Bygone Burnley: Finsley Gate Wharf and the Burnley Embankment

Burnley Express

Bygone Burnley: Finsley Gate Wharf and the Burnley Embankment, with Roger Frost MBE 26-11-24

Transcript

00:00Today we're at Turnbridge, which is on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Burnley.

00:06It's called Turnbridge because the bridge behind me originally was at canal level.

00:12It wasn't at higher level, the road level.

00:17It was lower down and it was on an axis. It turned on an axis.

00:23That was so that it could allow boats and barges through.

00:28But the whole area became known as Turnbridge.

00:32It's a name which is now not used a great deal.

00:35But the bridge was rebuilt in the mid-1880s and it was built as we see it now.

00:43So that is well over 100 years old.

00:46But the original one, at canal level, it didn't allow the expansion of Burnley beyond the canal.

00:58Buses, large vehicles couldn't use it easily.

01:04So this was a big improvement when it came into being.

01:10We're on the banks of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal again.

01:13And we're at Finsley Wharf.

01:16Now Finsley Wharf is a development built by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Company.

01:23And it dates from right at the end of the 18th century.

01:29And it was originally a warehouse but then it was converted into the canal company's workshops.

01:40And what we've got on the opposite bank, if I can point them out,

01:44are an 18th century house which you can now hire and stay over the weekend.

01:51Then there is a small single-storey building which was the canal company's blacksmith shop and smithy.

02:02And then the next building was the warehouse, a double-fronted warehouse,

02:08which was converted into a big workshop for the canal company.

02:13And they maintained the canal, its bridges, tunnels, etc.

02:19because there are two tunnels in the Burnley area.

02:22The next building is the third one in that sequence, the one with the pointed roof.

02:29And that was a workshop for the canal company.

02:32And the third one is a brick building, Burnley Bricks,

02:35that was constructed between the two buildings making a complete sequence of workshops.

02:44It was very active in the days that the canal company, this part of the canal, was run from this area.

02:52Then to add to that, in the trees behind there was a mineral railway line

02:58that connected the townly collieries to the canal.

03:02Here there was the point where coal was put into the canal from the railway line.

03:11And in addition to that, where the little shrubbery is beside the canal bank,

03:17that was a boat building yard and boat maintenance yard.

03:21So Finsley Wharf was a real hive of canal activity throughout the 19th century,

03:29right up to the end of the Second World War.

03:33We are standing on the towpath at the Leeds Liverpool Canal in Burnley.

03:41What we are actually standing on though is the Burnley Embankment,

03:46one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways.

03:49It was built to connect the two stretches of canal.

03:56The bit that comes into Burnley from the Pendleside was constructed and finished in 1796.

04:04But then they started building the Embankment here, which is a big engineering project.

04:10And we have got full accounts of the building work.

04:15It was the most impressive engineering works ever constructed in Burnley up to the time.

04:23And it was built in a straight line to connect either side of the Calder Valley.

04:30So the Embankment, which is also known as the Straight Mile, it's not quite a mile,

04:36was built to cover the...

04:42Sorry, lost it.

04:44The Embankment was built to connect these two stretches of the canal in a straight line.

04:52A straight line is the shortest distance.

04:55But in doing so, they crossed the Culvert and Yorkshire Street.

05:02So we ended up with two bridges.

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