Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
28
Shropshire
Union
Canal:
Middlewich
Branch
Distance
16km from Barbridge Junction to the Wardle Lock Branch
Highlights
View from the Weaver Aqueduct
The 100m Wardle Lock Branch
Navigation Authority
Canal & River Trust
OS 1:50,000 Sheet
118 Stoke-on-Trent & Macclesfield
The Middlewich Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal was opened in 1833 by the Chester
Canal Company and engineered by Thomas Telford as a short but important link between the
Shropshire Union Canal's main line and the Trent & Mersey Canal. It provided a faster and
less locked route than one via the Staffordshire & Worcestershire and Trent & Mersey Canals.
In 1888, there was an unsuccessful attempt to use narrow-gauge railway steam engines to tow
boats.
It leaves the main line at Wardle. Barbridge Junction, the branch point, is only 2km from
Hurlestone Junction where the Llangollen Canal joins the main line on the opposite side and
so traffic from Llangollen and Chester both feed through to the Trent & Mersey on the Mid-
dlewich Branch. It is part of the Four Counties Ring.
The line is almost entirely rural, reaching across the gently rolling Cheshire countryside,
more often than not through meadows with black-and-white Fresian dairy cattle. Studded with
oak trees, it is a pleasantly pastoral scene that contrasts with the activity on the canal.
Cholmondeston Lock, like other locks on the canal, is built of heavy red sandstone blocks.
The locks are deep and narrow, daunting for narrowboat users, many of whom are novices
emerging from Venetian Marina, one of the largest canal marinas in England, Venetian Cafe
and a caravan park, next to where the Chester to Crewe railway line crosses the canal.
