Route
The Ashton leaves the Rochdale Canal at Ducie St. Junction in central Manchester, and climbs for 6.7 miles (10.8 km) through 18 locks, passing through Ancoats, Holt Town, Bradford-with-Beswick, Clayton, Openshaw, Droylsden, Fairfield and Audenshaw to make a head-on junction with the Huddersfield Narrow Canal (formerly the Huddersfield Canal) at Whitelands Basin in the centre of Ashton-under-Lyne. At Bradford, the canal passes by the venue of the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
Apart from the Rochdale and Huddersfield Narrow canals, the Ashton Canal only currently connects with one other canal. Just short of Whitelands, at Dukinfield Junction/Portland Basin a short arm crosses the river Tame on the Tame Aqueduct, and makes a head-on junction with the Peak Forest Canal.
There used to be four other important connections to branch canals: the Islington Branch Canal in Ancoats; the Stockport Branch Canal from Clayton to Stockport (Heaton Norris); the Hollinwood Branch Canal from Fairfield to Hollinwood; and the Fairbottom Branch Canal (itself a branch of the Hollinwood Branch Canal) from Waterhouses to Fairbottom. There was to have been a fifth branch, namely the Beat Bank Branch Canal (itself a branch of Stockport Branch Canal) from Reddish to Beat Bank in Denton, but this was abandoned before completion.
Many of the canal locks are now listed buildings.
Read more about this topic: Ashton Canal
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