Telford's fast, straight main line from Wolverhampton to the Mersey at Ellesmere Port, known as the Shroppie
The Shropshire Union main line runs about 66 miles from Autherley Junction, on the edge of Wolverhampton, north to Ellesmere Port, where it reaches the Manchester Ship Canal and the Mersey. Widely known as the Shroppie, it links the canals of the West Midlands with the north-west coast, passing through Market Drayton, Audlem, Nantwich and on towards Chester.
The southern half is a Thomas Telford canal of the later, faster kind, driven as straight as possible through deep cuttings and along high embankments instead of following the contours. This makes it a striking canal to travel — long, tree-shaded rock cuttings alternating with open embankments carrying the water high above the countryside — but the price is the locks needed to change level, most of them gathered in flights. The best known is at Audlem, fifteen locks dropping the canal more than ninety feet in a mile and a half. North of Nantwich the older Chester Canal section is broader and gentler.
The main line was completed in 1835, the last major narrow canal Telford built, joining a string of older canal companies that amalgamated as the Shropshire Union in 1846. It carried goods between the Midlands and the Mersey ports until the railways and then the roads took the trade.
Ellesmere Port, at the northern end, is home to the National Waterways Museum, set in the historic dock basins where the canal locks down into the ship canal. The whole route is a popular cruising and towpath-walking line, and part of the Four Counties Ring.
