[Tealeaf]

Thats a lovely old piccy there, Atarah. Possibly it gives a rather romantisised view of what Accy was like mid-century - especially for what was probably a southern audience in rhe mid 1840's. (Piccy published in the Illustrated London News, according to the caption)

However, that landscape could easily have looked very different. Fifty years before the railway came through Accy, a canal was planned to come through. As we now know, the Leeds/Liverpool canal skirts around Accy - unlike Blackburn or Burnley, where it goes straight through the middle. Why? Well, it all depends on what evidence or theory you wish to look at.

What is certain is that a canal was planned to run north from Manchester through the Rossendale Valley to meet up with the Leeds/Liverpool canal in the Accrington area. I have always understood that tihe canal would roughly follow the route of what eventually became the Accy/Bury railway line to the centre of Accy, then turn East & meet up with the Lds/Liv at Church (following what is now the Blackburn Road line)

I have recently read, though, that that junction was originally planned at a site corresponding with the Old Grammar School, and that the Lds/Liv would then have crossed the River Stink at approx. where the Asda is now, swung east and then through either a cutting or locks proceeded towards Burnley along the route roughly of what is Burnley Rd. (Either going throughby a cutting or going Up & Over by a series of locks). Whatever, this would still have encompessed the building of a substancial embankment downriver of where the railway viaduct stands.

So that little piccy - and Accy now - could perhaps have looked quite a bit different. Maybe we would have had a canal embankment running through the town (as in Burnley) as well as the great railway viaduct; and Accy would have looked very different ro what it does today....a canal where Blackburn road is, a huge embanking leading to the railway arches, maybe the town centre in the middle of it all....who knows