Clayton Brook Pipeline Walton Summit, Lancashire. Archaeological Watching Brief.

A watching brief was undertaken by Oxford Archaeology North between November 2003 and January 2004 at Clayton Brook, near Walton Summit, Lancashire (centred on NGR SD 5826 2456). The work was commissioned by United Utilities following the proposed excavation of a new pipeline trench.
The proposed development area lies within the public areas of a housing development which was built in the late twentieth century directly over an eighteenth century canal
basin. The canal basin is associated with known monuments and features, in particular a warehouse and an inclined plane and tram plateway, which was the first
steam-operated railway incline to have been built in Britain. The pipeline was, therefore, being laid through an area of known archaeological significance with a high probability that archaeological horizons might be encountered. However, much of the canal basin and tram plateway have been subsumed by urbanisation. A recent
topographic survey suggested that the ground level had altered significantly since the canal’s closure, having been raised by some eight metres in places, owing to the
redeposition of material excavated during the construction of the nearby M61 in 1968/9. The watching brief was carried out to establish whether any archaeology had survived beneath this modern overburden.