Store Street Aqueduct, listed building in Manchester

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What is recorded here

Benjamin Outram built Store Street Aqueduct in the 1790s to carry Manchester's Ashton Canal across a road at a sharp angle. Its carefully skewed stone arch allowed both routes to keep their course, and the crossing remains in canal use as an early British example of this difficult form of engineering.

What this place is

The aqueduct is a long sandstone channel and bridge carrying the Ashton Canal over Store Street. Instead of meeting the road squarely, it crosses at roughly forty-five degrees, so the arch had to be laid out on a skew.

People and events

Engineer Benjamin Outram designed the work during construction of the canal, and it opened in 1798. Its early date places it close to the beginning of successful large skew-arch building in Britain.

How it was used

Boats and people on the towpath passed above while road traffic moved through the single broad opening below. The angled crossing avoided a disruptive bend in either the canal or the street.

What survives

About seventy metres of squared stonework remain, including the slanting half-oval arch, parapets and projecting triangular supports. The canal is still navigable across it and the northern towpath remains usable.

Why it mattered

Store Street solved a hard meeting between two transport lines in a crowded industrial city. Its continued use makes the importance clear: an innovative eighteenth-century structure still performs the job for which it was built.