Mar 20, 2026
My grandmother, Eileen Colledge (née Connaughton) used to sing a song to me when she was performing her grandmotherly child-minding duties. I didn't understand what it was about until later when I started to decipher the lyrics. It was about the Manchester Ship Canal, completed in 1894, which connected Manchester to the River Mersey at Runcorn, and hence to sea via Liverpool. Manchester was then a major industrial city, predominantly but not exclusively textiles, and was itself a significant market for everything else, so providing the means to get goods to and from made economic sense. Like any expensive undertaking there was a huge debate about whether it was worth it and who would pay for it, but it was finally built and Queen Victoria turned up to declare it open.
The song is based on the joke that now Manchester is connected to the sea, so it should of course have a beach and become the typical English seaside holiday town like Blackpool or Brighton. Ordsall Lane is a street that runs alongside the canal in the Manchester city centre.
While sorting out my late mother's things I found she had kept a hand-written copy of the song, written by her mother. Here are the lyrics:
Oh! What is all this talk about
It's getting all the rage
They read about it in the press
And on and off the stage
It's all about the Ship Canal
And everywhere the same
About the jolly old fun there'll be
At the bottom of Ordsall Lane
Oh! We shall have the donkey races
Running along the sands
We shall have the Punch and Judy
And the German bands
We shall have the bathing machines
Swimming in the sea
And down at the bottom of Ordsall Lane
What jolly old fun there'll be
The tune, as my grandma used to sing it, was familiar - I can't quite place it, but it resembles the verses of McNamara's Band. I guess it was the sort of band or concert hall tune common at the time, I doubt it was original. The canal opened before my grandmother was born, so I'm not sure where she would have encountered it. I had wondered whether she could possibly have written it herself, though it seems unlikely given it was before she was born. My guess is it was something sung in a music hall, and perhaps she heard it being performed. I've searched for the lyrics in the usual places, but it seems there is no internet footprint of this text at all, so presumably it was never in a book, or a newspaper well-known enough to have been digitised.
She had a relative who worked for the Manchester Ship Canal company, and her deck of cards that she used to play patience (aka solitaire) multiple times a day bore the company brand. She was fond of getting out her atlas and showing me how a ship could go all the way from Manchester, down the canal, across the Atlantic, up the St Lawrence River, past Quebec and Montréal and into the Great Lakes. A couple of years ago I stood overlooking the St Lawrence River in Quebec City, and thought of my grandma, and her atlas, imagining the ships from Manchester that used to sail past. I wonder whether anyone ever did have fun at the bottom of Ordsall Lane.