The Grocers’ Warehouse, Castlefield 83 Salford Applied Archaeology Series, Volume 1 house zone. A central feature of the basin was two adjacent late-eighteenth-century warehouses, the Duke’s Warehouse and the Grocers’ Warehouse. The Duke’s Warehouse is usually regarded as the first canal warehouse on the Bridgewater Canal, and thus in Britain, but the Grocers’ Warehouse was a more complex and, ultimately, more influential structure due to its use of internal canal arms and split-level loading. The subject of pioneering industrial The Grocers’ Warehouse, Castlefield: the First True Canal Warehouse? Michael Nevell Introduction The Castlefield terminus of the Bridgewater Canal has attracted a considerable amount of interest from historians since the 1860s, and from archaeologists since the 1960s. 1 These studies have developed two themes; the complexity and success (or failure) of the water management systems built by James Brindley, and the physical development of the basin as a ware- Fig 9.1 The Reconstructed Grocers’ Warehouse in Castlefield (copyright Michael Nevell). Chapter 9