Home › Rivers › Manchester Ship Canal

Manchester Ship Canal

A stream near Irlam, Salford. No gauge of its own: what the river map and the banked data say about it.

Manchester Ship Canal is a stream on Ordnance Survey’s river map near Irlam, Salford, with about 2.0 km of mapped channel. The map records no direction of flow at its lower end, so where it goes is not followed.

Next gauge downstream

Not known: the river map does not trace this water as far as a gauge or the sea (the map has a gap, the water enters a canal, or the next gauge is more than 100 km away).

Storm overflows on Manchester Ship Canal

3 storm overflows are placed on this stream on the river map. Each status is the water company’s own monitor.

Lytham Road CSO (452ef) Not discharging
United Utilities · into Manchester Ship Canal Via Sws · 2025: 10 spills, 22 h · reaches the river through a sewer, so where it enters is approximate
Townsgate Combined Sewer Overflow Not discharging
United Utilities · into Manchester Ship Canal Via Sws · 2025: 9 spills, 28 h · reaches the river through a sewer, so where it enters is approximate
Urmston Wastewater Treatment Works Not discharging
United Utilities · into Manchester Ship Canal · 2025: 25 spills, 194 h

A status says whether an overflow is discharging now, never how much or why. A monitor that is offline or has not reported is not “not discharging”. Sewage in Britain’s rivers →

Live status: © United Utilities storm overflow activity data, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Annual spill figures: Environment Agency Event Duration Monitoring return, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right, Open Government Licence (OGL) v3.0.

Water-sampling points on Manchester Ship Canal

1 Environment Agency sampling point is placed on this stream. These are dated samples taken by hand, not live readings, and FloodRadar does not grade them.

Manchester Ship Canal at Irlam Locks
Last sampled 31 Jul 2026 · 2 months ago · 34 samples banked

A sample is taken on a date; it says nothing about the water today. A sample below an overflow does not by itself show where anything in it came from.

Water samples: Environment Agency Water Quality Archive, © Environment Agency and/or database right 2026, Open Government Licence v3.0.

Places along it

From its source towards its mouth, the settlements within a kilometre of it on the map: Woods End, Calder Bank, Irlam.

On the map

The map needs JavaScript. Everything it shows is listed on this page.

The blue line is Manchester Ship Canal; grey lines are other mapped watercourses. Lines from OS Open Rivers (edition 2026-04).

M44 6GG, a postcode page near where it ends on the map (about 160 m away) →All rivers with gauges →

What this page can and cannot tell you

Its line, its name and where it flows come from Ordnance Survey’s river map (OS Open Rivers, edition 2026-04), which leaves out many small streams, ditches and culverts. “Flows into” is the map’s word: a channel that is not on the map is not shown here, which does not mean it is not there.
No gauge measures Manchester Ship Canal itself, so its own level is not known here.
Storm overflows are listed only where the river map places them on this stream; an overflow it could not place is not counted.
Water samples are England’s only (the Environment Agency’s archive), placed where the map can place their sampling point.
Nothing on this page says whether any place floods. For an address, see its postcode page.