Once named as “The hardest worked stream in the world” the River Irwell takes it’s rise just above Bacup on the Deerplay moorland to the right of Deerplay hill.In ancient times a packhorse road wound alongside the Cliviger ridge and from there onto the hills over Yorkshire. It  is in this vicinity now overgrown and covered in heath it can scarcely be distinguished from its surroundings, but this is the source of the Irwell. The Irwell is in fact two springs separated by a few hundred yards. Uniting near to the boundary of Bacup. The Irwell wends its way from the moors of Deerplay down through what was once Irwell Springs and through what was once described as a beautiful idyllic place known as Dogpits. Meandering through Broadclough behind the houses of York street Carrs bridge crosses the river allowing access to what was once known as Wright Walkers, Top of the barn farm farm, and on past the gates opposite of Broadclough house and Meadows Mill, under the Irwell Inn which sits astride the Irwell of which it takes its name.

 

 

The river Irwell has been completely culverted for 400 yards from behind St Johns Sunday school to behind the Co op car park and the buildings of Industrial Place. Walking up Burnley road to post a letter  that the  river was only six feet beneath them in a brick arched concrete channel. The river here pictured  right  being covered over in 1911. It is said that at one time trout  flourished in the river between Broadclough and Boston bridge  at least one butcher by the name of Kershaw who had business on situated on the landings  to the left in the picture daily washed the entrails of his slaughtered animals in the river ready to take them back to his shop and therefore to make them up into the sausages and black puddings his customers loved.

It is only recently with the work being carried out to repair the culvert in Bacup centre that many people would have realised that underneath their feet less than ten feet away flowed  the River Irwell.  Tong brook which rises in the moors of Tooter Hill and Sharneyford, flows down Greave Clough and joins the Irwell  at the corner of the Mechanics Institute.

 

 

 How many people know that the Waterloo Hotel sits astride the rocky bed of the Irwell, and could it be true that the name of the Waterloo comes from the tippler toilets used at the time rather from anything to do with Napoleon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashes from the many mills such as Irwell Mill shown right were frequently tipped into the  river  the public health report of 1849 describes the Irwell, as being  the receptacle for all solid matters that are found to be inconvenient or unprofitable. All old building materials, and all ashes and cinders from the houses, and from all the steam engines in the town. The inhabitants never seemed to have considered that while it is was very easy to raise the level of the bed of the river, it was not easy to raise the level of their houses. Every flood  the water overflowed into the cellars and lower portions of the town. Many hundreds of loads of ashes, cinders, lime, and brickbats, in heaps as much as eight or nine feet high, and sometimes extending two thirds across the stream, all of which had been shot in since the last preceding flood and were waiting for the next flood to be levelled or carried away the photograph shown opposite at  the start of this  page illustrates the Irwell heaped 16ft high with rubbish in 1862.

 

 

 

Until the bridge over the river at Henrietta Street was built in 1870 by George Maxwell, a cotton manufacturer who was operating at Mashwood the area now known as Henrietta Street and home to the council yard. Access was by a simple wooden plank and by stepping stones when the river was running low. The bridge was reconstructed in 1925.

 

The Irwell

By Ronald  Y Digby.

 

Most rivers have great beauty,

They flow down to the sea ,

With crystal laughing waters,

 Reflecting all they see,

But, thou O' River Irwell,

Must wind thy weary way,

Through tunnels, goits and culverts,

With turgid waters grey,

Thou has no purple Kingfishers,

To brighten halcyon days,

No gleaming fish to call thee home,

No jumping trout in May,

Polluted by foul effluents,

For factories a stink,

To living creatures lethal,

Repulsive with thy stink,

Though country loving aesthetes

From such as thee recoil,

Thou helps to earn a living,

Of countless sons of toil,

Flow on then busy Irwell,

Down to the surging tide,

Thou hardest working river,

In the world - in that they pride.

 

 

In 1832 a map was prepared showing the course of the River Irwell the map showed the waterfalls, and the mills and other works situated on the river. It is hardly surprising the river was polluted  as in the above poem when you take a look at the mills that followed the course of the river.  From its start in Deerplay:

 

Irwell Springs Print works.

Dog Pits  Cotton Mill.

Higher Broadclough Woollen Mill.

Lower Broadclough Woollen Mill.

Meadows Mill.

Holmes Mill.

Waterside Fulling Mill.

Rawcliffe Mill.

Newhey Mill.

Stubylee Mill.

Nunhills Mill.

Tunstead Mill.

Waterbarn Mill.

 

 

Rivers in the dark.

 

Under the streets of Bacup run an extensive network of underground rivers. The tunnels, or culverts, run from the Mechanics, up Burnley Road, and Rochdale Road, over the Irwell and up Todmorden Road, over the river Tong. In 1974 a report in the Bacup Echo  by John Hargreaves, describes a walk through the tunnels.

 

 " We entered the system by the junior library. Four years ago this tunnel received the " Fairy Grotto" treatment by shooting cement over the walls and the roof. As we walked along the sometimes slippery stones our torches picked out where drains and springs entered the river and the different material used on the roof and walls. It ranged from brick, sandstone, and gritstone, to steel and wood. The long tunnel that extends from the town centre to St John's school on Burnley Road, is particularly low. The river has been channelled into a narrow strip in the middle and we had to walk along the edge bent double. Lime stalactites hang from the roof and crumbled on our face and hair as we passed. It was a relief to get back into the fresh hair. Mr Fred Whittaker, who spent the 20 years before his retirement at Bacup's highways superintendant, knows more about underground Bacup than anyone else. He remembers the time in 1965 when the Mechanics started to sink into the river. He checked and found that the building had moved 5inches. Over 100 tons of concrete was poured in to make it safe. Mr Whittaker also remembers the mid 30's when there was a open river in front of the Conservative club. During his days as a council worker 100 tons of rubbish was removed from the tunnels every year.