Reed Hotel Boats



		Your floating hotel on the Canals and Rivers of the UK

Our guide to the waterways of the UK in detail.

Pictures of the Shropshire Union Canal,

Autherley to Norbury.

The Shropshire Union canal as we know it is composed of parts of all three of the four companies which came together as the Shropshire Union. However other sections still exist but are now called the Llangollen canal and the Montgomery canal. What we now as the Shropshire Union is a canal reaching for sixty-six miles through forty-seven locks, some narrow some broad, from the outskirts of Wolverhampton past Nantwich and Chester to the Mersey estuary at Ellsemere Port opposite Liverpool.

The Shropshire Union canal leaves the Staff and Forces at Autherley junction passing through a shallow stop lock. Within a mile it has left the outskirts of Wolverhampton. It ducks under the M54 then over its predecessor the A5 on Stretton Aqueduct. It is straight and level, only one lock, take at Weaton Aston, in the fifteen miles to Norbury junction. It is rural with only the villages of Brewood, Wheaton Aston and Gnosall alongside the canal. There is a rock cutting at Cowley leading to a rock lined tunnel of just 81 yards. Finally there is the great embankment of Shellmore its height much obscured now by the great woods alongside it. At Norbury, where the Shropshire tub boat canal used to drop away to connect to the canals around the rich industrial centre of Coalbrookdale, Coalport and Shrewsbury, the junction can still be see, now it just leads to a dry dock although there is talk of restoring it.