The Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal was built to link Bolton and Bury with Manchester. The canal, when fully opened, was 15 miles 1 furlong (24.3 km) long. It was accessed via a junction with the River Irwell in Salford. Seventeen locks were required to climb to the summit as it passed through Pendleton, heading northwest to Prestolee before it split northwest to Bolton and northeast to Bury. Between Bolton and Bury the canal was on the same level and required no locks. Six aqueducts were built to allow the canal to cross the rivers Irwell and Tonge, as well as various minor roads.
The canal was commissioned in 1791 by local landowners and businessmen and built between 1791 and 1808, during the Golden Age of canal building, at a cost of £127,700. Originally designed for narrow gauge boats, the canal was altered during its construction into a broad gauge canal to allow an ultimately unrealised connection with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The canal company was later converted into a railway company and built a railway line close to the canal's path, which required modifications to the Salford arm of the canal.
The majority of the freight carried was coal from local collieries but, as the mines reached the end of their working lives, sections of the canal fell into disuse and disrepair and it was officially abandoned in 1961. In 1987, a society was formed with the aim of restoring the canal for leisure use and, in 2006, restoration began in the area around the junction with the River Irwell in Salford.
Prestolee Aqueduct is a stone-built aqueduct in Prestolee in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester. The four-arch structure was constructed in the 1790s to carry the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal across the River Irwell. It is now preserved as a Grade II listed building.
The aqueduct is one of two remaining major structures on the canal, the other being the Clifton Aqueduct. A third major aqueduct, Damside Aqueduct, was demolished in the 1950s.
Up to 2007, the aqueduct still carried water, although it was not navigable, as adjoining sections of the canal were in need of restoration.
By Road: Either from Little Lever High Street (A6053) along Myrtham Road and Boscow Road, or from Prestolee Road off the A667.
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