The Macclesfield Canal brought trade in Bollington to life, providing for the first time a means of getting raw materials into the town and finished products out in bulk and quickly. It also provided the incentive to build the two great mills on its banks, Clarence and Adelphi.
The first sod was cut at Bollington, though we don't know where, but probably at Bollington Wharf on Grimshaw Lane, opposite Adelphi Mill, in 1825. The canal was finally opened in November 1831 after the difficulties of its contruction at Bollington, with the completion of the huge Palmerston Street embankment and aqueduct (left), the two largest, and most troublesome, engineering structures on the entire canal.
Bollington mill owner Philip Antrobus at the time owned the house known as Rookery. The schedule to an 1832 Act of Parliament relating to Antrobus's Will shows that Rookery was leased to 'Willm Crossley'. It is thought that this was probably the same William Crosley (with one s) who was the engineer to the Macclesfield Canal Company - the chap in charge of construction of the canal.
Full details of the canal today can be found at the Macclesfield Canal web site
. That site includes extensive historical information.
