Along the Moors - Wappenshall

Up the Junction

The Transhipment Shed And 'Wide Waters' Around 1950

The new waterway was completed in January 1832, after several delays, although boats did not reach Shrewsbury for another two years; the bridges and locks of the existing canal serving the town, which had been built in the same dimensions as the tub-boat system of the east Shropshire coalfield, required widening to accommodate the standard narrowboats plying the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction route and the new branch to Wappenshall.

Financial constraints ensured such alterations were never carried out on the Trench section and the canal basin at Wappenshall was rapidly developed by the Duke of Sutherland (who was the Lord of Wappenshall Manor) as a transhipment point, where goods were unloaded for passage between the mainline and the tub boat system of the coalfield. According to contemporary accounts, the road to the new wharf was reckoned to be among the busiest in the county and, by the 1840, the erection of several new houses and a pub in the vicinity of the waterway created a brand new community entirely dependant on the canal for its existence.