some 300 tons were beginning to make an appearance. This was not fully achieved until after the Second World War.

Steam Power Arrives

The River Weaver, and its connecting waterways, as portrayed by Bradshaw in the early 1830s. Waterways Archive

In 1864 the first steam-powered flat, the Experiment, made its appearance, quickly followed by others. It was soon realised that a steamer could tow up to three unpowered, or ‘dumb’, flats behind it instead of them relying on horses, but these trains had to be split up for the boats to pass singly through the locks which wasted a great deal of time.

The answer was to build larger locks, and a massive programme of modernisation was begun, starting with a new lock at Sutton Weaver at the east end of the Weston Canal. A new lock chamber over 200ft by 40ft was built, capable of handling a steamer and its tow of three flats. These locks were little used after 1891 following the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal across the mouth of the Weaver, and were bypassed in 1955.

It was unfortunate for the Weaver Trustees that the engineer responsible for all these new designs, Edward Leader Williams, left to join the Bridgewater Canal Company in 1872. The work that he had started was continued, beginning with new deep locks at Dutton and Saltersford. These locks had large chambers capable of handling four boats, with intermediate gates to save water when the whole lock was not needed. Alongside were narrower locks capable of taking one or two craft in line. Although the Weaver Navigation gives the appearance of a large river, the water supply was restricted and had to be carefully regulated.

These new large locks were built to a very high standard and had some unique features. The gates were opened and closed by turbines driven by the river itself. The turbines, two per gate, were geared down to capstan winches mounted below water level, from which chains pulled the gates open or shut. A clutch allowed the capstan not in use to be disengaged, when the chain would run out and lie on the bottom of the lock. Gates of this size were traditionally supported by a roller running on a stone track on the bottom of the lock, but the whole weight of these gates was hung from the gate strap, which meant a massive construction was required.

Also unique was the way that the water was let into and out of the locks, by means of ‘Stoney’s Patent Cylindrical Equilibrium Sluices’, quite a mouthful but an ingenious design. The simplest way to describe the principle is to imagine a toilet roll inner tube stood in a plug hole, lift it up and the water will run out through the annular gap at the bottom. Provided the water level is below the top of the tube there is no downward pressure, and as the water pushes in equally all round there is no friction either, allowing the carefully counterbalanced sluices to be easily lifted by one man. The programme of building new locks continued up-river of Northwich in the late 1880s with new locks at Hunt’s and Vale Royal.

Anderton Boat Lift

An aerial photograph of Vale Royal Locks, showing three lock chambers dating from 1792, the 1860s and 1889. The covers over the turbines and sluices can be clearly seen.

On completion of the lift at Anderton, narrowboats could be lowered to the river level and head off to Weston Point with their cargo, where they could tranship directly into seagoing vessels or onto the quay, returning to the Potteries laden with flint and china clay. Railway & Canal Historical Society

Dutton sluices were opened in 1881, and were able to pass very large volumes of flood water; they still do today. When these sluices were completed the incidence of raised water levels at Northwich reduced considerably, although they were still overwhelmed by the floods of February 1946. Waterways Archive

The steamer Decempedes at Winsford in 1904. By the late 1800s the Weaver was handling nearly one and a half million tons of salt, coal and other goods annually. The river valley from Newbridge to Winsford provided some two-thirds of the white salt. The river was lined on both banks with salt works; nearly 500 chimneys belched so much noxious smoke into the atmosphere that grass would not grow in the valley. Ruinous price wars and competition between manufacturers, which often led to salt being sold for well below its production cost, led to the establishment of the Salt Union in 1888. This led to a general reduction in the salt trade, made worse by the pumping of brine from Marston to a new salt works at Weston Point, thus bypassing the Weaver altogether. It was unfortunate that this took place while the Weaver Trustees were still paying off the loans taken out to fund the latest round of modernisation. Waterways Archive

The Weaver Trustees had always wanted to take more of the traffic that was passing along the canal to and from the Potteries. Transhipment between canal and river had been taking place at Anderton since the late 1700s, but a method was needed that could carry the whole boat, to save unloading and loading the cargoes.

The ingenious solution was an hydraulic lift, constructed in 1875 on an island at Anderton, connected by an aqueduct to the canal at the upper level. Two tanks, or caissons, full of water, were supported on top of two large hydraulic rams, the cylinders of which were connected together below the ground by a system of valves. The ends of the caissons and the aqueduct were sealed with guillotine-type gates to keep the water in, and a frame was built around the caissons to guide them accurately. In use a little extra water was added to the upper caisson, and a little let out of the lower one, the resulting weight imbalance providing the power to allow the caissons to exchange levels. The final adjustments were powered by a steam-driven hydraulic pump.

The ‘Big Freeze’ in 1895 saw one of the worst recorded frosts. The Weaver Trustees had an unusual way of dealing with the ice; it was first broken up by the steam tugs and hoppers, which had specially reinforced spoon shaped bows which would ride up on top of the ice and crush it. A hopper and a dumb barge would then be connected together side by side with a very long bow rope, forming a ‘V’. This combination would ‘sweep’ the broken ice downstream towards the sluices, where a shallow cap, or ‘ice weir’ would be opened, creating a surface current which would carry the ice out of the navigable channel into the adjacent old river course. In this manner they were able to keep traffic on the move when all other canals and navigations had been forced to close down. This practice was described in more detail in Winter 2008 NB. Waterways Archive

Water Management

Once the series of large locks was completed, attention was turned to control of the water flow. Unlike fixed weirs, in times of flood sluice gates allow the water to be rapidly moved down the river, and on dropping the sluices the river equally rapidly reverts to a virtually still-water navigation. New sluices were built at Vale Royal. At Hunt’s four were built on top of the existing weir, raising the water level another 4ft. Extra sluices added to the weir at Winnington and a new one at Barnton controlled the water in the Northwich pound.

After consultation with one of the most eminent consulting engineers of the day, Sir John Hawkshaw, the decision was taken to build a set of large new sluices alongside Dutton Locks, with a cross-sectional area larger than any other place on the river.Below: The Anderton Lift during conversion to counterbalanced operation in 1908. The hydraulic system used on the lift was originally filled with river water, resulting in problems with corrosion of the hydraulic rams; this led to a rebuild in 1908. A new structure was built above and around the existing one, and a system of pulleys installed on top. Wire ropes led from both sides of each caisson, over the pulleys and down to counterweights suspended from the wires. Each set of pulleys was driven by a small electric motor, and each tank could now be used independently. Colin Edmondson Collection

The Manchester Ship Canal

The next engineering milestone was the building of the Manchester Ship Canal, which was to be constructed right across the mouth of the Weaver. This problem was overcome by building and filling the ship canal in stages. Weston Marsh Lock was opened in 1891 close to Weston Point at Rocksavage. The Ship Canal was then filled with water up to a dam just beyond the lock, allowing a new shipping route to the docks while the canal was constructed past the tidal entrances.

The approaches to Sutton Weaver Locks, made redundant after they were bypassed in 1955, were used to dump unwanted boats as trade on the narrow canals declined. Carl Leckey

A drawing showing the pontoons, which lie beneath the surface of Hayhurst Bridge, opened in 1898. Colin Edmondson Collection

Opposite to the Weaver mouth a set of sluice gates was built to release flood water from the Weaver straight into the Mersey. Weston Mersey Lock was built in the sea wall between the Ship Canal and the Mersey opposite the dock entrances to allow traffic to cross the Ship Canal and enter the original river channels. When the tide was unsuitable, the boats could instead use the Ship Canal to Eastham on payment of the required toll.

New Trustees

A reorganisation of the Trustees in 1895 saw new members being drawn from the existing Trustees and from representatives of the traders and merchants and local councils who had a direct interest in the affairs. They continued to manage the navigation until the nationalisation of the transport system in 1948.

The Northwich Bridges

The old stone-built Town Bridge with its centre pier was replaced by an iron girder bridge in 1858. The town of Northwich and the surrounding area had continued to subside, and this was causing some real headaches for river users. The water level in the river remained the same, as Town Bridge slowly sank; unladen boats eventually had to take on ballast before they could pass underneath. The bridge was raised several times, until the approach ramps became so steep that horse-drawn carts were having trouble climbing them.

To avoid the town being split in two for a long period, a new swing bridge was built upstream of Town Bridge before the old bridge was removed. It was the first swing bridge in the country to be powered by electricity, and four submerged pontoons relieved the pivot of 255 tons of the total of 305 tons making it very easy to both swing and also to jack up if the ground subsided. Navigation Bridge, now Hayhurst, opened in 1898, and was followed by Town Bridge in 1899.

A new swing bridge, a larger version of those in Northwich, was opened across the river at Sutton Weaver in 1926, followed by the one at Acton Bridge in 1933. The existing single-track hand-operated bridges were slowly being battered to pieces by the rapidly increasing weight and speed of motor traffic, and every time a heavy vehicle such as a steam roller wanted to cross a bridge it first had to be packed up with timber wedges. The last bridge to be replaced was at Winnington, which was replaced with a single track steel span as the county council could not make a decision whether or not to pay the difference in cost of the construction of a larger bridge.

The First World War brought problems, timber was in short supply, and some construction methods had to be modified. The usual way of building bridges to carry the towing path over side streams was to drive in heavy timber piles, and then to construct a timber roadway across the top. The heavy timbers for this were no longer available, so when a new bridge was required to carry the towing path across the original river course below Dutton locks it had to be constructed from smaller section timbers laminated together to form arches, with the deck supported by a latticework of smaller timbers. So the problems of wartime supply led to the construction of one of the most elegant bridges on the river. Colin Edmondson

The old Acton Bridge swing bridge, with the Leigh Arms pub to the right. It was replaced by the present bridge in 1933. Colin Edmondson Collection

Saltersford Locks in February 1946, a time that stays in the minds of older Northwich residents as the year of the great flood. A very wet winter was followed by two weeks of virtually non-stop rain. Despite every sluice on the river being lifted, nature took over. The residents of the lockside houses at Saltersford and Dutton had very narrow escapes, with the flood water lapping round their door steps. The navigation structures stood up well to the onslaught, although a barge broke away and forced Hayhurst Bridge partly open. Compare this with the title photograph. Weaver Hall Museum, Northwich

Although Brunner Mond became part of the vast ICI industry in 1926, the diesel powered craft that plied the river under the ICI flag up until 1980 were still affectionately known as ‘Brunners’. Their last voyage was recorded in the May 1980 issue of Waterways World, and further photographs of traffic on the Weaver were published in December 2011 WW. Of the three remaining vessels seen here at Wallerscote, James Jackson Grundy, nearest the camera, is still in trade.

The 1930s saw plans to make Winsford a new inland port serving the Potteries. Two major obstructions prevented small sea-going vessels reaching Winsford, one of which was a swing footbridge across the river at Pickerings. Requiring an Act of Parliament to allow it to be closed, this was finally removed and the right of way re-routed across Dutton Locks in 1947.

The other major obstruction was a low stone bridge across the river at Hartford, and the construction of a new Northwich bypass allowed this to be removed and replaced with a high level bridge. One or two other bends had to be eased to make the river suitable for larger vessels to get all the way to Winsford, and the first coaster to take advantage of this tied up in Winsford in November 1949. An interesting wartime scheme was to extend the River Weaver Navigation by means of locks through Nantwich to Audlem, where the first of four lifts would have taken 100-ton capacity boats along the route of the Shropshire Union Canal all the way to the outskirts of the Black Country (Waterways World, December 2005). Needless to say, nothing came of this, and today commercial traffic on the river has effectively ceased.

Despite all the modernisation work, commercial seagoing ships rarely went further upriver than Anderton, where British Waterways built an inland depot. The entrance to the basin was widened to allow large coasters to turn to head back down river. The various wharves of the ICI chemical company were in regular use, dispatching, among other cargoes, soda ash from the loading plant at Wallerscote, seen here. This could handle the largest vessels that the Weaver could comfortably accommodate. The last commercial ship to use the navigation was the 750-tonne St Kearan, owned by J&A Gardner of Glasgow. She was built specially for the Weaver, and was regularly seen moored by Winnington Bridge whilst loading calcium chloride liquor for transport to Scotland. Weaver Hall Museum, Northwich

The River Weaver below Frodsham Bridge has never been a part of the Weaver Navigation, but until recently was still used by the grain barge Panary, which brings in 250 tons at a time for onward transportation to Manchester by lorry. She has recently been joined by the ex ICI Packet James Jackson Grundy built in Northwich in 1947 and now back in commercial use after many years as a cadet training vessel. Little other than narrowboat traffic moves on the rest of the river these days. Colin Edmondson