Shrewsbury Canal - Route

Route

The canal branched away from the Shropshire Union Canal at Norbury Junction, passing under a stone bridge which carried the Shropshire Union towpath over the branch. The bridge is a Grade II listed structure. The section to the first lock is still in water as it is used for moorings, while the first lock is used as a dry dock. The lock was the first in a flight of 17, which lowered the canal down the hillside as it passed through Oulton and to the south of Sutton and Forton. At the bottom of the flight, the canal and a minor road crossed the River Meese on the Forton aqueduct, before passing under a skew bridge which carries the road over the canal. The aqueduct is a scheduled ancient monument. The River Meese feeds the Aquelate Mere, which is a National Nature Reserve and the largest lake in the West Midlands region, covering 214.4 hectares (530 acres). Soon afterwards, the route of the canal has been cut by the building of the A41 Newport bypass.

Beyond the bypass, Meretown lock marks the start of a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) watered section, which passes through Newport and included another five locks. The Strine Brook passes under the canal at both ends of this section, running parallel to the canal between the two aqueducts. The canal passed under Buttery Bridge, and then over Kinnersley Drive on an aqueduct, before the junction with the Humber Branch, which ran for about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the south, and served the industrial complex of Lilleshall. Two more aqueducts carried it over the Humber Brook and the Crow Brook, before the junction at Wappenshall where the new branch joined the original canal from Trench to Shrewsbury. At the junction, the warehouses, basin and a section of the canal have been bought by Telford and Wrekin Council, and include a Grade II Listed warehouse which straddled a dock, so that goods could be loaded and unloaded through trapdoors in the floor of the upper storey.

The Trench branch rose through 9 locks from the junction, which were called Wappenshall, Britton, Wheat Leasowes, Shucks, Peaty, Hadley Park, Turnip, Baker's and Trench lock. Wappenshall Lock was demolished to make way for a weir which is part of a storm drain. Hadley Park and Turnip locks are Grade II listed structures, as is the bridge immediately downstream of Hadley Park lock, and both locks still have their original guillotine mechanism in situ. Beyond Trench lock, which was demolished in 1977 as part of a roadworks scheme, the Trench Pool was the main water supply for the canal, after which the Trench incline carried boats another 75 feet (23 m) upwards. The building of an incline, rather than a flight of locks was dictated by the lack of an adequate water supply at the higher level. The locks on the Trench Branch, and the two Eyton locks, had guillotine gates at the lower end. They were 81 feet (25 m) long, and although Thomas Telford wrote in 1797 that they had a third set of gates, so that they could be used by a single 20-foot (6.1 m) tub-boat in the short section, a train of three tub-boats in the longer section, or a train of four boats if the outer gates were used, there is no evidence that the middle gates were ever fitted.

After Wappenshall junction the canal dropped down through the two Eyton locks, which were widened when the Newport Branch was built, passing to the north of Eyton upon the Weald Moors and through Sleapford, before crossing the River Tern on the aqueduct at Longdon-on-Tern. The canal then headed south-west, skirting the southern edge of Rodington, where it crossed the River Roden on an aqueduct which was demolished in January 1971, and the eastern and southern edge of Withington, where there was a wharf. It passed under the Shrewsbury to Telford railway line south of Upton Magna, where the new line of the A5 road has blocked the line of the canal, to reach Berwick Wharf. Here it turned north-west, to enter the 970-yard (890 m) Berwick Tunnel. At the time of its construction, this was the longest canal tunnel in Britain, and the first equipped with a towpath through it. From the northern portal of the tunnel, it passed under the railway and the A5 road again, heading north to Uffington, after which it followed the large horseshoe bend in the River Severn to reach Shrewsbury where it terminated at Castle Foregate Basin adjacent to the Buttermarket building.