Canal charity gives rare heritage skills boost in double win for Burnley's successful Finsley Gate Wharf restoration

Located on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the 220-year-old former boat yard and canal office have recently been renovated and transformed into a successful restaurant and café bar, function room, guest house, community heritage learning hub, working forge and waterside gardens.

The £2.9 million restoration was reopened in July 2021, but Covid and rising material costs delayed work on the final piece of the jigsaw – a small, stone-built wash house and outdoor toilet, which would once have served the canal supervisor’s house. Constructed in local gritstone, the 160-year-old outhouse, like the rest of the site, was in a poor state of repair.

The young craft apprentices, all from Burnley, were originally taken on by the charity under the Kick Start scheme after Covid and are now being formally trained as apprentices in the rare, specialist skill of stone masonry. Dominic Lafrenz, Tyler Williams, Mason Macari and Luke Haywood spend a fortnight every two months at York College, one of very few in England offering courses in stone masonry. The rest of the time they are learning practical skills on the job with the Trust.

Now under the guidance of the Canal and River Trust’s North West heritage adviser Bill Froggatt, project manager Mark Wigley, apprentice supervisor Graham Mitchell and craft operative James Archer, they are helping to repair the building and convert it into a new storehouse for the site’s volunteer gardeners.

Bill Froggatt, explained: “Canals initially brought prosperity through trade during the Industrial Revolution and it’s wonderful that, in the 21st century, they have been reinvented as a place for people to spend their leisure time, get fit, enjoy the outdoors and feel healthier.

“Finsley Gate was an important regional boating centre in the 19th century, fuelling Burnley’s growth as a cotton town. Known locally as Mile Wharf, it is located on a sharp bend next to the town’s famous one-mile-long embankment across the Calder Valley, one of Britain’s Seven Wonders of the Waterways.

“This has been a perfect win, win project, which achieves the complete restoration of an important Grade Two listed site, while giving us an opportunity to offer apprenticeships in the specialist skill of stone masonry to four local residents who were previously unemployed.

“Over the next couple of months, we will be completing the job with a new slate roof, and new windows and doors, created by award-winning apprentice carpenter Mani Lau, from our Bradley Workshop near Birmingham. It will be fantastic to see Finsley Gate Wharf finally restored in its entirety and the former washhouse given a new lease of life.

“Although the site only opened to the public towards to the end of the covid pandemic, it is already making its mark as a popular landmark for local residents, who are enjoying a wide range of activities here, from yoga, paddle boarding and canoeing to craft classes, school visits, heritage tours, light refreshments and fine dining.”

The restoration of Finsley Gate Wharf was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, supported by Burnley Borough Council and the new site management company Finsley Gate Wharf Ltd.