Today the Manchester & Salford Junction Canal is little more than a water feature at its beginning and end.  At the River Irwell end it sits between the Marriott Hotel and the car park behind Granada TV.  Hotel residents cross a wooden bascule bridge over this short section of canal to retrieve their cars.

The canal was built in 1839 to provide a link from the Rochdale Canal to the River Irwell and hence on to the Mersey.  With no physical link goods coming into Manchester via the Rochdale Canal had to be unloaded and transported over land to the Irwell - Mersey Navigation.



The canal started here close to Water Street and continued above ground for a short distance into what is now the Granada TV site.  Then it went underground beneath Deansgate and emerged again in the vicinity of what is today The Bridgewater Hall.  At a later date the Great Northern Warehouse complex and Central Station were built above the underground section of the canal.




Lifts existed under the Great Northern Warehouse to raise goods up into the goods yard.  The canal only operated for a relatively short time.  Eventually the Rochdale and Bridgewater Canals were joined eliminating the original problem.  Then the growth of the railway added further pressure on canal transportation.  The canal closed for business in 1922 but the underground tunnels were used during WWII as air raid shelters.

(The entrance into the Manchester & Salford Junction Canal can be see at "b" above.  The approximate course of the underground section is indicated by the dark blue line. The section in the vicinity of the Bridgewater Hall is shown at "c" above.)


Below is a photograph taken in 2008 of a section of the tunnel.  The image is copyright Grimey121uk and was made available for reuse in Wikimedia Commons.