Jack-In-The-Box, Manchester

Ojay/Nickindroy...

A jack-in-the-box is a children's toy that outwardly consists of a box with a lever and a "surprise": A lid pops and a figure, usually a clown pops out of the box :D

Myself and nickindroy spent most of the evening trying to get a lid back down in the middle of the road that had "managed" to jam, wouldn't mind it didn't lead to anything useful!

About half an hour with a sledge hammer, planks of wood and various other useless props we managed to level it.

I was ready for turning it in before I remembered another lid nearby which leads into another bit of the system I had on my age old list of things to follow up.

Here a 3m side entry manhole shaft drops onto a landing

An 'L' shaped walkway sits above a 5x3m brick storm overflow (The original inlet is now bricked up, as the upstream sewer overflow has been diverted elsewhere..

A smaller combined sewer enters via a 1.5ft pipe, down a small tumbling bay before taking a U turn and exiting into another smaller chamber.

Climbing down the ladder the other side of the walkway and you can grab a closer look as the sewer exits via a 2ft pipe.

The downstream sewer is only small and despite previously lifting a number of lids revealed nothing of any sizeable interest.

Back in the main chamber a rather smart looking brick pill overflow sits behind some iron beams; a typical primitive screening system seen in many older CSO's.

During capacity this overflow will come into use to alleviate the smaller sewer, however the more sizeable u/s stuff has been upgraded now and is no longer served by this overflow.

Thanks for looking