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No way back for the town basin

24/ 7/2002

IT LOOKS just like a normal car-park serving a normal retail park.

But it once brought in a different kind of business rather than the weekend shoppers in their cars.

The recently-built Matalan store on Oldham Road sits directly on top of a half-mile stretch of forgotten canal.

Now covered with the giants of retail, filled with clothes from around the world, it was once the scene of canal-side warehouses filled instead with materials ready to be dispatched across the globe.

Because the line of the canal took it almost a mile away from the town centre, the decision to build a branch line was made.

The original plans for the canal included a line to Hollinwood in Oldham, which was never built, and one to Castleton, which was opened in 1798.

But this wasn't poor planning, as the area known as Castleton once stretched as far as the River Roch, with 'Rochdale' on the other side.

The still waters of the basin at Ha'penny Bridge is now all that remains of a branch that stretched almost as far as Drake Street.

Warehouses once lined its banks and it even gave the Navigation Inn on Drake Street its name.

Sadly, its intrusion into the town meant it was a prime target for redevelopment and it became one of the first parts of the canal to be filled in during the late 1960s.

It may be gone, but one story about its demise suggests it will be a part of Rochdale for a long time to come.

When it was being filled in, there were still several canal barges moored at the wharf.

So the story goes, rather than move the now-redundant boats they were simply covered in concrete and left, unable to ever sail again.