Canal charity awarded £574,000 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant to prepare Anderton Boat Lift major project

[Ray T]

CRT Press Release

 

19th December 2022

 

CANAL CHARITY AWARDED £574,000 FROM THE NATIONAL LOTTERY HERITAGE FUND TO PREPARE MAJOR PROJECT AT ANDERTON BOAT LIFT AND VISITOR CENTRE

 

The Canal & River Trust charity has been awarded a £574,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the development of a major repair and refurbishment project, with extensive community engagement plan, at Anderton Boat Lift, Cheshire’s Cathedral of Canals, near Northwich.

 

This funding, made possible by National Lottery players, will enable the Trust to carry out essential repairs to the Victorian boat lift to secure its long-term future, prepare a detailed plan to update facilities and interpretation at the popular visitor centre and extend a community outreach programme.

 

The Scheduled Historic Monument, which each year carries around 3,000 boats between the Trent & Mersey Canal and the River Weaver Navigation, needs a major upgrade to keep it operational. The whole iron structure requires blast cleaning, repairing and re-painting, the timber control cabin replacing and IT operating system updating.

 

Also included in the proposals are plans to replace the large marquee, which is used to host school groups and events, with an alternative flexible building, including new toilets, plus updates to the visitor centre and grounds to improve the visitor experience, as well as the development of new learning, skills and outreach programmes. This will enable more visitors to enjoy the unique attraction and delve deeper into the site’s fascinating history.

 

Daniel Greenhalgh, Canal & River Trust North West director, said: “We are grateful to The National Lottery Heritage Fund for allowing us to take a first vital step in securing the future of this unique boat lift, one of the seven wonders of the waterways. Since the Anderton Boat Lift reopened as a major visitor attraction in 2002, it has become a firm favourite on the tourist trail, as well as bringing a significant boost for the local economy.

 

“The essential repair and upgrade work is critically important to maintaining the lift as an operational structure. Constructed in 1875, it holds a unique place in waterway history as the world’s first commercially-operated boat lift and our mission is to ensure that it continues to delight and engage future generations.”

 

Over the next 14 months, the waterways and wellbeing charity will be developing a comprehensive plan for ‘Engineering the Future’, with the intention of applying for a further grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund towards the entire £13.4 million project. If the bid is successful, the plan will be to start an 18-month programme of works at the end of the 2024 boating season.

 

As a foretaste of the urgent necessity for major repair work, the lift has been closed since early August due to the failure of a safety mechanism in one of the lift gates. An emergency £450,000 repair work package is now on course to be completed this winter to ensure Anderton Boat Lift reopens to boaters and the Trust’s Edwin Clark public trip boat in time for Easter 2023.

 

The work features two key projects. Two giant hydraulic ram cylinders, which each propel a caisson transporting boats up and down, are being given a much-needed overhaul. The large metal tank caissons will be detached from the rams and propped up about two metres above ground level to allow the 20-year-old cylinder seals to be replaced, the ceramic rams re-polished and re-set, and 12,000 litres of hydraulic oil to be changed.

 

Each of the lift’s ten sets of gates will also have two new ‘fall and arrest’ safety systems installed, which act like a giant seat belt in an emergency. Following the identification of the safety issue in the summer, new designs have been engineered, approved by Historic England and manufactured. Once the repairs have been carried out, the lift will have a short recommissioning period of about two to four weeks before it is once again available to carry boats.

 

The Anderton Boat Lift Visitor Centre will continue to welcome visitors throughout the winter at weekends – Saturdays and Sundays, 9.30am – 4.30pm. For more information, check out the Canal & River Trust website: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/places-to-visit/anderton-boat-lift-visitor-centre or call 01606 786777.

 

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For further media requests please contact:

Lynn Pegler

[Alan de Enfield]

Is £450,000 emergency repair work, to be followed by a £13,400,000 longer term expenditure realy, REALLY justified to carry 3000 boats per annum ?

 

I know it is the 'Cathedral of the waterways' one of the seven wonders, and a wonderful piece of VIctorian engineering but could the money not be spent to better benefit 30,000 boaters ?
Dredging maybe ?

 

Sometimes history should be left in the past.

[haggis]

No, no no !!! We need the lift to be able to spend time on the wonderful river Weaver - and to get access to Northwich dry dock 😊

[Sea Dog]

34 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Is £450,000 emergency repair work, to be followed by a £13,400,000 longer term expenditure realy, REALLY justified to carry 3000 boats per annum ?

 

I know it is the 'Cathedral of the waterways' one of the seven wonders, and a wonderful piece of VIctorian engineering but could the money not be spent to better benefit 30,000 boaters ?
Dredging maybe ?

 

Sometimes history should be left in the past.

 

 

Is it still even 3000 boats a year? Last time I went up there, the remote booking system and the team on the ground appeared to be operating entirely independently whilst a board outside said they were closed. I can't believe they get as many boats through as when we were able to rock up and take the next free slot.

 

The lift is a remarkable feat of engineering which I'd love to see preserved and preferably working as intended. I have also very much enjoyed the delights of cruising on the lovely Weaver and I'm keen to do so again, but I too can't help but wonder about that £13.4 million...

[Cheshire cat]

Would it be cheaper to sort out the lock at the lower end of the Weaver? At the end of the day they are hoping for Lottery money. Might be available for a lift but probably not for a lock.

[David Mack]

15 minutes ago, Cheshire cat said:

Would it be cheaper to sort out the lock at the lower end of the Weaver? At the end of the day they are hoping for Lottery money. Might be available for a lift but probably not for a lock.

Which lock? You can already get out from the bottom of the Weaver onto the Manchester Ship Canal. It would be nice to restore Runcorn Locks and the Runcorn and Weston Canal to provide a link through to the Bridgewater that doesn't involve travelling along the MSC, but much of that route is now lost to roads and building development, and restoration would cost a damn site more than £13.4 million!

[Rassiloth]

12 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

 

 

Is it still even 3000 boats a year? Last time I went up there, the remote booking system and the team on the ground appeared to be operating entirely independently whilst a board outside said they were closed. I can't believe they get as many boats through as when we were able to rock up and take the next free slot.

 

The lift is a remarkable feat of engineering which I'd love to see preserved and preferably working as intended. I have also very much enjoyed the delights of cruising on the lovely Weaver and I'm keen to do so again, but I too can't help but wonder about that £13.4 million...

 

The board will have been for the Visitor Centre. The lift operates as part of the centre but does operate outside the centre's opening hours.

[Cheshire cat]

18 hours ago, David Mack said:

Which lock? You can already get out from the bottom of the Weaver onto the Manchester Ship Canal. It would be nice to restore Runcorn Locks and the Runcorn and Weston Canal to provide a link through to the Bridgewater that doesn't involve travelling along the MSC, but much of that route is now lost to roads and building development, and restoration would cost a damn site more than £13.4 million!

I was thinking the lock out on to the Ship Canal is somewhat dicey. I got that impression from here. I confess I haven't been to look at it. 

[Sea Dog]

7 hours ago, Rassiloth said:

The board will have been for the Visitor Centre. The lift operates as part of the centre but does operate outside the centre's opening hours.

Well, it was all open whoever's board it was. The lift operation, the visitor centre and the booking centre felt like 3 separate entities with little connection to me, which it had not prior to the remote booking centre. Maybe I was unlucky enough to arrive when they were having an off day, but that's a side issue to whether the lift figures are accurate and support a spend of £13.4M.

 

I sound like I'm agin it now, but I'd like to see the whole system in we'll run and in fine fettle, including the fabulous lift.

[Alan de Enfield]

49 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Well, it was all open whoever's board it was. The lift operation, the visitor centre and the booking centre felt like 3 separate entities with little connection to me, which it had not prior to the remote booking centre. Maybe I was unlucky enough to arrive when they were having an off day, but that's a side issue to whether the lift figures are accurate and support a spend of £13.4M.

 

I sound like I'm agin it now, but I'd like to see the whole system in we'll run and in fine fettle, including the fabulous lift.

 

 

Maybe we could have a beautiful working boat-lift but no boats can get there.

[Barneyp]

11 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

Well, it was all open whoever's board it was. The lift operation, the visitor centre and the booking centre felt like 3 separate entities with little connection to me, which it had not prior to the remote booking centre. Maybe I was unlucky enough to arrive when they were having an off day, but that's a side issue to whether the lift figures are accurate and support a spend of £13.4M.

 

I sound like I'm agin it now, but I'd like to see the whole system in we'll run and in fine fettle, including the fabulous lift.

I don't think the money is being spent to enable 3000 boats to get to and from the Weaver, it's about preserving a piece of heritage and using it to educate and engage the wider community.

The lottery will give grants to individual projects like the boat lift, but maintaining the canals in general wouldn't meet their criteria, so it's not a straight choice between fixing the lift or carrying out routine maintenance on the canals. 

[Sea Dog]

2 hours ago, Barneyp said:

I don't think the money is being spent to enable 3000 boats to get to and from the Weaver, it's about preserving a piece of heritage and using it to educate and engage the wider community.

The lottery will give grants to individual projects like the boat lift, but maintaining the canals in general wouldn't meet their criteria, so it's not a straight choice between fixing the lift or carrying out routine maintenance on the canals. 

Absolutely. I'm glad to see it being preserved too but, as Alan says above, there's a bit of a dichotomy if it's sat in splendid navigational isolation. In truth, the whole network is the heritage project, not just the highlights.

[Machpoint005]

3 hours ago, Barneyp said:

I don't think the money is being spent to enable 3000 boats to get to and from the Weaver, it's about preserving a piece of heritage and using it to educate and engage the wider community.

The lottery will give grants to individual projects like the boat lift, but maintaining the canals in general wouldn't meet their criteria, so it's not a straight choice between fixing the lift or carrying out routine maintenance on the canals. 

 

The half million squid wouldn't have been available for eg dredging. That's not the way lottery grants work.

 

 

[BEngo]

The questions  with conserving the Anderton lift are: "Which lift are you trying to conserve?" And "How much do you need it (whichever you conserve) to work?"

 

A crude assessment is:

 

The first, water-hydraulic lift, is  reduced to the current tanks (as modified), the tank guidance framework and the upper approach structures.  The hydraulic rams were not able to survive the local environment.  It could never be rebuilt in original form to function as a lift again.

  The second lift (counterbalanced electro-mechanical) was largely built around the framework of the lift.  The additional structure supported the lift mechanicals and took the weight of the tanks and counterbalance weights.  The mechanism has been entirely dismantled because the supporting  structure is no longer adequate to support the weight of the tanks and counterbalances ora the  mechanism.  The control system was pretty much pure manual and if reinstated it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to make a Safety Case for it.  The structural deficiencies mean it would be very expensive to restore to an operable version.

The third,  (oleo- hydraulic, computer controlled) lift was constructed anew in the remains of the first and second lift. It reverts to the operating principle of the first lift, and has a control system of its era. 

 

  Some dynamic load bearing structures from the first and second lifts remain, preserving the cosmetic appearance of the lift, but now  play little part in the support  of the tanks. Only the tanks and upper approach structures have any role in 2022 operation. The millenium era hydraulic rams and seals are now 20+ years old, and, not unreasonably,   are in need of a refurbish, the computer based control system is,  like most 20 year old computers,  obsolete and the H&S requirements for controls grow ever stronger.  Yet the existing  version, after a fashion, works and is "safe". FSVO "Safe", anyway.    Thus, this is the only viable operable future.

 

So, spend £450k now, to keep H&S at bay and the Lottery funders content that the maintenance they expected is actually happening.  Convince them to give you £500k to pitch for loadsa money.  Then hope they will swing for another £13.4M later.  The alternative is a rusting  Victorian/Edwardian  climbing frame, and restricted boat access to the Weaver.

⁸

 

N