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33-535: Haigh Foundry was established in the Douglas Valley in Haigh around 1790 by Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres and his brother Robert, as an ironworks and foundry . The ironworks was not a success but the foundry was, particularly after Robert Daglish became chief engineer in 1804, and the works acquired a reputation for manufacturing winding engines and pumping equipment for the coal mining industry. The foundry

66-622: A design by Daniel Gooch in the 1850s ( Damon, Falcon, Orion and Priam ). The works continued to build locomotives on their own account, and under sub-contract. Among these were long boiler types for Jones and Potts and three for T.R.Crampton . In 1855 two 0-8-0 locomotives for use in the Crimean War , capable of hauling guns up inclines as steep as 1 in 10, were reputed to have been built with horizontal cylindrical furnaces, rather than rectangular fireboxes, and boilers fed by force pumps. They were described as having outside cylinders driving

99-414: A design by John Frederick Bateman to supply the growing population of Manchester and Salford with fresh water. The top three reservoirs (Woodhead, Torside and Rhodeswood) and Arnfield are for drinking water, and the lower reservoirs (Valehouse and Bottoms) are used as compensation reservoirs to maintain the downstream flow of the river. There was originally a seventh – Hollingworth Reservoir – which

132-403: A foundry, five cupola furnaces , three air furnaces for making the largest castings and another foundry for smaller pieces. Also on site were blacksmiths' and pattern-makers' shops, office, drawing shop, the foreman's house, boiler yard and iron warehouse. A water wheel driven by the river powered the machinery, line shafts and furnace blasts. The forge was powered by water and steam. Part of

165-583: A long culvert under the railway near Wigan North Western station , is crossed again by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and heads northwest, closely paralleling the canal. It is crossed by the M6 motorway and the Manchester-Southport line near Gathurst station , passes by the village of Appley Bridge , and at Parbold the canal crosses for the third time, as the river turns to the north and north-west. The aqueduct

198-630: A railway line was built from the Earl of Crawford & Balcarres ' colliery network at Aspull in 1860 and was replaced in 1869 by a link from the Lancashire Union Railway 's 'Whelley' loop. The foundry designed and built large winding, pumping and mill engines, heavy engineering and architectural castings until early 1885. The firm's assets were sold in September of that year. Many of the foundry buildings survive along with two cast iron bridges used by

231-435: A round arch and is constructed of rock-faced stone. The river then bypasses Worthington Lakes, three reservoirs built in the 1860s to provide drinking water for Wigan, and now managed as a country park by United Utilities . The river ceases to form the county boundary just before the lakes and re-emerges from a tunnel below the reservoir dam, passing east of Standish . It continues southwards to Wigan , where it flows through

264-649: Is shared by like-named rivers in The Old North , such as the Douglas Water in Scotland. The River Douglas rises at Douglas Springs, a series of springs on Rivington Moor close to the 1,440-foot (440 m) contour close to the summit of Winter Hill. The River Yarrow, one of its major tributaries, rises at springs less than a mile (1.6 km) to the north-west. Nearby are Anglezarke Reservoir , Upper Rivington Reservoir , and Lower Rivington Reservoir , which are part of

297-518: The A59 road over the river. It is built from rock-faced sandstone blocks, and the keystone on the southern side indicates it was constructed in 1821. The north side is of red sandstone, with indications that it might once have been part of a narrower bridge. After its junction with the canal at Tarleton Lock, the final 4 miles (6.4 km) of the river to its junction with the River Ribble , here also known as

330-810: The Albert Dock in Liverpool and some massive pumping engines. The pumping engine for Mostyn Colliery , Flintshire weighing 30 tons was 17 feet long and had a 100" bore cylinder and it is believed that when built in 1848, it was the largest cylinder in the world. In 1849 the company delivered about 1000 yards of 40 inch cast-iron water pipes for the Manchester Corporation Waterworks Scheme in the Longdendale Chain . The new leasees, Birley & Thompson, concentrated on heavy engineering but made at least two locomotives and quoted unsuccessfully for

363-961: The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs . Another joint initiative between the Environment Agency and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has seen sea defences improved and 370 acres (150 ha) of saltmarsh created as part of the Hesketh Outmarsh Coastal Realignment project. The Environment Agency measure the water quality of the river systems in England. Each is given an overall ecological status, which may be one of five levels: high, good, moderate, poor and bad. There are several components that are used to determine this, including biological status, which looks at

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396-707: The River Yarrow . In 1720, an Act of Parliament authorized Thomas Steers and William Squire to make the River Douglas navigable to small ships between Wigan and its mouth. Despite financial irregularities, the Douglas Navigation was not completed until 1742. By 1783, it had been replaced by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal , and the river reverted to its natural state. Although the remnants of several locks are still visible between Parbold and Gathurst. The Rufford Branch of

429-585: The B5246 Station Road over the river, and dates from the time of the construction of the Douglas Navigation, between 1720 and 1742. Below the bridge, the channel is rather straighter. Until 1805, the river was joined by the Rufford Branch of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Sollom Lock, but the lock was abandoned and a new one built further downstream at Tarleton . In order to do this, a new channel

462-628: The Festiniog Railway's 'Prince' class. The company produced stationary engines including a 100" x 14 ft stroke beam engine for the Talargoch Lead Mine (the engine house survives) and a 1000 h.p. McNaught compound beam engine for a cotton spinning mill. Other examples were supplied to many Lancashire collieries. Until 1860, everything that Haigh Foundry made had to be hauled up the steep and twisting Leyland Mill Lane. Teams of up to 48 horses were needed, many hired from local farmers. However

495-668: The River Asland, is used by boat traffic transferring from the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the Lancaster Canal since the opening of the Ribble Link in 2002. The reservoirs of the Rivington Chain capture and store run-off from Winter Hill and Rivington Moor, much of which is used to provide a public water supply to areas of Lancashire and Greater Manchester. However, as a result of the original statutes that allowed them to be built,

528-476: The Rivington Chain, a network of reservoirs built to supply the drinking water needs of Liverpool. This reservoirs alter the natural drainage patterns of both rivers. The Douglas descends rapidly, dropping below the 430-foot (130 m) contour before flowing into the Lower Rivington Reservoir, just north of Horwich . Below the dam, the river's flow is maintained by compensation water released from

561-789: The canal joins the river at Tarleton . The river rises on Winter Hill in the West Pennine Moors , and flows for 35 miles (56 km) through several towns before reaching the Ribble estuary near Tarleton, with the last 10 miles (16 km) being tidal. In 1892, the Douglas was diverted in Wigan to allow the construction of Wigan Central railway station . The Douglas is derived from the Brittonic elements dūβ- , meaning "black", and *glẹ:ss , "stream, rivulet, watercourse" ( Welsh du-glais ). This etymology

594-510: The lower section, and at Skelmersdale on the River Tawd. Upgrades to the Wigan and Skelmersdale Treatment Works have been carried out, to improve the quality of the final effluent before discharge into the river system, while in Wigan, the sewage system has been improved, to reduce the amount of raw sewage discharged into the river by combined sewer overflows. In Standish, the pumping station at Chorley Road has been upgraded to reduce its impact on

627-591: The quality being less than good include sewage discharge for most of the river, together with physical modification of the channel and poor nutrient management of agricultural land on the lower sections. Longdendale Chain The Longdendale Chain is a sequence of six reservoirs on the River Etherow in the Longdendale Valley , in northern Derbyshire . They were constructed between 1848 and 1884 to

660-421: The quantity and varieties of invertebrates , angiosperms and fish, and chemical status, which compares the concentrations of various chemicals against known safe concentrations. Chemical status is rated good or fail. The water quality of the River Douglas system was as follows in 2016. The section marked Ribble covers the tidal River Ribble and the lower 4 miles (6.4 km) of tidal River Douglas. Reasons for

693-466: The reservoir, marking the county boundary between Greater Manchester and Lancashire. The river is crossed by the M61 motorway near Rivington services , and then turns to the north-west to reach the southern edge of Adlington . It flows in a generally southwesterly direction and is crossed by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal , via a grade II listed aqueduct designed by John Rennie in the 1790s. The aqueduct has

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726-472: The river progresses to the west, the gradient lessens, and level changes occur more slowly. There are two locations on the river where water is abstracted to maintain levels in the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. On many sections of the river, flows are augmented by the discharge from sewage treatment works. Major treatment works are located at Horwich on the upper river, at Wigan Wastewater Treatment works in Lathom on

759-519: The river, while in Horwich, there was an ongoing scheme in 2014 in which volunteers walked the river to identify pollution points, which were then followed up by officers from the Environment Agency. Run-off of nutrients and other pollutants from agricultural land has also been addressed through the Catchment Sensitive Farming project, run jointly by Natural England , the Environment Agency and

792-448: The third set of wheels, while two pairs of wheels were flangeless. The description given here is from the only reference to them from an unreliable list produced in the 1890s. No such engines were recorded in the Crimea, and it is probable they were never built. When the lease expired in 1856, Haigh Foundry had built over 100 locomotives, produced swing bridges for Hull Docks , ironwork for

825-399: The water company is required to maintain some flow in the river below the reservoirs, and this compensation flow provides a fairly steady baseline flow in the river throughout the year. It is only normally exceeded if the reservoirs become full. On the upper reaches of the Douglas, the river bed is relatively steep, and consequently the river level can change quickly as a result of rainfall. As

858-581: The works railway line. Part of the premises is still an iron foundry, though on a somewhat smaller scale. River Douglas, Lancashire The River Douglas , also known as the River Asland or Astland , flows through parts of Lancashire and Greater Manchester in North West England . It is a tributary of the River Ribble and has several tributaries, the major ones being the River Tawd and

891-479: The works where spade making was carried out had Naysmyth steam hammers and a rolling mill . Also for lease was the firebrick and tile works which used fire clay from a nearby pit and had a kiln , drying sheds and a steam powered grinding wheels. The manager's house and cottages for workers were part of the lease. A railway line connecting it to the Lancashire and Yorkshire and London and North Western Railways

924-571: Was abandoned in 1990, and has become part of the Swallows Wood nature reserve. Water flowed by gravity through the Mottram Tunnel to the Godley covered reservoir where it drops to the service reservoirs at Denton , Audenshaw , Gorton and Prestwich . The reservoirs are listed from upstream to downstream i.e. from east to west: Quayle, Tom (2006). Manchester's water: the reservoirs in

957-425: Was being built. Lancashire's first three steam locomotives were built here in 1812, 1815 and 1816 for John Clarke's Winstanley Colliery Railway at Orrell . In 1819, the firm built an 84" cylinder Cornish beam engine and beam engines were also exported to the colonies before 1820. After 1835 the foundry produced 0-4-0 and 2-2-0 type locomotives, many subcontracted from Edward Bury and Company . In 1837 Ajax

990-503: Was created for the river further to the east, and the original channel was reused by the canal. On the new section, Great Hanging Bridge is similar to White bridge, both in date and in its three arches, and it carries the A581 road . Below it, the river is joined by the River Yarrow, which has taken a more direct route from its source to this point. At Tarleton, another three-span bridge carries

1023-446: Was designed by John Longbotham, has a semi-elliptical arch, and dates from 1791 to 1792. The river drops below the 33-foot (10 m) contour at Parbold, and continues across open countryside where it is joined by the River Tawd , flowing north from Skelmersdale , becoming tidal before it reaches the village of Rufford . White Bridge at Rufford is a grade II listed structure with three spans, constructed of squared sandstone. It carries

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1056-418: Was leased by E.Evans and T.C.Ryley in 1835 for 21 years. The partners intended to produce railway locomotives and were later joined by a Mr Burrows. In 1855 Haigh Foundry and Brock Mill Forge were offered for lease. They had manufactured some of "the largest pumping engines and the most powerful factory engines in the kingdom" in the previous decade. The iron works, on the bank of the River Douglas, consisted of

1089-599: Was supplied to the Leicester and Swannington Railway , followed by Hector , an 0-6-0 , a design so powerful that orders were received from a number of other railways. The company built two broad gauge locomotives for the Great Western Railway with upward gearing in 1838 but these were not successful and the gearing was removed around 1840. Four more 4-4-0 ST s for the South Devon Railway were built to

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