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,

Norbury to Nantwich.

The Shropshire Union canal as we now 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.

It is twenty miles from Norbury to Nantwich a very varied twenty miles. In the first ten miles comes the great steep sided cutting of Grubstreet followed by the embankment at Shebdon with the former Cadbury's milk factory at it end. Finally comes the great rock sided deep cutting of Woodseaves. The canal then drops down to the Cheshire plain. First thirty-three feet through the five Tyrley locks cut out of the rock and going over an embankment at the bottom to Market Drayton wharf. After a couple of miles, passing through the haunted Bretton Wood the canal drops a further thirty-one foot in the five Adderley locks. After just one more mile the canal goes down the fifteen Audlem locks, lowering the canal another 93 feet past the village of Audlem by the Shropie Fly pub with its gift shop and old wharf crane. The last five miles to Nantwih basin have just two locks, those at Hack Green, and finish with the embankment and aqueduct at Nantwich itself.

Tyrley locks	Tyrley locks	Adderley locks
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Adderley locks.	Aldlem locks	Aldlem locks

More pictures of this canal?

Autherly to Norbury / Barbridge to Chester / Chester to Ellesmere Port / Middlewich branch.

General information on the canal.

The History of the canal

The Chester canal / The Liverpool & Birmingham Junction. / The Shropshire Union.

Find our information about other canals and rivers on the canal index page.

If you have any questions then do ring us on 07977 229103
or email us at martinreed@reedboats.co.uk