The Tern Valley Trail - Longdon

The Shrewsbury Canal

Thomas Telford

By the late 18th Century, Shrewsbury was largely dependant on the many mines centred around the Oakengates area for its coal supplies. In fact, the sheer volume of traffic used for transporting raw materials to the county town had rendered the Holyhead Road all but impassable in places and an alternative was sought in 1792 when a potential route for a new canal was first surveyed. In 1793, an Act of Parliament sanctioned a 17-mile canal linking Shrewsbury to the existing waterways of the east Shropshire coalfield at Trench. The civil engineer Josiah Clowes was charged with overseeing the project but, after his death in 1795, Thomas Telford was appointed his successor. The Shrewsbury Canal, which opened in several stages between 1794 and 1796, included many groundbreaking engineering feats along its length, of which perhaps the most important is situated at Longdon-on-Tern.