The River Medlock is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, which rises near

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...

and flows south and west for to join the River Irwell in

Manchester city centre Manchester City Centre is the central business district of Manchester in Greater Manchester, England situated within the confines of Great Ancoats Street, A6042 Trinity Way, and A57(M) Mancunian Way which collectively form an inner ring road. ...

Sources

Rising in the hills that surround Strinesdale just to the east of

, the Medlock flows through the steep-sided wooded gorge that separates Lees from

Ashton-under-Lyne Ashton-under-Lyne is a market town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. The population was 45,198 at the 2011 census. Historically in Lancashire, it is on the north bank of the River Tame, in the foothills of the Pennines, east of Manche ...

and the Daisy Nook Country Park with its 19th century aqueduct carrying the disused

Hollinwood Branch Canal The Hollinwood Branch Canal was a canal near Hollinwood, in Oldham, England. It left the main line of the Ashton Canal at Fairfield Junction immediately above lock 18. It was just over long and went through Droylsden and Waterhouses to termi ...

over the shallow river.

Lower reaches

The final miles of the river flowing to the River Irwell have been extensively modified. The river is culverted underneath the car park of the City of Manchester Stadium (the site of a former

gasworks A gasworks or gas house is an industrial plant for the production of flammable gas. Many of these have been made redundant in the developed world by the use of natural gas, though they are still used for storage space. Early gasworks Coal ...

). It is visible flowing through Mayfield Park and under a bridge on Baring Street, close to Piccadilly station, before running again in a culvert beneath the former

University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...

campus (London Road (A6) to Princess Street), then under Hulme Street, until it appears briefly at Gloucester Street before flowing under the former gasworks at Gaythorn, reappearing at City Road East. At the point where

Deansgate Deansgate is a main road (part of the A56) through Manchester City Centre, England. It runs roughly north–south in a near straight route through the western part of the city centre and is the longest road in the city centre at over one mile ...

and Chester Road ( A56) meet (under the Bridgewater Viaduct), the river meets the

Bridgewater Canal The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, Greater Manchester, Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester. It was ...

head on, where a sluice gate (a listed structure) allowed water to feed the canal, until the water quality of the Medlock became too polluted for canal use. Normally, the level of the river is several feet below the level of the canal, and the river is carried in a tunnel under the

Castlefield Castlefield is an inner-city conservation area in Manchester, North West England. The conservation area which bears its name is bounded by the River Irwell, Quay Street, Deansgate and Chester Road. It was the site of the Roman era fort of Mam ...

canal basin, reappearing at Potato Wharf, where it is supplemented by excess canal water draining into a circular weir. When the river is in flood, the tunnel cannot cope and river water enters the canal, flows across the basin, and exits via the weir and manually operated gates. further on, the Medlock enters the Irwell adjacent to the bottom gate of the disused Hulme Locks.

Navigation

In the latter part of the 18th century the river was navigable at least between the

(at Deansgate) and the site of India House (on

Whitworth Street Whitworth Street is a street in Manchester, England. It runs between London Road ( A6) and Oxford Street ( A34). West of Oxford Street it becomes Whitworth Street West, which then goes as far as Deansgate ( A56). It was opened in 1899 and is ...

). At India House was the entrance to a tunnel used to carry coal to a wharf at Store Street (by Piccadilly station).Geoffrey Ashworth, ''The Lost Rivers of Manchester'', Willow Publishing, Altrincham, 1987, . The tunnel mouth is still visible. The tunnel was rendered obsolete by silting of the river and the construction of the Rochdale Canal.

Notable features

The area just south of Oxford Road railway station enclosed by the railway line and the loop in the river was known as

Little Ireland Little Ireland was a slum district of Manchester, Lancashire, England, in the early 19th century. It was inhabited from about 1827 to 1847 by poor Irish immigrants, and was south of Oxford Road railway station, enclosed by the railway line and th ...

, and was described by

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Friedrich Engels, ''Condition of the Working Class in England'', 1845 (multiple publishers
online edition
. It is commemorated by a red plaque on the wall of 8

Great Marlborough Street Great Marlborough Street is a thoroughfare in Soho, Central London. It runs east of Regent Street past Carnaby Street towards Noel Street. Originally part of the Millfield estate south of Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street), the street was named ...

, about half-way between New Wakefield Street and Hulme Street. About west of the plaque, there stands the Statue of Friedrich Engels at Tony Wilson Place. The statue was moved from

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

after the

dissolution of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

, and has the now-culverted flow of River Medlock between Anne Horniman Street and City Road East beneath. The telephone exchange name, and subsequent dialling code for the area around Strinesdale, Moorside, and Grains Bar, was Medlock Head, abbreviated to MED for dialling. This was so at the time of the introduction of Subscriber Trunk Dialling to the area in the 1960s. The name owed less to local geography than to technology. The code MED was rendered as 633 on the telephone dial. MAI, the code for Oldham Main, was 624. Post Office Telecoms equipment of the day worked better when discrete local geographical areas, then with relatively few subscribers, had similar prefixes. These numbers, and others beginning with 6, remain in use in Greater Manchester, prefixed by 0161.

Tributaries

River Tib A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

*Shooter's Brook **Newton Brook *Lord's Brook *Lumb Brook *Taunton Brook *Holden Brook *Little Bankfield Brook *Rabbit Brook *Rowton Brook *Thornley Brook **Ashes Brook **Wood Brook *Sheep Washes Brook *Roebuck Low Brook

Sources

Lower reaches

Navigation

Notable features

Tributaries

References

Further reading