If Carlsberg made drains, they'd make drains like Redbarn. Although it's fairly straight, relatively short, and a shrinker, it has so much else in its favour that the negatives are immediately overlooked. The culvert exists to convey the Wince Brook, a small tributary of the River Irk, under residential and industrial developments. I first explored this drain at the age of about thirteen, around 1987, it was a favoured school lunchtime loitering spot. From its concrete mouthed outfall a garish orange flow of iron oxide tinged water can often be seen swirling forth. Heading upstream from here the first four hundred yards of the drain are the most modern, built in the late 1950s. The brook here was previously incredibly meandering and so its course was considerably straightened through the culvert. This first stretch is in fairly good order, being the newest section, and is quite a contrast to the remainder of the culvert.

Once you're through the 50s section you get the sense that this place has been maintained just barely enough to keep it from collapsing in on itself, it's old and buckling! Like other similar culverts Redbarn is of piecemeal construction, spanning some one hundred and seventy years. The oldest known section was formerly a railway culvert, built in 1840 from stone blocks to allow the Middleton & Oldham branch of the Lancashire & Yorshire railway to cross the brook. As the town of Chadderton developed during the Victorian era more and more of the brook was culverted until eventually we have one continual tunnel of massively varying construction materials, methods and forms! The old railway culvert is quite a sight to behold, groundwater runs and sprays in from every conceivable angle and the whole section has become so encrusted with mineral and flowstone build up that it looks almost cave like. Around the mid way point of the culvert there is a small inverted egg shaped brick sidepipe that eventually leads to an overflow chamber on a main sewer, similar to Processor. Sadly Redbarn shrinks upstream and you reach a point where going on would likely be both fruitless and backbreaking, that said I feel one day the drainboard will have to be brought along just to see exactly how far it does go & more importantly where, if anywhere, it comes back aboveground!

who | links