Restoration
Today the junction still has a warehouse over part of the canal, a roving bridge, and has been the subject of work by the Shrewsbury & Newport Canals Trust.
In 2007, the canalside buildings at Wappenshall, including a trans-shipment warehouse which has been little altered since it ceased to be used in the 1930s, and retains many original features, were put up for sale. They were eventually purchased, along with a length of the canal and the Wappenshall basin, by Telford and Wrekin Council, who are working with the Shrewsbury & Newport Canals Trust to allow repairs to the buildings to be undertaken, with the aim of providing a museum and heritage centre for the canal, a cafe, and offices for the Canals Trust.
The link from Newport to Wappenshalll was crossed by a towpath bridge immediately before the junction. This is still in situ, and is a grade II listed structure. Nearby is a three-storey dock warehouse, which straddles a section of the canal. The first floor includes trap doors, which allowed goods to be hoisted up from the canal boats into the warehouse. It is also listed, and was built by George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, the Earl of Sutherland, rather than the canal company, as was the basin. The Sutherland Estate also built a fine office for the canal toll clerk. It is a two-storey building, constructed of red bricks, with a central half-octagonal bay containing three sets of windows. A small community developed around the junction, as several cottages and the Sutherland Arms public house were built close by. The building is now called Bridge House, and it was rented to John Tranier when it was first opened.
On the route to Shrewsbury, the canal was crossed by a lift bridge, to the west of the junction. The Trench Branch, which heads south-east, passes under a minor road at Wappenshall Bridge, and Wappenshall Lock, the first of the nine to Trench, was just after it. Although much of the basin has been filled in, there is still some water in the canal through the basin, as the Hurley Brook, which formerly ran to the south of the canal, has been diverted into it just below Britton Lock, the second on the Trench Branch, and leaves it again below Eyton Lock, the first on the route to Shrewsbury.
Read more about this topic: Wappenshall Junction
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)