All About Magazine - Issue 17

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34 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
asmotive 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
An abandoned canal
by John Myers of the Shrewsbury & Newport Canals Trust