B&W Picture Place: The Chester Canal 3

The Black & White Picture Place

Old Photographs & Drawings of Chester & Liverpool

The Chester Canal Area part 3

ere we see the canal a few yards further on from the above and about ten years later, sometime during the early 1960s.

The photograph was taken from the bridge connecting Seller Street with Egerton Street. The ironwork of this bridge deserves inspection should you pass by as it is deeply worn by the tow ropes of the great horses that pulled barges along the canal in former times.

The bridge we can see crossing the canal is the newly constructed St. Oswald's Way section of the Inner Ring Road. The large building on the right is the Griffiths Brother's mill which was later restored and converted into what is today the Mill Hotel. The sheds on the extreme right have since been replaced by the hotel's extension- and a further extension has recently been completed on the other side of the canal, linked to the hotel by a new bridge.

You can see some 1960s views of the canal looking in the other direction- and also a photograph of how it looks today- here - and here is another, rather romantic, contemporary view...

In January 2003, immediately before the demolition of the leadworks commenced, developers Bellway Homes (Manchester) kindly allowed me to explore and photograph the site, including the spectacular view from the top of the Shot Tower

Moving down the towpath to the imposing Steam Mill, to its left may be seen a modern sheltered housing unit known as Steven Court. It stands on the site of Steven Street, described by former resident Joe Tranter as one of the poorest streets of the area: "The houses were standard two-up-two-down terraces, in a very narrow street with lots of people living in it. They struggled to get by and it was each for his own in order to survive."

Most of Boughton was a working-class area of factories using the canal which crossed the area and streets of terraced housing where the local workers lived. On a day in June 1927, however, unexpected wealth came the way of the poor residents of Steven Street: the Boughton Gold Rush...

It seems that this local stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal had recently been drained in order to carry out maintainance. A boy from Steven Street, looking out for lost treasures from the tow path, found just that when he spotted a glint of gold. He didn't hesitate to jurnp into the mud and rubbish to fish out a sovereign.
But this is where he made his mistake- he climbed out and told everyone of his find. A crowd soon gathered and all jumped in and started frantically searching through the mire and soon found more sovereigns. The mud was about knee high but as it became churned up it seemed to get deeper and people were soon covered in it.
Initial opinion was that the canal was a robber's hiding place but the true explanation for the discovery soon came to light. An old lady had died in Steven Street not long before, and her relatives had cleared out the house of her belongings. They had taken the bed frame, but didn't fancy the look of the mattress, so like a lot of things in those days, it was dumped in the canal.
What the unfortunate relatives had not realised was that she had kept her life savings- in sovereigns- in her mattress. Over time the mattress, under water, had rotted away and the sovereigns had spread around in the mud.

Our photograph of the event was discovered by local historian Len Morgan in a barber's shop run by brothers Tom and Harry Toner near to the canal. He recalled, "I could always remember my dad telling me the story, but even when I had found the photos nobody seemed to have exactly the same story to tell me, so I set about searching for people who were actually there on the day itself.'
Mr Morgan successfully found six of the 'gold rush' participants, including a man named Jimmy Thompson, who appeared as a young boy in the photos and now lives in Blacon, and Julia Igo, whose mother had unwittingly thrown away a fortune when she disposed of the crucial mattress. He says: "Her mother had cared for Mrs Derrick, the old lady concerned, and had actually been told by the dying lady that she could have the mattress because it was 'valuable'. But instead she threw it in the canal and caused the commotion."

This is how the 'Boughton Gold Rush' was described by a reporter from the Chester Chronicle, June 11th 1927:

"Golden sovereigns, mummy- golden sovereigns! It's true, they're in the canal!
Three times- more than that, and more than three times three- a breathless little boy called out thus in Boughton on Tuesday noon, but he must have told them a score of times before he could make them understand.
Golden sovereigns in the bed of the canal! It was stunning news and at first it took some believing. But it didn't take these spectators half as long to bend round the corner of Steven Street and get over by the canal gate on to the portion of the canal which is being drained, where the first rich vein was struck. In the course of the first day quite a number of sovereigns, apparently, were unearthed by these poor prospectors who came armed with buckets and spades, sieves and trowels.
In the humble homes of Steven Street- easily one of the humblest thoroughfares in the city- one can imagine the excitement. Golden sovereigns! Until Tuesday, Steven Street hardly knew what gold was. But they were all fabulously rich by Tuesday night- at least, so the late and unlucky prospectors said.
About the hour when a Chronicle reporter arrived, it had gone round that Steven Street dwellers had locked themselves in with their newly-acquired wealth. Many of them in Steven Street, it was freely stated, had acquired from the canal bed as much as 20 or 30 sovereigns each. Some of the pieces of gold were Queen Anne sovereigns, but those recovered were mostly of more recent reigns".

Further big changes were announced in March 2004 concerning the environment of Chester's canal. Planning permission was granted for what is currently the car park of the Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS)- the large open area on the right hand side of this photograph- to be transformed into the bank's new regional headquarters together with 250-300 homes, including luxury penthouses and 25% (ha ha) 'affordable' housing units. There will also apparently be a public square and café bar. The bank's existing high-rise office building, Thistle House in nearby City Road, is to be converted into a 112-bed hotel.
Considerable concern has been expressed by local authority traffic planners and some councillors regarding the likely increase in traffic on narrow local roads, especially the already horribly-congested Hoole Lane where children attending St. James' Junior School have long had to compete with the 'foot on the accelerator, hand on the mobile' thrusting young banking community. A recent unpopular amalgamation with the neighbouring infant's school will soon lead to even younger kids being forced to run the gauntlet- and ne'er a mention of any form of traffic calming during the entire debate.
Somehow the existing 1,381 car parking spaces at the bank will be increased (via a new multi-storey car park) by a mere 12 and some- as yet tenuous- form of 'travel plan' is said to be being put in place.
Local arbiters of taste in things architectural, the Chester Civic Trust, have panned the design of the proposed development, saying that though the scheme has been "substantially redesigned", the result remains "disappointing". We at the Chester Virtual Stroll have been known to occasionally criticise some of the Civic Trust's pronouncements- such as their views regarding the historic Electric Light Building at the 'Old Port' and the recently-demolished Police HQ- but, viewing the above 'artist's impression' of the charmless proposed new buildings, we find it difficult not to heartily agree with them.
May 2008: Over four years have passed since the above was written with ne'er a sign of the new canalside development...