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Shrewsbury Museum Hosts Newport Canal History

Museum Hosts Newport Canal History

Author | 10 February 2016

Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery is hosting a display on the history and future of the Shrewsbury and Newport Canals, 12 -17 January and 26 January to 16 April 2016.

The Shrewsbury & Newport Canals Trust (SNCT) has been given a ‘local communities’ slot in the newly re-opened Shrewsbury Museum. This is for an exhibition covering the Shrewsbury and Newport Canals from their construction in the 18th and 19th centuries through to their abandonment in 1944, what has happened to them since then and the Trust’s plans for their future. The themes that run through the displays are: The coming of the canals to Shropshire (both the original Shrewsbury canal of 1797 and the Newport branch from Norbury in 1835), Working life on the canals and Canal restoration.

We have a lot of items from the last two centuries being loaned by the National Waterways Museum, the Canals & River Trust boatyards at Ellesmere and Norbury, the Saturn fly boat project and by SNCT members and other local people.

Amongst the subjects covered by the displays are: canal engineering, including the role of smithies and foundries; how tolls were collected; the use of horses as motive power; the domestic lives of boating families; and canal restoration, with particular reference to the Shrewsbury and Newport canals. The displays include maps, a timeline, ‘roses and castles’ painted canal ware, horse paraphernalia and a reconstruction of a forge.

For more information, please call 01743 258885 or visit shrewsburymuseum.org.uk

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