page_title: River Irwell
section_title: 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: River Irwell / History / 20th century / 1990s
caption_attribution_description: Trinnity Bridge, Manchester, England. Spanning the canal and bridging the gap between Manchester and Salford. Designed by Santiago Calatrava.Trinity Bridge
context_page_description: The River Irwell is a 39-mile long river which flows through the Irwell Valley in North West England. Its source is at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately 1.5 miles north of Bacup. It delimits Manchester from Salford where its canalised section downstream starts with Salford Quays and seamlessly becomes the River Mersey during its Manchester Ship Canal tract, which no longer receives regular shipping, having received the smaller flow of the upper parts of the Mersey near Irlam.
  In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Irwell's lower reaches were a trading route that became part of the Mersey and Irwell Navigation. In the 19th century, the river's course downstream of Manchester was permanently altered by the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal which opened in 1896. The canal turned Manchester and Salford into a major inland seaport and led to the development of Trafford Park which became the largest industrial estate in Europe. Further changes were made in the 20th and 21st centuries to prevent flooding in Manchester and Salford, such as the Anaconda Cut in 1970 and the River Irwell Flood Defence Scheme in 2014.
context_section_description: In 1990, the newly formed Mersey and Irwell Packet Company launched regular tourist trips along the river from a landing stage opposite the Granada Studios Tour entrance in Quay Street, taking in the stretch from Castlefield to Salford Quays.  This was not universally welcomed as, by September of that year, a retired chemical engineer claimed that the pleasure boat was "leaving clouds of methane in its wake as it disturbed sediment on the river bed". However, in 1991 a feature article appeared in the magazine Lancashire Life extolling the virtues of the cruise, and stating that the Irwell "once thought a liability is in fact a major asset to urban regeneration ... now the twin cities compete to befriend her, to dress her in finery and proudly introduce her back into society. And the public are cordially invited back onto her waters."  During 1994, construction work began on a new £1.3M footbridge to link Manchester and Salford, to be known as Trinity Bridge. The box-girder and steel cable construction was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava to represent a ship in full sail as the centrepiece of the £50M Chapel Wharf Regeneration Scheme, which was expected to breathe new life into a run-down area of Salford and to create up to 8,000 new jobs.  In May 1995 a new 30-mile (48 km) long multimillion-pound arts trail, to be known as the Irwell Sculpture Trail, was reported in the Manchester Evening News and in June 1997 work began on the £10 million Lower Irwell Valley Flood Defence Scheme in Lower Kersal.
caption: Trinity Bridge
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