The Lost Waterways of Manchester The River Tib

[Music] rivers and cities when the river is broad the city stands aside makes way and crowns it with bridges a medium-sized River lie the irk can be collated what emerges a short distance away but what are the smaller rivers the Brooks the streams that found themselves in the wrong place in the middle of a city that was expanding and developing what happened to those well they to work all that it sent underground paved over built upon and will lost lost forever when it comes to Manchester's riveted it's been lost and hasn't been seen for almost 200 years [Music] hello my name is Martin and welcome back to another video so today we're looking for the river tip one of Manchester's lost rivers now here's my disclaimer we are not going to find the river tip today unfortunately I can't show it to you because as I said in the introduction there it's been buried underground under the city streets for about 200 years so we certainly ain't going to find it today however what we can do in this video is plot its course and see where it runs now the most obvious clue is behind me here now now believe me there's nothing more alike than to be able to sort of take you around the corner just off tip Street and show you something you never seen before and say the following words here behold the tip only those who have bathed in its waters and drank of it spills are true bank unions but alas that scene is not to be like I say I can't show you the river tip well thank you to the river real well for standing in on my little skit there thank you very much for very well anyway let's go ahead round what this this River today's it as I wonder what I explained is it's not this vast fast flowing river that runs on this underneath month the City of Manchester it's a small Water Course at best it's a stream if you like and the river tip I think just found itself in the ever-expanding city that Manchester was back back in the day and it just got in the way and it was just built over paved over coveted and we never saw it again basically I think the last time it was seen or the last time it ran open I think was 1819 I could be corrected but it was 1819 so it's a small water course and when it's been raining very heavily it runs like a little stream but some of the Victorian writings about it describe it at times as just a ditch and sometimes it's just a ditch full of stagnant water I suppose that was during dry times and it was described like that but it's a natural water course it found itself right in the city centre of Manchester that was expanding and of course because of that they had to deal with it and it just got coveted totaled and disappeared so I have seen little pictures of it I'll try and show you some and it's just let's just say this there have been times where they've been roadworks and it's been mistaken for a because that's what it looked like a sewer but it is actually a little Culver a little brick culvert an ancient brick culvert that carries the river tip now secondly the name the tip obviously because it's so old one theory is that Roman soldiers home sick Roman soldiers called it the tip after the Tiber and because the tip was a small River they shortened the name as well to Tim after the Tiber back home in Rome this isn't the case the named tip probably it has got it's the same origins as the Thames and the Taff in Wales and these words tip Taff Thames relate to the name the ancient name of a watercourse and that's it so it would be nice to think that the Romans named after the Tiber but it's got its origins probably in ancient language that just described watercourse now the inspiration behind this video is this book it's a book by Jeffrey Ashworth and it's called the lost rivers of Manchester and I was lucky enough to get hold of this book and I was been looking off to speak to Geoffrey who wrote the book back in the 80s did a hell of a lot of research and he's given me permission to use the bulk he knows it's my inspiration for this video and I'm gonna give you a couple of quotes from it now the question is where does the tip start what is the source of the river tip and with a quote directly from the book the river tip rises in a spring called CalPERS or Cooper's Pitts on the west side of Alden road about two hundred yards south of Collier Street on ground now covered by the railway yards so there you go it rises from a spring just at the side of Oldham Road now I've been there and trying to find that source and it's very difficult here are the problems I've had so as you can see behind me those railway arches there the railway arches of the railway land were allegedly the source of the tibbie's now you can see it raised up but it's quite inaccessible so I imagine that source could even be somewhere underneath the Archies maybe because if it's a spring it's gonna come up from the ground isn't it's looking what from up there so this is the problem in accessibility okay so here's our underground map and Manchester at the top there where the yellow arrow is that max the source of the tip roughly that must be Cooper's or CalPERS spring just off old and rolled there there's a satellite map and you can see where the yellow arrow is at the top just disappearing now that's coleus street all the brown area there that's railway land and that's fairly inaccessible I'll show you that now coming back to the satellite you can see all the trees there that's probably where the spring is somewhere and incidentally just where the green arrow is that's pointing to some former a railway bridge that probably fed the old railway station down at the bottom of Oldham Road that's really interesting that's another video although I think and this map here just shows you where the tip runs it basically runs down new Allen Street and diagonally across miles platen under the houses around the the yellow oval area as it makes its way then towards Oldham Road [Music] and then really quickly you'll just see there that yellow arrow is pointing out the course of the tip there into Manchester and indeed the tip runs down from all the road across he's just a little bit into Swan Street and then all the way down tip Street behind me and then onwards believe it or not into Piccadilly and underneath Piccadilly now just while we're on tip Street probably long before the buildings on tip Street were the buildings at the are now I'll just quoted from Jeffries book somebody had a sighting of the river tip and it was in one of the very probably the very old houses and it goes like this this is what they wrote when my mother first came to Manchester she stayed for a time in a house in tip street about opposite to scold Street there was a lobby to the house and in it was a trapdoor covering running water in the rainy season the noise of the rushing water was fearsome the tenants used to throw their refuse and I presume says down into the river so you can see that the river the tip was also used as probably a sewer as well and there's a rubbish tip as well now this map just shows you the routes from tip street you can see crosses Market Street there if you look at the yellow arrows they're just pointing out the blue line of the river and it crosses Mackay Street and it goes under all the buildings and down Mosley Street you can pause that and have a bit of a study of that no point me going to those areas because there's absolutely as far as I'm aware nothing at all to see that is until we get to this map and if you look at the yellow arrow there it's pointing towards the Rochdale canal and here is a possible clue well there is a clue here where I'm where I am now just off the Rochdale canal just off Whitworth Street it's a very subtle clue and there's another clue that I'm not sure whether it's linked to it or not well let's go and check out these two things two things that you wouldn't think of you would just walk past so I've been walking up and down the canal bank here looking for this thing this mark on the towpath and slippery trainers it's been raining slippery wet canal bank I haven't nearly fell in but I nearly slipped on me ask few times anyway I finally found it and it's over there beyond the lock so let me take you to show it to ya you wouldn't know what it was and it's a little clue to the Lost River tip let's go and see so as we walk across this bridge our area of interest is just down there in front of those that wooden barrier there right so for the past 15 minutes I've been up and down this little section of the canal looking along the edge and it's too slippy as hell and I think I found it a clue to the river tip and it's a little marking down on the edge of the canal towpath and it denotes where the trap door is look at this [Music] so here it is our little marker down on the Canal towpath that you would never normally notice and this little marker marks the spot where submerged underneath at the bottom of the canal is a trapdoor a wooden trapdoor with a chain attached to it don't ask me how that works in terms of waterproofing what that trapdoor when lifted drops down into the tip which runs under here and out underneath Whitworth Street towards the river Medlock now that is probably the only clue we've got as to the tip this marker I don't know how long it's been here I would imagine it's been here a long long time as for the trapdoor I'll tell you more about that in a minute what amazing and this is the only insight we've got into the tip and you have to know what it is to be at know when it's pointing out I love it now this trapdoor I don't think it's been opened for many many many years I've read something on the internet where somebody spoke to an old lock keeper spot to this lock keeper many years ago who was then in his 80s and said that the the trapdoor hadn't been opened for at least 90 years so this thing is old really old and I did have a problem with a wooden trapdoor underneath water and I thought well how does that work in terms of water tightness and will they not just rot away and I thought well a lot of the locks are wooden out they sold maybe it has lasted years and years and years and years so also another account where Sunday went along when the canal had been drained went along to that spot to see if they could see the trapdoor and it all silted over and it was it was not visible at all now this one's disputable because I've just decided it I'm disputing it well this might be another clue into the river tip across the canal there is a little overflow and I did read something somewhere that that overflow runs downwards and into the tip however let me show you something first of all let me show you overflow so just down at the other side of the locks now if you look across the canal there look at that little bubbling area there I think that is that overflow coming out the other side I think that's what it is it's just coming out there so I think that gully is possibly just an overflow for the locks however it could feed down into the tip as well not sure really not sure on that one I have read something that's heavy feeds into the tip wok don't know now that I've seen something coming out there I dispute that to be honest with you anyway the tip I'd like to say that the tip rolls somewhere underneath this building here so it comes from chepstow Street over there am I right chepstow Street yeah and if you look at the map it sort of comes this way underneath the building or maybe it comes further over here because the trap the trap door is there so it must come diagonally underneath this underneath here at this building underneath the canal and then underneath the old Hacienda building and out onto whip the street okay so just leaving that canal area now I'm going down onto it with Street and I'll just show you so across here now it's home the new sort of cinema and apps complex and the TIF them somewhere probably that red car up there underneath here underneath first Street and underneath all the new buildings and family meets the river medlock just over beyond City Road okay back to our underground map and you can see where we are in Manchester there the top our old denotes the Rochdale Canal the top yellow arrow and you can see that's where we were looking around and then it goes on under the Hacienda Apartments I said before the Hacienda the old Hacienda building and many house and her apartments goes on the Hacienda Apartments underneath wit with Street underneath or the railway she's underneath the new home building and you see there it says Medlock culvert well that's the root of the Medlock there you can see where the Medlock turns from one gray line into a blue line where it's called the tit and turns back into a gray line well somewhere in that culvert the tip finally meets the Medlock and again it's inaccessible so just roughly where the bottom yellow arrow is is roughly where the tip meets the Medlock so unfortunately we can't see that either back to the video but I'll just show you the start of the culvert here it's over the top I'll try and show you it's hidden by a lot of bushes so here we are journey's end just down there as you can see is the other side of that culvert where the river Medlock re-emerges just near City Road in Manchester and it's in that culvert deep down underneath where we can't even get to and we can't even see there from a small outlet the tip finally emerges and flows into the Medlock so I suppose Telus offically you could argue that somewhere down there in those waters the waters of the tip are swirling around and mixing with the waters of the Medlock but alas we still a letter went wading down there we still can't see the tip unfortunately there is however I think a picture that I'm trying to get hold off that might have it by the time I get back and edit this video a picture of the team emerging down in that culvert but if we've great to go in there but ain't going in there so there you go journey's end for the tip it meets the Medlock down here and there you go there's the picture there's the river tip emerging from its little culvert which has probably been built 150 200 years ago by Victorians and it emerges from that little spot on the side of the wall and it runs into the Medlock journey's end for the tip or is that the spot because this is where the river tip has its last laugh because when you try and research this where it comes out of the or pours into the Medlock culvert there's two pictures that I'm not sure which one it is perhaps someone could correct me I think it's the older one with the brick hatchway but does this picture as well that suggests it's the tip of flowing into the Medlock Thank You River tube for being so mysterious right to the end there you're the riveted mysterious right till the end if you've got any Corrections or any extra information if you put a comment down below in the comment section and that'd be great thank you very much also if you've enjoyed the video consider subscribing to my channel I don't make any money toll free and it's free for you to subscribe so consider subscribing because it's very motivational for me when people subscribe to you channel thanks for watching gives a thumbs up and let's just see you very soon in the next video take care [Music]

Channel: Martin Zero

Views: 47,650

Rating: 4.972261 out of 5

Keywords: manchester, the river tib, tib street, tib, manchester lost waterways, lost waterways, waterways, local history, time team, historical mystery, historical documentary, martinzero, martin zero, history of manchester, history of britain, urbex, urban explorer, rivers of manchester, manchester rivers, the rivers of manchester, lost rivers, the history of manchester, river tib manchester

Id: gJcMDuODRsU

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2017