In the city of Manchester (England) the Irk and Medlock join which river? In the city of Manchester (England) the Irk and Medlock join which river? Asked on Jun 10 2014 by Emily Emma Irwell Answered on Jun 10 2014 by Emma Answer this question: In the city of Manchester (England) the Irk and Medlock join which river? Your Name: Enter the code above here : Can't read the image? click here to refresh Similar Questions from Yahoo Answers Best Answer Irwell It is found in various places on England's south coast, not just the west, but the West country might be its main stronghold. Best Answer The genus Tamarix (tamarisk, salt cedar) is composed of about 50–60 species of flowering plants in the family Tamaricaceae, native to drier areas of Eurasia and Africa. The generic name originated in Latin and may have referred to the Tamaris River in Hispania Tarraconensis (Spain). jobless and need help ,can i join army at this age with this qualification or should i work for any Mechanical company? PLEASE HELP?

HI FRIENDS, i am Mechanical Engineer Graduate fresher passed out year June 2013 with "second class" marks and i am 25 years old. am i eligible to any of the Indian Military Academy(Army,Navy. IAF). its my deepest desire to join IAF but since my marks and age i think i am not eligible. please guide me, is there any way i can join any Military force. how can i join? is there any website? what are the procedures ? IF i cant join Military. what can i do with mechanical degree, every one just asking either for experience or good marks. which i lack both.can any one please guide me in right direction i am going into depression without any job, what can i do i have wasted my time i don't want to waste any more . what should i do with my life. Best Answer do you have the physique to join the army? what is your height? do you go jogging early in the morning? then the army career is for you What are the most common spiders in england? Im trying to move to durham, england. I think its near newcastle? Yeah, anyway. What are the most common spiders in england?

I love everything about UK, but i hear there are Goliath Bird-Eater andGiant Huntsmans. Is this true or false??? Is health care here better than america's? Best Answer England is not known for dangerous spiders because there are none . Health care in the US is in shambles due to Obama Care debacle being implemented . Why is sunshine higher on South Coast of England than inland England? Where I live, on the South Coast of England we have between 1800 to 2100 hours of sunshine annually. However, London gets around 1400 to 1600 and Birmingham around 1350. I was wondering why is this? Shouldn't the fact that I live close to the see bring more cloud and rain? Best Answer Interesting question! Do you know where the sun shines most in Sweden? On the tiny island of Koster, close to the Norwegian border and where I live. The reason is very simple: a) there is a reporting weather station on the island! and b) the island is a bit off the main coastline and doesn't get that much clouds resulting from the sea breeze effect. During daytime, the land is warmer than the sea.

Warm air rises, lowering the pressure, bringing moist air from the sea. The wind is onshore. Moist air rising and cooling down by adiabatic effect, forms clouds along the coastline. At night, the system is inverted as the water is now warmer than land, causing an offshore wind. I have sailed several times my sailboat along the coast of the Channel, from Dover to Falmouth. Indeed, it doesn't surprise me that it has more hours of sunshine than London. The capital is more inland and subject to clouds during a sea breeze system. Last but not least, the sun isn't at the zenith, right above you. At the equinoxes, the sun, at noon, will be about 90 - 50 = about 40 degrees above the southern horizon. If your coastline faces south then, of course, even if the clouds are right above the shoreline, you'll get some sun. But a north-facing shoreline won't. Hwo do you describe the sound of a river? I need a description on how to describe a river. I know the usual ones, flowing, trickling, icy, fast, rushing ...etc.... but I want to know a description for a river.

For instance, when you don't know it is a river yet but you can hear it. Best Answer Mapping The Medlock – The River That Manchester Forgot | Manchester Walks Contact Mapping The Medlock – The River That Manchester Forgot There are three visible rivers in city centre Manchester: the Irwell, the Irk and the Medlock. And it’s the Medlock that we investigate on this tour. The river that Manchester has almost forgotten rises near Oldham and flows westwards through Daisy Nook Country Park (as painted lucratively by L. S. Lowry), past Man City’s ground, and between Ancoats and Ardwick, towards the centre of town, disappearing into a subterranean chasm by the junction of the Mancunian Way and London Road near Piccadilly Station. The river remains underground – under the former UMIST buildings – until Princess Street, forced into a culvert in best Le Corbusier style when the modernist concrete towers of UMIST were created in the 1960s. At Princess Street the river reappears triumphantly. This part used to be navigable.

At the back of India House was the entrance to a tunnel which was used for carrying coal to a wharf at Store Street by Piccadilly station and which is still visible. The river’s passage through the city centre is subtle and serpentine. In its hey-day the river was used as an industrial sewer into which factory and mill owners poured their pollution. On its banks, which regularly flooded in the rains, were Manchester’s worst slums, particularly Little Ireland which lay west of Oxford Street around what is now Oxford Road station. It is near impossible to follow the route of this almost forgotten river, which makes our “In Search of the Medlock” walk, as we head beyond Little Ireland into Gaythorn, Knott Mill and Castlefield, en route to the river’s watery grave in the Irwell, all the more rewarding and challenging. substormflow - Manchester Sewer History substormflow Full Text Concise Text Manchester started to grow rapidly in the late 18th century with the onset of the industrial revolution. The population grew from around 10,000 in 1753 to over 60,000 by 1800 with which came increasing amounts of waste to be dealt with.

Early Sewers # The earliest sewers in Manchester were likely to be culverted watercourses such as the Hanging Ditch and River Tib. The first proper sewers were constructed when the 1792 Police Act gave powers to (amongst other things) pave and sewer the streets. Records of the early sewers is scant with many being lost or degrading beyond repair in poorly maintained storage archives. There are 2-3 miles of early sewers under the oldest parts of the city, the courses and locations of many are not well known. Some have been incorporated into other systems or replaced but uncharted sewers turn up occasionally such as in 1979 when one was found under Oxford Road while doing work nearby. Another Police Act in 1828 led to the foundation of the Paving and Soughing Committee which had funds for constructing sewers. 1830 saw sewering of the outskirts of the city and then from 1835 to 1860 the surrounding towns such as Cheetham, Ardwick, Chorlton and Hulme. Sewers were generally laid under streets and flowed to watercourses such as the Irwell, Irk and Medlock.

They were frequently U shaped and no bigger than 3ft with barely any manholes for access. Between 1840 and 1850 around 25km of sewers were laid within a kilometre of the Town Hall. This rapid growth sometimes led to poor quality construction which made it's presence felt years later with sewer collapses in the city centre. The sewers were mostly brick although John Francis, the City Surveyor in 1848, introduced self cleansing, egg shaped clay pipes which were cheaper and quickier to install. They found widespread use until 1880; it was later found that the puddle clay to seal each section tended to wash away. This meant the sewerage leaked out, ground water leaked in and eventually the ground above collapsed into the voids formed around the pipe. Sewers were originally intended to deal with surface water from rainfall. As Manchester grew throughout the 19th century the expanding use of water closets, overflowing cess pools and industrial waste rendered the receiving rivers little more then open sewers themselves.

Taming the Rivers # The rivers were instrumental in shaping the course of the sewerage system, it was in attempts to control flooding and pollution that committees were formed and schemes put forward that would shape the main drainage system we have today. Over the years many plans were put forward to address the flooding issues; solutions ranged from unblocking slow moving channels, installing large tunnels and adjusting weirs. The Irwell and Medlock have been prone to flooding in the past. 1866 was known as the 'Year of the Great Flood', rain fell for 3 days straight and the Irwell rose 14ft above normal levels in places flooding 1,100 acres of land. J F Bateman proposed a flood relief tunnel for the Irwell in 1868. It was to start at Salford Cresent, then cut through Salford to outfall near Regent Road Bridge. Too many problems were presented by this idea and it was ultimately dismissed. The Medlock followed a winding course through the city and on it's banks landowners had built jetties and obstructions, all this hampered the free passage of water during storms.

The Medlock Improvement Committee was created by the Council in April 1863 to address the flooding issues. The Manchester Improvement Act of 1865 allowed the Council to improve matters, however in the following years there were still several severe floods. In July 1872 the River Medlock burst it's banks and washed away corpses from Bradford Cemetery. The Council spent £15,000 to pave the bed of the River Medlock through Philips Park which helped protect the cemetery. To this day it flows through an open culvert of terra-cotta brick although recent efforts have been made to start returning the river around the park to a more natural state. The City Surveyor at the time, Mr J G Lynde proposed a scheme to the Medlock Improvement Committee in September 1874 for a 20ft tunnel. This would intercept flood waters at Pin Mill Weir then cut through the South side of the City to the Irwell below Throstle Nest Weir. It was also intended for use as an outfall sewer and initially costed at £200,000.

A month later the price increased by £70,000 as the dimensions increased to 34x24ft. The scheme was presented to the Council on the 9th of December, it was said that if a such a large tunnel was to be built then it should intercept all the sewers that were polluting the rivers as well as carrying Medlock stormwater. The Medlock Improvement Committee asked Bateman and Lynde to return with a matured scheme which catered for the increased scope. This came back a couple of years later in November 1876 as a joint report by Messrs. Bateman and Lydne. There were 3 different proposals for controlling flood water; straightening the course of the Medlock, a large flood relief tunnel similar to the previously proposed and finally the building of a reservoir above Medlock Vale which could act as a buffer during storms. The tunnel solution was favoured above the others, it would be 20ft in diameter, convey 4,000 cubic feet per second and was estimated to cost £200,000. The second part of the report detailed a system of intercepting sewers.

The Surveyor, Mr Allison, reported to the Rivers Committee in March 1881 that an inspection of the Irwell and Medlock had been made. He found that flooding could be reduced by dredging, installing better flow management such as sluices and channels, and finally by removing groins and jetties. This was put before the Council who later approved the plan and in 1882 "The Manchester Corporation Act" was obtained which enabled the work to be done. An inspection in Feburary 1884 showed that there had been big improvements to the Medlock and Irk from improvements to the river bed, altering weirs and installing retaining walls. In Feburary 1886 the City Surveyor reported that altering Throstle Nest Weir on the River Irwell, had a large effect on lowering flood water through the city. The Medlock ultimately flows into the Irwell, before this though is an interesting setup where water could be sent into the Bridgewater Canal via sluices at Knott Mill. The remaining water dropped down into Castlefield Basin Culvert , a tunnel cut through the sandstone underneath the canals.

Two men were employed to regulate the sluices 24/7, this along with an opening known as Giant's Swallow (which took excess water from the canal back to the Medlock) alleviated flooding for the upper section of the Bridgewater canal. The First Interceptor Scheme # The city had an area of 4,294 acres with over 100 districts, each having a sewer flowing directly into a local watercourse. The Messrs. Bateman and Lydne report proposed 21 main intercepting sewers that would mainly follow the line of the rivers and divert all the sewers into a main outfall sewer. They were given the letters A through V (the 'I' Interceptor was deemed unnecessary during further planning and not built). The Outfall sewer took the flows to Davyhulme where a sewerage works was to be built. The existing river outfalls were to be largely retained as stormwater overflows. The total cost of building the sewers was estimated at £320,000 and the treatment works £100,000.

Work began in April 1889, took 10 years and ended up costing around £700,000 to complete the 56km worth of sewers. Enlargement and Modification # A report in July 1877 suggested a larger combined drainage scheme with the surrounding townships would be more effective. The Council agreed and upgraded the Medlock Improvement Committee into the Rivers Committee. This gave the powers necessary to speak to other local authorities, 15 of them came to a conference at the Town Hall in 1878 and some showed an interest. Mr John Alison took over duties as City Surveyor and submitted a report on the sewerage rate of the different districts, the city generated by far the largest amount of sewerage with 3,329,000 cubic ft/day. The joint scheme was abandoned in October 1879 as it was impractical to work through details with the other authorities who were concerned with the cost of the joint venture. In April 1880 Mr Alison wrote to other towns for guidance on sewerage treatment and visited some including Bradford, Leeds and Nottingham.

His findings were reported to the Council in February 1885 and the Rivers Committee started to look for land that could be used for the sewerage works. On 17th May 1886 the City Surveyor presented his plans for the proposed Main Drainage Scheme. It roughly followed the previous plan by Messrs. Bateman and Lynde but abandoned the flood prevention tunnel and added in the districts of Bradford, Harpurhey and Rusholme. This had a total drainage area of 5,934 acres at a cost of £412,081. Several civil engineers were invited to advise on both the construction and cost of the scheme. Mr John Bailey Denton was taken on and he proposed several improvements in 1887. Suggestions such as provisions for a larger population and higher rainfall were deprioritised in favour of removing a pumping station at Hunt's Bank to allow for a fully gravity based system. The engineer recommended an iron box to carry the sewer across the G Interceptor across the River Irk just before it met with the Irwell. Also suggested were self acting flaps on overflow outfalls to prevent river water entering the sewer in flood and modifications to the land at Davyhulme.

The Rivers Committee presented the modified scheme to the Council in April 1887 at an estimated cost of £500,000, it was approved and a public inquiry was held in September 1888. Stretford was incorporated in the scheme by agreement in December 1888. The sewage of 1636 acres of the district's land would be taken and the Stretford local authority would contribute to the cost of constructing the sewers and pay a yearly fee for treatment. The scheme was approved by the local government board in March 1889 and the Rivers Committee was instructed to carry out the work a month later. The New Sewers # The outfall sewer (Nowadays called Outfall A) was built in two main parts. The lower section commenced at Davyhulme and was a circular 10ft brick pipe built with three rings of brick, the invert being made of blue brick and the upper half red brick. The upper section started just under 4km from Davyhulme, this was an ovoid design 14ft tall and 10ft wide.

The ovoid shape was chosen in order to avoid pumping and allow it to pass under three railways and a number of other sewers. The Manchester Ship Canal (MSC) had not been built when the scheme was designed, Throstle Nest Weir was the closest place to the city where water levels allowed a storm overflow to be built. When the MSC was constructed in 1894 the weir was removed and the next closest place became the Mode Wheel Locks. There was a 13ft fall on the downstream side of the locks which was enough to build the storm overflow where today the outfall lies underwater. Many old defective sewers needed reconstructing before connecting to the interceptor system. Though not a primary part of the Main Drainage Scheme the cost of rebuilding them was included as the Surveyor thought it to be necessary. A overflow chamber was built to send flows down a 9ft overflow culvert to the Mode Wheel outfall, nowadays the overflow is nicknamed Lock Stock . This 51ft x 27ft chamber marks the termination of the circular sewer and start of the larger ovoid sewer. It's discharges were subject to a clause within the February 1890 agreement with the Manchester Ship Canal Company.

This basically said the overflow would only spill when the volume in the outfall sewer was 6 times the normal level which equates to flow more than 6ft 4in deep. Slots were designed into the overflow weir into which baffle boards could be dropped should spills be found to be damaging the ship canal, thus increasing the spill threshold to 8½ times the normal level flow. Where the Outfall Sewer crossed the Bridgewater Canal a 10ft cast iron tube made from bolted segments was used as there was not enough room for the normal brick pipe to pass underneath. Downstream the sewer crossed the canal again and there was even less depth available, so two 8ft 9 inch cast iron pipes were used instead of one bigger one. Further Enlargement # In 1890 the city extended it's boundaries, the Main Drainage Scheme was one of the key reasons the local authorities agreed to being incorporated into Manchester. The areas included Blackley, Clayton, Crumpsall, Kirkmanshulme (part of Longsight), Moston, Newton Heath, Openshaw and West Gorton.

This required an extension of the sewers to reach these areas, the sizes had already been decided upon and the City Surveyor, Mr Allison, was under the impression the system could cope even with the increased load. The plans were drawn up and were ready June 1893. The extended plans for incorporating the out townships received Council sanction in October 1893. An inquiry was held by a local government board inspector and the borrowing of an additional £100,000 was granted May 1894 for extensions to the B, J, M and U sewers, the Council had finally got it's joint scheme. The City Surveyor Mr Allison died in February 1894. Thomas de Courcy Meade was appointed as the new Surveyor in July 1894. He requested an extra £100,000 to complete works, buy a sludge streamer and also additional machinery at Davyhulme. The Council approved but stated they needed a full report before borrowing any more than £50,000 in the future; the work by this point was estimated to have costed £700,000.

Bad Work # New filter beds at Davyhulme were found to be defective by Mr Meade so he recommended a full check of current sewer work. Charles Jackson performed this duty in November 1894 and he found some sewers had such bad workmanship that whole sections needed replacing. Others had been constructed from less costly material then specified such as Stackstead red brick instead of Staffordshire blue brick and some which should have had stone inverts only had brick ones. To add insult to injury, an audit revealed extra payments were requested for work not actually done, some by over a thousand pounds. In August 1895 the Surveyor again found a large amount of work had been done badly during a systematic inspection of work. The brickwork needed to be cut into to check it, often the sewers were small and inspecting it all was a long and painstaking job. The contractors started to replace the bad work as it was found. In places the void outside the sewer was not being filled with bricks and mortar to prevent the subsidence of the ground above.

Flooding and Explosions # After a period of heavy rainfall in July 1895 the sluices in the storm overflow chamber at Davyhulme had to be lifted to prevent the boiler house from flooding. A tree trunk had found it's way down the outfall sewer and caught on an iron grid along with grass and the usual rags and detritus which clogged it up. This was unusual and when the Surveyor looked into it he found that overflow outfalls on the Medlock, Irwell and the sewer bridge at Hunts Bank were submerged in the storm and acting as inlets from the rivers to the sewers. It was thought when the interceptor scheme was designed that the river flooding problem would have been sorted out by the time it was completed, which was not the case. That along with unreliable outfall flaps as suggested by John Denton contributed to the influx of water. The overflows under construction in 1896 were fitted with penstocks that could be adjusted by hand to ensure dilution of sewerage to the river but keep most the stormwater out of the sewers. The sewers only started to be built with ventilation after 1889, manholes were built at changes of line and gradient.

The main interceptors were first to be ventilated, followed by smaller ones in 1894 built by the Paving committee. Older sewers were a troublesome issue as often they were not cleansed well so installing ventilation without sorting the deposits that had built up would constantly vent bad smells into the streets. In May 1901 there were a couple of sewer explosions in Miles Platting; a number of lids were blown off along the line of the Shooter's Brook relief sewer as well as the O and P sewers which flowed into it. An investigation by a city chemist revealed chemicals had leaked from the works of Messrs. Hardman and Holden and the Manchester Oxide Company, although representatives from each company claimed nothing unusual had entered the sewers. The Extended Scheme # The Main Drainage Scheme was originally designed in 1886 to serve 5,934 acres, this expanded to 12,911 acres in 1894 and 23,420 acres in 1909 with a 90% increase in population in that time to 715,335 people.

The sewers were originally designed to deal with 868,522 people, the total sewerage and stormwater flow turned out to be over double the maximum capacity of the system. John Denton was responsible for advising on the sizes of the existing outfall and intercepting sewers in 1887. At the time he determined the sewers should be able to cope with double the population. Unfortunately the data he had on sewerage and rainfall per head was not reliable and his predictions were too low. He did advise on bigger pipes to cater for a larger population but the Council decided to act on other suggestions instead. The small sewers and growing population meant the sewers were often overwhelmed and flooding occurred often. A report in September 1909 showed stormwater reaching critical levels across the entire interceptor network earlier that year. Mr Meade submitted a report in 1910 where he recommended the building of 16 new sewers, these formed the basis of what went onto become the Work Series interceptors. The services of Sir Alexander Binnie were employed by the Rivers Committee to do an independent investigation into the enlargement of the main drainage system based on the plans of Mr Meade.

Sir Alexander had previously designed major parts of London's Main Drainage System. It was estimated that the population would reach 1,100,000 by 1959. Sir Alexander anticipated the increasing load on the system would not stop once all the land within the city boundary had been built on. The new proposed scheme was laid out with provision for other districts becoming included at a later date, up to a total of 1,400,000 people. The original interceptor system had insufficient capacity due to a lack of knowledge on how much stormwater the system would need to deal with. Both Sir Alexander and the City Surveyor independently calculated how big the pipes of the new system would need to be in order to accommodate current and future flows. The Work Series sewers were built at a higher quality; apart from the years of accumulated filth the brickwork in some of the massive overflow chambers looks brand new. Stage one of the works was completed in 1934 with the price rising from the £50,000 estimate by £6000.

The final cost ended up at £1.6million when the Work 6 Interceptor through Openshaw was completed in 1973. The new sewers # The Work 5 interceptor was laid out as the main North/South sewer through the city, it started in Blackley to relieve the sewer there that was liable to surcharging. Sir Alexander proposed the sewer be constructed in a tunnel through the sandstone at quite a depth beneath a major road as the rock was easy to tunnel through and would not interfere with traffic as much as a cut and cover method. An alternative route was suggested along the bottom of the Irk Valley but was deemed too expensive. An overflow chamber was built to relieve the sewer of stormwater before it reached the city. Today this is nicknamed SSSI and spills into the River Irk. The Work 5 changes into the Work 4 Interceptor and later Outfall B as it leaves the city. Various connection points were made between the two outfall sewers to help balance the load or allow a section to be closed off for maintenance. Examples of these have been nicknamed: Packin' Heat , A2B and Packin' More Heat .

The existing sewers around the Fallowfield/Rusholme neighbourhood (Q,R,S & T) were so undersized that the storm overflows were unable to relieve them in times of heavy rain, the levels were known to rise 16ft above the sewer invert. The 2m+ Work 10 sewer was built to intercept these and continue through Moss Side to join the Work 4 just upstream of a new overflow. This was called the Work 9 overflow and later nicknamed the Hulme Flume . It could be built due to the levels of the incoming sewers being slightly higher than the River Irwell. Sir Alexander mentions the existing outfall sewer (Outfall A) "would be totally incapable of dealing with any additional drainage" from any of the proposed sewers and the rest of the scheme would be useless without the critical overflow point. It was proposed that construction should go ahead without waiting for the Parliamentary sanction needed to fund the rest of the scheme. This overflow would relieve the A and B Outfall sewers as well as the B Interceptor.

The 2.8m Work8 sewer was constructed to help drain Didsbury and intercept the sewer that drains the Southern part of Mosside not drained by the Work 10. This area was difficult to drain as the relatively flat land by the Mersey made building overflows impractical. This meant an oversize sewer had to be built instead at considerable cost. The Work 11 Sewer was constructed to intercept the flows at Gorton Sewerage works to try and help clean up the Gore Brook into which the Works discharged. Work 13 and 14 were to relieve the Irk Valley (B) and Moston Brook (J) sewers into the Work 5 Interceptor. T de Courcy Meade's original plan included provision for a supplemental storm overflow sewer alongside the Mode Wheel overflow (Lock Stock), however it was thought that if the Work 9 overflow (Hulme Flume) was built then the additional sewer would not be required. The ground conditions for the proposed scheme were estimated though a series of boreholes and it was found that most of the work in the northern part of the city would be through rock. This was considered fortunate as tunnelling could minimise the inconvenience to traffic.

The majority of the ground the main interceptor went through after the Work 9 Overflow was comprised of soft materials like clay sand and gravel. Much of this work was proposed as cut and cover apart from a short stretch underneath the Westinghouse Works which was tunnelled under. Sir Alex's estimate of work was slightly more than T de Courcy Meade's £842,300, he also added a 15% contingency which brought the total cost to bring before parliament to £970,000. Trafford Park # In 1914 work was underway in building Outfall B when the outbreak of war meant the government refused permission to complete the work. It came to a halt in Trafford Park at a large crossover junction chamber between the old and newer outfall sewers. Work was resumed in July 1919 and completed two years later. City Engineer Mr J B L Meek directed the construction which was done by Messrs. Edmund Nuttall and Co. This section of work involved building several major components. The 98ft x 32ft crossover chamber itself had a semi circular arched ceiling which was comprised of 6 rings of brickwork.

The new sewer leaving this (Lower Outfall B) was a circular 15ft tall tunnel four rings of brick thick, capable of discharging 330,000 gallons per minute. It later travelled underneath the Bridgewater Canal where it split into two box culverts, each with a semi circular invert and sloping benching. When checked recently the sides were completely underwater, see Duck . The sewer then came to the 9ft Mode Wheel culvert, a new overflow chamber was added which incorporated a 50ton cast iron carrier on hydraulic rams. This acted as an adjustable weir to permit stormwater to enter the existing overflow culvert. No tunnelling was required for the work, open cut techniques were used with steam cranes and a temporary railway alongside used to lift and remove excess material. A stretch between the canal and overflow chamber was not suitable for crane and train access so a runway was attached to the underside of cross members going across the trench. An electric powered 1 ½ton transporter lifted material away. Modern Day # In 1979 the City Engineer and Surveyor Geoffrey F Read said the condition of the interceptor sewers was reasonable but a large scale programme was necessary to prevent immense problems.

At the time, the interceptors were 60-90 years old. A number of collapses affected some of the smaller sewers, poor construction and increased road loading could be partially blamed. Between 1975 and 1979 there were 45 collapses in the city centre. Most of these could be partially attributed to burst water mains flowing into the sewer which washed away the ground forming a cavity around the pipe into which the road above fell into. One of the largest collapses was at Slone Street, the 3.6m Work 5 Interceptor collapsed producing a cavity the size of 4 double decker buses. This was likely due to wear on a drop shaft connection from an earlier 1.5m sewer. Changing land use lead to some sewers becoming overloaded, the original J sewer was brick lined and overflowed constantly. During 1979 a 1.5m bolted concrete segment lining was installed in the old pipe which was then inner lined with concrete for a smooth finish, this stopped the sewer overflowing in normal conditions. The Manchester Corporation was taken over by North West Water following the Water Act 1973.

This became North West Water plc in 1989 and then merged with the electricity board Norweb in 1995 to become United Utilities. Through a series of Annual Maintenance Programs (AMPs) United Utilities have invested millions in upgrading the system. The main interceptor system is still in use and seems to be coping with current normal level flows. Storm flows are a big issue however and over the years a number of Unsatisfactory Intermittent Discharges (UIDs) have been identified and sorted out. Generally these are overflows which are not screened to a fine enough level (if at all) and/or spill too often. Three main overflows have recently had major work done. The Mode Wheel overflow has seen the largest amount work, a series of 3 detention tanks linked by a new 3.6m sewer is designed to store 17,800 cubic metres of stormwater. The Hulme Flume and SSSI have had large screening chambers installed to filter out solids before they flow into the Rivers. The amount of sewerage Manchester is producing is still increasing, for now the upgrades to the Victorian system should mean it is not overwhelmed.

The rivers are cleaner than they have been in the past, fish levels are increasing and the River Irwell is now used for recreational activities. To maintain low levels of pollution further, large scale investment and construction will be needed. Copyright substormflow. River Irwell and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence Beyond the Ducie Bridge the River Irk is an invisible visitor to the city because most of its course is culverted. This wasn't the case in the days when Friedrick Engles lived there. In his book, "The Condition of the Working Class in England", Engles described the Irk as he saw it. "The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet high. On this abrupt slope there are planted three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of construction is as crowded and disorderly here as in the lower part of Long Millgate.

Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found - especially in the courts which lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet beheld." He goes on to describe the view from the Ducie Bridge as follows, "The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed from mortals of small stature by a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank." Below is a map of the area from 1850 showing the exposed Irk between the Ducie Bridge and the confluence with the River Irwell. The red star added to the map above shows the approximate location of the photograph below. The Irk is passing beneath the ground at that point. Below is the point where the Irk emerges from the culvert to join the Irwell near the MEN Arena.

The river Irk | urbanecologymanchester urbanecologymanchester Hello world and welcome to my blog. The aim is to document my exploration of the urban ecology of rivers in Greater Manchester and the effects of industrialization. Main Menu · by heavymetalecology · in Background . · The mightly river Irk has a catchment area of 73 km2, starting at Royton to the north east Manchester. The river heads west through Chadderton and Middleton then south to the city centre. The industrialisation of the river started during the middle ages with the water being used to power a corn mill. The development continued at a slow pace until the industrial revolution. This period changed the characteristics and features, where mill after mill, channelization, and the construction of weirs, retaining walls and water extraction. As there was very limited controlled emissions and disposal of waste materials, the mill owners and society as a whole could flush, throw and tip anything they wanted into the water course. Manchester would have looked and smelt like many parts of industrial China today.

The air – acrid, heavy with sulphurs compounds, soot, smoke, industrial gasses and any other particles which with the Climate of Manchester being very humid, will have precipitated to the ground as it rains 1:3 days of the year (2012 was an exception – the ducks in the park was sick of it!). This would have acidified the soils, washing anything dumped on the land, leaching out and heavy metals and contaminants and running into the streams and rivers. Irk landfill site – don’t dig it! At the height of this excess Friedrich Engels vividly described the banks of the Irk: “The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of construction is as crowded and disorderly here as in the lower part of Long Millgate.

Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found – especially in the courts which lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on the Irk above Ducie Bridge – in case anyone should care to look into it. Below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge, known as Allen’s Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept and disinfected with chloride of lime. Dr.

Kay gives a terrible description of the state of this court at that time. Since then, it seems to have been partially torn away and rebuilt; at least looking down from Ducie Bridge, the passer-by sees several ruined walls and heaps of debris with some newer houses. The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed from mortals of small stature by a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank.” As you can see from the edited maps on my flickr feed, the Irk has historically been used or the land adjacent as a landfill site (the pink on the maps are known historic sites – data obtained from the environment agency what’s in your backyard feature). These sites are still contaminating the river, decades from there closure and potentially a source of contamination for the next few decades and centuries into the future. Irk and medlock landfill sites The historical importance of the river and the unknown aspect and neglect is of importance for the health of the rivers Irwell and Mersey downstream.

In my opinion focus should be to improve the health of the river system so recreational users such as fishermen and canoeist can use the river and for the biological recovery to occur. I will discuss what I observed of the river in another post. Below is my Photosynth of the Irk before it flows under Manchesters Victoria station. Red river shore: exploring the Medlock culvert | Paul Dobraszczyk CV Red river shore: exploring the Medlock culvert In common with many other urban watercourses across the world, Manchester’s smaller rivers are today all but buried beneath the city centre. As Manchester rapidly expanded and industrialised in the nineteenth century, its once salubrious watercourses – the Irk, Tib and Medlock – became notorious as appalling foul-smelling and polluted streams (or, rather, open sewers). Unsurprisingly, by the turn of the twentieth century, the courses of these rivers were largely canalised or hidden beneath brick and stone culverts.

So, today, the Irk disappears beneath Victoria Station in a giant 1km culvert before joining the Irwell, the Tib has long since become a sewer, while the Medlock snakes almost shamefaced through the city centre in a series of culverts before emptying into the Irwell at Castlefield. Even in suburban areas, the Medlock was long ago forced underground, most notably in a 600m culvert under what is now the car park of the Manchester City football stadium straddling Miles Platting and Clayton. 1. 1893 Ordnance Survey map of Manchester showing the River Medlock in Clayton When Joseph Adshead made his extraordinarily detailed maps of Manchester in 1851, the Medlock was depicted meandering across open fields in Miles Platting; while the Ordnance Survey map of 1893 showed the river still open but straightened in its course (1). Culverting of this section of the Medlock began in 1905 and was complete by 1909.

At the same time, a whole section of the river upstream in Philips Park was canalised with millions of red Accrington bricks, forming a walled bank, the fast-flowing water carried in an artificial channel. Today, Manchester’s ‘red’ river is being restored to its ‘natural’ state, the bricks being slowly removed in an attempt to rehabilitate the watercourse in Philips Park. 2. Entrance to the Medlock culvert, Philips Park 3. Inside the Medlock culvert It remains to be seen whether the tunnelled section of the river Medlock will remain in place – for it is here that one gets the strongest sense of a shackled watercourse, banished underground. Despite being relatively easy to access (a hop over a fence and a short wade through the water), the culvert is nevertheless a forbidding place: walking into pitch darkness goes against all natural instincts and the sound of running water is magnified by the cavernous brick tunnel (2 & 3).

The Medlock’s waters may be technically ‘clean’, but, over the years and together with many smaller overflows that line the tunnel, they have created a fantastic array of shapes and colours on the brickwork, a petrified miasma that is at once beautiful and repellent (4). 4. View inside a small side drain emptying into the Medlock culvert 5. Looking up the inspection chamber flanking the Medlock culvert There are other wonders here too: an inspection chamber that rises 30 ft to the surface in a series of concrete platforms that resemble the startling modernist geometries of Brutalism (5); and, further down, a resolutely Victorian series of steps down which tumble water from the Ashton Canal, which lies above the culvert (6). More unsettling are the remains of tombstones within the Medlock’s waters: flushed downstream in a calamitous flood of 1872 when the river burst its banks and inundated the cemetery next to Philips Park, carrying off dozens of corpses and headstones. 6.

Steps providing a run-off from the Ashton Canal into the Medlock culvert The strange coming together of the ultra modern, Victorian gothic and the downright morbid in the Medlock culvert characterises many urban underground spaces and is no doubt why they are so appealing to urban explorers. Indeed, the rich interweaving of contradictory elements witnessed in the Medlock culvert is exactly what is missing from the rhetoric that surrounds the current project to restore the river to its ‘natural’ state, which seems to speak of the river in a way that divorces it from the (industrial) history of the city. Perhaps the real imaginative force of the Medlock (and all urban rivers) lies at the point where it meets human attempts to control its power – producing in structures like the Medlock culvert a fecund melding of human and non-human forces. Share this: Manchester | England, United Kingdom | Britannica.com England, United Kingdom Norman Foster Manchester, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester urban county, northwestern England . Most of the city, including the historic core, is in the historic county of Lancashire , but it includes an area south of the River Mersey in the historic county of Cheshire .

Manchester is the nucleus of the largest metropolitan area in the north of England, and it remains an important regional city, but it has lost the extraordinary vitality and unique influence that put it at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution . Skyline of Manchester, England. ManchesterMan Manchester was an urban prototype: in many respects it could claim to be the first of the new generation of huge industrial cities created in the Western world during the past 250 years. In 1717 it was merely a market town of 10,000 people, but by 1851 its textile (chiefly cotton) industries had so prospered that it had become a manufacturing and commercial city of more than 300,000 inhabitants, already spilling out its suburbs and absorbing its industrial satellites. By the beginning of the 20th century, salients of urban growth linked Manchester to the ring of cotton-manufacturing towns— Bolton , Rochdale , and Oldham , for example—that almost surround the city, and a new form of urban development, a conurbation, or metropolitan area, was evolving. By 1911 it had a population of 2,350,000.

In the following years, however, the pace of growth slowed dramatically. If the 19th century was Manchester’s golden age, when it was indisputably Britain’s second city, the 20th century was marked by increasing industrial problems associated with the decline of the textile trades (the result of foreign competition and technological obsolescence). Area city, 45 square miles (116 square km); Greater Manchester metropolitan county, 493 square miles (1,276 square km). Pop. (2001) city, 392,419; Greater Manchester metropolitan county, 2,482,328; (2011) city, 503,127; Greater Manchester metropolitan county, 2,682,528. Physical and human geography Eyjafjallajökull volcano The out-migration has been partly counterbalanced by in-migration from Commonwealth countries, particularly from the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent. Manchester itself has a multiracial immigrant community, which is chiefly concentrated in the Moss Side area. Some of the textile towns, too, have attracted Commonwealth immigrants, chiefly Indian and Pakistani textile workers.

The metropolitan area as a whole has been one of the main magnets to Commonwealth immigrants in Britain. The economy Industry There has long been a contrast between the economies of the core city (Manchester itself, together with the industrial areas of Salford and Stretford) and the textile towns that form the northern and eastern margins of the urban cluster. Until the 1960s the latter had narrowly based economies largely dependent on the textile trade, which still provided more than half the employment of women. The former, however, had an economy of greater diversity: manufacturing was varied (including printing and the production of engineering and electrical products, chemicals, and clothing), and a broad range of service activities gave stability to the economy. This old pattern of contrast was breaking down in the late 20th century, as the core city lost factory employment at a rapid rate and became increasingly dependent on services while the peripheral towns acquired greater industrial diversity and thus a securer (and locally expanding) manufacturing base. The entire metropolitan area of Greater Manchester has undergone major economic changes. The textile industry has been reduced to a mere vestige of the enormous manufacture that once underpinned the economy of the city.

It continues to decline, despite diversification from cotton to man-made fibres and resultant close links with the chemical industry. The surviving mills have been reequipped for high productivity, but this, too, has had the effect of reducing labour demand. The clothing industry has declined with the textile industry but has remained a significant employer of women, chiefly in many small workshops in the inner city. Much more serious has been the sharp contraction of more modern industries that until the 1970s had served as replacements for the old industries. The decline in engineering, one of the main sources of jobs for men, is especially serious. Within the chemical industry the main growth has been in the production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, with research laboratories located in parkland at Alderley, on the southern fringe. The paper and printing industry is stable, reflecting Manchester’s status as the second centre, after Greater London , of newspaper production in England. Manchester’s economy has been moving from an industrial to a postindustrial nature. Services have become the chief employers, with the “thinking” rather than the manual services undergoing expansion.

Some services, such as transport and distribution, are declining, but the professions, finance and banking, administration, and general personal services are growing with explosive force. Most of these growth points require well-qualified workers: the declining demand for manual skills and the shift to mental skills have caused selective unemployment, which is clearly a persistent social problem. The conversion of Manchester into a service city is not an entirely new trend, since the city has been the regional capital of northwestern England for two centuries. The process, however, has been quickened by the rapid decline of industry in the inner city. Clearance of the slum tracts and their subsequent redevelopment have removed entire urban districts that once housed many hundreds of small firms. Nearly half of the employment once available in manufacturing in the inner areas has disappeared. In these districts a disadvantaged and ethnically mixed community experiences unemployment rates that are at least twice the city average. Part of this loss of factory work in the inner city has been the result of the movement of firms to the fringe of the urban area, not only to planned industrial estates but also to the cotton mills left empty by the decline of the textile trades.

Hundreds of mills have been converted to other uses, thereby providing the cheap factory-floor space necessary to young and struggling firms, so that the textile towns have in some degree replaced the inner city as an industrial nursery in which it is possible for new firms to become established. Trade and transportation Apart from its massive volume of retail and wholesale trade, Manchester has a number of distinctions as a regional service centre. It houses a branch of the Bank of England and the Northern Stock Exchange, the headquarters of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and one of the major provincial crown courts. Its airport at Ringway, 10 miles (16 km) south of the city, is the leading British terminal outside London in the volume of international traffic handled and in the diversity of both its European and its transatlantic services. Ringway is owned by the city and is the country’s second airfreight terminal. From 1894 to 1986 Manchester was a seaport, with a group of docks at the head of the 37-mile (60-km) Ship Canal .

The growth in the size of shipping, together with changes in the pattern of maritime trade, led to a slow decline in the use of the waterway, and by the mid-1980s the upper parts had been closed to traffic. The lower reaches of the canal remained open and busy, serving the needs of bankside industries, especially the huge oil-refining and chemicals complex at Ellesmere Port. New industrial and commercial uses for the derelict terminal docks have been developed. Public transport in Greater Manchester is coordinated by a Passenger Transport Executive, and it relies heavily on an integrated system of bus routes. The system faces private competition, however, especially from flexible minibus services. The city is also served by a dense network of commuter rail services. Administration and social conditions Government Although the metropolitan area of Greater Manchester is a single cohesive socioeconomic unit, its local government has been fragmented for much of its history. The dominant unit is the metropolitan borough of Manchester, which carries the financial burden of supplying central facilities (major museums and libraries and the airport) for the area as a whole. There are nine other metropolitan boroughs, each independent and able to develop its own social, educational, and planning policies.

The Local Government Act of 1972 (in effect from 1974) created a metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, divided into metropolitan boroughs, including the city of Manchester. The county administered a number of general services (e.g., strategic planning, transport, and recreation), while the boroughs handled the main range of services (e.g., education, housing, and most personal and household services). The metropolitan county of Greater Manchester lost its administrative powers in 1986, however. Some of the general services that it had provided were taken over by specialist successor authorities, but many of its administrative powers passed to the city of Manchester and the other individual metropolitan boroughs, which are in effect now unitary authorities. Education and social services Of all Manchester’s pioneer cultural achievements, none has prospered more than the Victoria University of Manchester. After its foundation in 1851 at a site in Quay Street, the college received a charter in 1872 and began growth on its present site in 1873. By 1880 it had combined with member colleges in both Leeds and Liverpool to form a federal institution.

Since becoming a separate body again in 1903, the university has grown to become one of the largest in Britain. The faculty of technology has become autonomous as an Institute of Science and Technology, and, with the establishment of the University of Salford in 1967 and the growth of a large polytechnic, there are now four institutions of higher learning in and near the city. The city provides the complete range of social and welfare services within the British system, but its special strength lies in health services and medical education. The Victoria University of Manchester has the largest medical school in western Europe; it is linked to three large groups of teaching hospitals that provide specialist treatment. One of the most distinguished of these is the Christie Hospital, a major centre for cancer research. Cultural life The cultural life of Manchester suffered some losses during the 20th century. For example, its prestigious newspaper, The Guardian , has (in the Mancunian view) fled to London and dropped the city’s name from its title. However, the Lowry, an architecturally innovative centre for the visual and performing arts, opened in 2000 and signaled the city’s cultural revival at the beginning of the 21st century.

Music maintains its strength. The Hallé concerts reached their centenary in 1958, and the orchestra continues to maintain its international reputation. The city has a large number of private, public, and specialized libraries. The municipal library, with more than 25 branches, has its headquarters at St. Peter’s Square. Manchester also houses the notable John Ryland University Library (now part of the Victoria University of Manchester library) and Chetham’s Library, one of the first free public libraries in Europe. Among the galleries and museums, the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Manchester City Art Gallery are particularly well known. The latter contains a fine collection of paintings, sculpture, silver, and pottery and is supplemented by several branch galleries. The Manchester Museum has special exhibits of Egyptian and Japanese objects, as well as natural history collections and an aquarium. The Museum of Science and Industry highlights Manchester’s industrial heritage. There are two major football (soccer) clubs. And, at the grounds of the Old Trafford Cricket Club, test matches are played against overseas cricket teams visiting Great Britain.

Manchester also has an active pop music scene, which revolved around Factory Records in the 1980s and has given rise to several influential rock bands, including Joy Division , the Smiths , and Oasis. History Early settlement and medieval growth Early in the Roman conquest of Britain, a fort was established (ad 78–86) on a low sandstone plateau at the confluence of the Rivers Medlock and Irwell. In its first form, the fort was a simple field fortification of shallow ditches, earth banks, and timber palisades. By the early 3rd century, it had been rebuilt in stone and contained a number of buildings; excavations have uncovered evidence of substantial activity. A vicus (Latin: “row of houses”) of merchants and craftsmen had grown outside the walls, along the well-made road to York . But Roman occupation left no permanent imprint, except to give the modern city its name, derived from Mamucium (“Place of the Breastlike Hill”). There is no evidence of occupation after the 4th century, and the site seems to have lain empty for 500 years.

In 919 the West Saxon king Edward the Elder sent a force to repair the Roman site as a defense against the Norsemen, and some traces of this reoccupation have been discovered. By then, however, the growth of Manchester had recommenced almost a mile from the fort, at the junction of the Rivers Irk and Irwell near the present cathedral. The Norman barony of Manchester was one of the largest landholdings in Lancashire, and its lords built a fortified hall close to the church. During the 13th century, Manchester began its transition from village to town, and sometime before 1301 a charter was granted. Although Manchester was acquiring regional importance, it was subordinate to its near neighbour, Salford, which was the capital manor of the hundred (district) and which had an earlier borough charter. The full development of the medieval borough followed the establishment in 1421 of a college of priests to take charge of the church. Part of the college survives as Chetham’s Hospital, while a free church school set up in 1506 became the Manchester Grammar School in 1515, founded by Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter .

Evolution of the modern city By the 16th century Manchester was a flourishing market borough important in the wool trade, exporting cloth to Europe via London. By 1620 a new industrial era had begun with the weaving of fustian , a cloth with a linen warp but a cotton weft. This was the origin of the cotton industry that was to transform southern Lancashire after 1770. As the trade grew, Manchester expanded and “improvements” were added, including the fine square and church of St. Ann (1712). From the 1760s onward, growth quickened with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The first canal, bringing cheap coal from Worsley, reached the town in 1762; later extended, it linked Manchester with the Mersey and Liverpool by 1776 and so served the import-export needs of the cotton industry. Manchester’s first cotton mill was built in the early 1780s. By 1800 Manchester was said to be “steam mill mad,” and by 1830 there were 99 cotton-spinning mills.

The world’s first modern railway, the Liverpool and Manchester, was opened in 1830, and by the 1850s the greater part of the present railway system of the city was complete. Despite its growth to a population of more than 70,000 by 1801, the town had no system of government and was still managed, like a village, by a manorial court leet (a court held semiannually by the lord of the manor or his steward to conduct local government). A police force was established in 1792, but not until 1838 did a charter of incorporation set up an elected council and a system of local government. Manchester’s economic history during the second half of the 19th century was one of growth and diversification. The city became less important as a cotton-manufacturing centre than as the commercial and financial nucleus of the trade; on the floor of the Royal Exchange , the yarn and cloth of the entire industry was bought and sold. From an early textile-machinery industry, many specialized types of engineering developed. Products included steam engines and locomotives, armaments, machine tools, and, later, those of electrical engineering.

The opening of the 37-mile Manchester Ship Canal (1894) linked Manchester, via the Mersey estuary at Eastham, to the Irish Sea and the world markets beyond. By 1910 Manchester had become the fourth port of the country, and alongside the docks, at Trafford Park, the first (and still the largest) industrial estate in Britain was developed. New industries also took sites there, with a prominent role played by such American companies as Westinghouse and Ford, the latter moving to Essex in 1929. At its height, more than 50,000 workers were accommodated within factories of the estate, though that number later declined. The Manchester of the 19th century was a city of enormous vitality not only in its economic growth but also in its political, cultural, and intellectual life. The Manchester Guardian became Britain’s leading provincial newspaper, achieving international influence, while the Hallé Orchestra was its equal in the world of music.

Owens College (now known as Victoria University of Manchester) became the nucleus of the first and largest of the great English civic universities, while the academic success of the Manchester Grammar School made it something of a model in the development of selective secondary education in England. Politically, Victorian Manchester often led the nation: in the agitation for parliamentary reform and for free trade , its influence was crucial. The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 arose from a peaceful political assembly, held on fields near the city, to demand parliamentary reform. In the period 1842–44 the German social philosopher Friedrich Engels lived in Manchester, and his influential book Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) was based on his experiences there. Among its other intellectual achievements were John Dalton’s development of the atomic theory as the foundation of modern chemistry and the work of the “Manchester school” in the application of economic principles to the problems of commerce, industry, and government. There was a price to be paid for this precocious growth. In its urban fabric, inner Manchester remained essentially a 19th-century city, and by the late 20th century it faced massive redevelopment problems.

An industrial collar of obsolescent factory zones encircled the city centre, and huge areas of old slum housing survived with little renewal into the 1960s. Manchester, then, is a city in transition: its face is being transformed by redevelopment, and its dependence on the insecure base of the textile industries is declining with the growth of a much broader economic structure. River Irk, Manchester, England Tourist Information Locals and travelers to connect with About Manchester, England The River Irk is a river in Greater Manchester in North West England that flows through the northern suburbs of Manchester before merging with the River Irwell in Manchester city centre. Rising to the east of Royton, north of Oldham and running west past Chadderton and Middleton, its course has been extensively altered as the Industrial Revolution took its toll on the region's landscape.

Question: In the city of Manchester (England) the Irk and Medlock join which river?
Answer: Irwell