Wigan Pier is the name given
today to the area around the canal at the
bottom of the Wigan flight of locks on the Leeds and
Liverpool Canal
. It is a popular location for visitors and the
local community in Wigan
, Greater
Manchester
, England, situated just a few hundred yards
south-west of the town centre.
History
The original "
pier" at Wigan was a coal loading
staithe, probably a wooden jetty, where
wagons from a nearby colliery were unloaded into waiting barges on
the canal. The original wooden pier is believed to have been
demolished in 1929, with the iron from the tippler (a mechanism for
tipping coal into the barges) being sold as scrap.
The name Wigan Pier was possibly invented by and was brought to
popular attention by
George Formby,
Sr. in the Music Halls of the early twentieth century and later
by
George Formby, Jr. who
incorporated it into his songs.
Someone looking out of an excursion train to
Southport
in the fog and seeing a coal gantry asked "Where
are we?" and was told "Wigan Pier". The tippler became the
favoured location when people subsequently wanted to see it. There
are references to it in songs such as
On the Wigan Boat
Express.
In 1937, Wigan was featured in the title of
George Orwell's
The Road to Wigan Pier, which dealt,
in large part, with the living conditions of England's working
poor. In response to a critic he insisted "He liked Wigan very much
— the people, not the scenery. Indeed, he has only one fault to
find with it, and that is in respect of the celebrated Wigan Pier,
which he had set his heart on seeing. Alas! Wigan Pier had been
demolished, and even the spot where it used to stand is no longer
certain." Some have embraced the Orwellian link, as it has provided
the area with a modest tourist base over the years. "It seems funny
to celebrate Orwell for highlighting all our bad points, but Wigan
wouldn't be anywhere near as famous without him," says the Wigan
Pier Experience's manager, Carole Tyldesley. "In the end George
Orwell has proved to be a strong marketing tool." Others regard
this connection as disappointing, considering it an insinuation
that Wigan is no better now than it was at the time of Orwell's
writing.
To see the difference, it is worth recalling a description of the
canal scene from The Road to Wigan Pier: "I remember a winter
afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the
lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the
passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see
the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal
path was a mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the
imprints of innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the
slag-heaps in the distance, stretched the ‘flashes’ — pools of
stagnant water that had seeped into the hollows caused by the
subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The ‘flashes’
were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were
muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It
seemed a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing
existed except smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul
water."
Today, the slag heaps have been removed or landscaped with trees,
the factories are closed or converted to housing and the canal is
only used for recreational boating and fishing.
Existing buildings
The pier was at the end of a
narrow
gauge tramway from a colliery.
The wagons would be brought right to the edge of the canal to be
tippled so that their contents went straight into the waiting
barges. The original wooden pier is believed to have been
demolished in 1929, with the iron from the tippler being sold as
scrap. Because of the more recent pride in the area's heritage, a
replica tippler, consisting of two curved rails, has been erected
at the original location.

The original terminus of the canal,
completed 1777
The former Wigan Terminus Warehouses were built in the 18th century
and refurbished in the 1980s. Boats could moor inside the building
and off-load directly into the warehouse.
A warehouse with covered loading bays, converted into a museum of
Victorian life (often mistakenly thought to be Wigan Pier), and the
home to The Way We Were museum, was part of the Wigan Pier
Experience museum and exhibition centre. The exhibition featured a
Victorian school room, a
colliery disaster, the
Second Boer War and (on the top floor) a
complete
pub transported from Hope Street and
reconstructed by shopping centre developers. The Wigan Pier Theatre
Company used these displays to remind present generations of "The
Way We Were" – not always a happy life. The attraction closed on 20
December 2007.
Gibson's Warehouse is a Victorian cotton warehouse, originally
built in 1777, re-built in 1984 as
The Orwell at Wigan
Pier, is situated on the canalside.
Trencherfield Mill is a former cotton mill, located across the road
from Wigan Pier - currently being converted into luxury apartments.
It still contains the massive working steam engine which will be
kept in the new development.
There are several bridges across the canal. Bridge #51 Pottery
Changeline is a
roving bridge, one
which swaps the tow path from one side of the canal to the other,
usually in such a way as to allow the horse pulling the barge to
pass easily and without disconnecting its tow-rope. Bridge #50
Seven Stars Bridge is adjacent to the Seven Stars
public house, taking its name from "
The Plough" star constellation.
Elizabeth House, whose address is The Pier, Wigan, houses the
Keep Britain Tidy campaign, which
is a British campaign run by the ENCAMS environmental
charity.
Wigan Pier Nightspot is a
night club on
the southern bank of the Canal. The club plays music predominantly
from the
bouncy house genre.
Future
The area is set to undergo a further transformation with the
development of a cultural "Wigan Pier Quarter" which will include a
performance centre and retail outlets.
External links
References
- Wigan Pier - Leeds and Liverpool Canal
- Origin of the term
- On the Wigan Boat Express
- On the road again
- The Leeds Liverpool Canal: Wigan
- The Leeds and Liverpool Canal: Wigan
- Britain's Waterways - Wigan Pier & Skipton
Castle
- Welcome To The Orwell at Wigan Pier
- Trencherfield Mill developments.
- The Leeds Liverpool Canal: Wigan
- The Seven Stars Bridge
- Wigan Pier Quarter