A thriving community and a alink between sprawling suburbia and the High Peak.
Whaley Bridge is a bridge between two worlds.The town's long main street starts where 18 miles of ribbon development along the A6 comes to an end, and it finishes where the Peak District begins. Until 1987, the street was a continuation of the A6 and the route that motorists had to take in order to cross from sprawling suburbia to the wide open spaces of the High Peak. The town is now by-passed, thanks to the construction of a four-mile stretch of dual carriageway through the Blackbrook Valley.
Benjamin Outram was responsible for a much earlier transport link between the Manchester conurbation and the Peak District. In 1794, he began building the Peak Forest Canal to connect the limestone quarries and coalfields ofDerbyshire with the industrial towns of Lancashire. His original ambition was to extend his canal to the Cromford Canal on the other side of the Peak, but this proved impossible.
However, in 1831 the two canals were linked by the Cromford and High Peak Railway, which crossed the Peak District before making a 1,000 ft descent through a series of inclined planes to the terminus of the Peak Forest Canal in the centre of Whaley Bridge. A large transhipment warehouse was built in the canal basin, so that boats could unload cotton for the town's mills and take on board limestone and coal from the railway wagons. Although the triple-gabled warehouse is classified as a Grade II* building, it is currently unused and awaiting restoration.
The canal is still in use, not by cargo boats but by pleasure craft. The Phoenix, a 12-seater day boat that was reconstructed after a fire, is available for hire, and the Judith Mary II, a 72-foot longboat, operates as a floating restaurant with 40 covers. Chef Allan Kelsall serves up lunches, dinners, buffets, cream teas and champagne breakfasts, which his diners can enjoy while they take a two and a half hour trip along the historic canal.
For the first half-mile of its journey, the canal runs alongside the River Goyt. On the peninsula created where the two waterways diverge, there is a large out-of-town Tesco store, which is accessed from the main road by a bridge over the canal.Tesco's initial planning application was for a much larger store, together with a funding contribution for the construction of a second bridge that would have crossed the River Goyt and given access to the Bingswood industrial estate on the far bank of the river. Permission was refused and the second bridge was not built.
The only existing route into the industrial estate is through the historic canal basin, which is accessed via Canal Street, a narrow road that follows a short incline from Whaley Bridge's main street and requires HGVs, which approach the town from the north, to enter it by making a near-impossible U-turn. As everyone in Whaley Bridge will tell you, there is a desperate need for that second bridge by the Tesco site.
Before walking up Canal Street to the town centre, I called in the aptly-named Outram House, home to Allan Kelsall's offices and a flower shop operated by the mother and daughter team of Joy and Beverley Goodwin, both born and bred in Whaley Bridge and now cheerfully, enthusiastically and bravely establishing their new business in today's difficult economic circumstances.
Canal Street meets the main street at the point where it is dominated by the Jodrell Arms, which stands on a ledge above the street. The multi-gabled front of the old inn bears little resemblance to the elaborate Italian-style side elevation, which faces the train station and was added when the line from Stockport reached the town in 1857. Built to impress and entice disembarking rail passengers, the striking faade cannot lure them into the Jodrell Arms at present, because the inn is closed for renovation. However, new owners Jeremy Middleton and Nicholas Aldrich are promising a complete make-over that should revive the fortunes of the old hostelry. The owners have donated land in front of the inn for a new British Legion cross - one of only a few erected in recent history - which has been designed and carved from Derbyshire gritstone by Andy Oldfield of Pilsley firm The Fringe Workshop.In his Buildings of England, architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner criticised the style of the Jodrell Arms for being too 'heavy'. He was equally dismissive of the nearby Mechanics' Institute, describing it as 'preposterously Frenchy with bits of incised ornament'.Whatever its architectural merits, the institute makes a fine home for the Town Council, which is currently chaired by Jake Walsh.
Now serving his third spell as chairman, Liverpool-born Jake came to live in Whaley Bridge 23 years ago and joined the council because he felt the town needed energising. Although he recently changed the pace of his own life by giving up his job as a sales manager and taking up rather less stressful work at the Tesco store, albeit on night shifts, his energetic commitment to the council remains undiminished.
Like everyone else in the town, Jake wants to see the building of that second bridge and, at long last, he has reason to be optimistic. High Peak Borough Council is about to produce a 'masterplan' that will include the construction of the bridge, as well as the regeneration of the canal basin and the transhipment warehouse.
As chairman of the council, Jake has the special privilege of occupying a chair made out of wood salvaged from the original road bridge that gave the town its name. His fellow councillor John Pritchard has the even greater honour of being an Honorary Townsman, in recognition of his 38 years of service as a local councillor. He has also been a member for 40 years, and chairman for the last 20 years, of the Amenity Society, which vets planning applications, organises litter-picks, surveys rights of way and generally tries to safeguard the appearance of the town and its surroundings.
John, who is an Oxford graduate and spent much of hisworking life at the National Computer Centre, confesses that he was first prompted to become involved in local organisations by an appraisal carried out by his employers, which suggested that he should take steps to develop his communication skills with non-technical people. Whaley Bridge has good reason to be grateful for that appraisal!
As a persistent campaigner for the second bridge, John believes that it is the 'key to Whaley Bridge's future'. Longserving council clerk Stephanie Raybould has even vowed that she will not give up her post until the bridge is built. Stephanie is also secretary to the trustees of the Mechanics' Institute and is responsible for arranging the many lettings in the building. They include dance and drama classes, ju-jitsu, aerobics, Irish dancing, children's parties and money-raising coffee mornings, run on a rota basis by more than 20 local organisations.
Ever since it opened in 1876, the building has housed a public reading room, which 97-year-old Arthur Jackson has been using since he became a member of the Mechanics' Institute in 1926. He recalls that his joining fee was 2s 6d, which he took from his weekly wage of 9s 6d as an apprentice joiner. Arthur's memory for the past has enabled him to produce three popular memoirs: Arthur Jackson Remembers; Arthur Jackson Remembers More and The Life and Times of Arthur Jackson.
All Arthur's books have been edited and published by Nye Rowlands, the former Principal of Manchester College of Arts and Technology. Nye has also been the driving force behind Footsteps, the superb community centre on Whaley Bridge's main street. Thanks to the efforts of the Whaley Bridge Community Trust and a grant of �112,000 from the Big Lottery Fund, the three-storey centre, which is run by volunteers, contains a coffee shop, a remarkably wellstocked second-hand bookshop, a youth club and an ITsuite with 50 computers.
All these facilities are housed in George Hill's former shoe shop. Having retired after spending half a century as a shop-keeper who loved meeting and chatting to customers on a daily basis, George was delighted to make his premises available to Treetops, so that people could continue to drop in for companionship and a chat. The centre also accommodates a living history group, a craft group, a Spanish class, a carer circle, a book club and a clog-dancing group known as Shuttlers' Clog.
Many of the clog dancers have formed firm friendships with members of a Polish folk-dancing group, because Whaley Bridge has had an exchange with Tymbark since 1994. Exchange committee chair Donna Hodgson told me of visits by families, firemen (who donated a fire engine toTymbark), schools and scouts to Tymbark's market-place fair, nearby salt mines and Crakow, with return trips by thePoles to Chatsworth, Castleton's caves, Old Trafford and Whaley Bridge's Water weekend, when all manner of activities take place in the canal basin. Unfortunately, the Poles have not yet formed a liking for mushy peas or Bakewell pudding!George Hill's shoe shop may have gone, but many longstanding businesses continue to operate in Whaley Bridge. Despite the presence of Tesco, the town retains its butcher's shop, its greengrocer's, its newsagent's and its Co-op. Regular farmers' markets are held in the Uniting Church and there are many specialist shops, some of which operate behind delightful traditional faades.
At the point where the road twists to the right as it passes over the River Goyt, there is an unusual curved building that once housed the millinery department of the Co-operative Society. For the last 20 years it has accommodated the Bike Factory, crammed with BMX, road and mountain bikes. The shop and its repair department are managed by Fred Salmon, an ex-cross country professional, who is a great advocate of the health-giving benefits of cycling in the nearby Goyt Valley. In fact, he would love to see this activity promoted by the provision of marked cycle trails.
Pupils at Whaley Bridge Primary School are given a healthy start in life because they have the benefit of a swimming pool on site, thanks to the remarkable efforts of Alan Johnson, who was chairman of the governors for 30 years and an Honorary Townsman. He died last year, aged 81, when a eulogy was given by Rick Heys, who became headteacher of the school in 1991, because he was attracted by the challenge of developing its enhanced resource facilities for pupils with special needs.
Thanks to Rick and his staff, it is not only these children who have an excellent education. Every pupil has become an author by contributing to A Little Book of Something; the Year 6 children have written, produced and directed their own feature film; all the pupils have been cooking healthy food with help from parents and teachers and they have been improving their memory techniques through a University of the First Age learner day. Children outside Whaley Bridge have been helped too, because the choir has raised a staggering �26,000 for Children in Need since 1997 by giving concerts at the Trafford Centre.
Whaley Bridge's main street continues beyond the school to Horwich End, where there is another cluster of shops, including a splendidly-named fish and chip shop called Frydays, run by Graham Steele, a former social worker, and Kate Green, who worked in accounts for a construction firm. It's not only the chair of the Parish Council who has made a change of lifestyle!
The main street ends in a remarkable building that looks like the gatehouse to a French chteau. It was built in 1923 to house the Manchester and County Bank, but is now the family home of Alan Fernley, who also runs his mortgage and financial advice business from the premises.
Three roads lead off into the Peak District from this point: one heads for Chapel-en-le-Frith; a second climbs above the Goyt Valley, where the Grimshaw family had their country seat at Errwood Hall until the valley was flooded to create Errwood Reservoir; and a third provides views of Toddbrook Reservoir, which was built as a feeder for the Peak Forest Canal. Given its location at the foot of Peakland, the chteau-like house has a very appropriate name. It is called Rivendell, after Tolkien's fictional 'last homely house west of the mountains'.
