The Demise of the Shrewsbury & Newport

From the Archives: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2025

Joseph Boughey

Joseph Boughey uses archive sources to trace the sad loss of an important canal connection

The Shrewsbury & Newport Canal at Rodington. In 1947, the British Transport Commission inherited several waterways that were no longer navigable. This included the Shropshire Union lines to Newtown, and through Newport to Shrewsbury (and Trench). If one had to list the biggest waterway losses of the postwar period, the line to Newport and Shrewsbury would be a major candidate. While there is now some long-term hope for its revival, in the late 1950s this line was substantially intact between Norbury Junction and Uffington, at least. On the 12½ miles to Long Lane, only a single farm crossing obstructed the canal line. The recently catalogued file CRT/BW/95/1038 at the Waterways Archive sheds some light on the sorry process of this waterway’s destruction, here focusing largely on the Newport Branch. The policy of the mid-1960s can be traced back to the Inland Waterways Redevelopment Advisory Committee, which had approved policies to transfer and/or fill in vario…