Aqueduct

 

Ages ago, way back when I first did Calcott Hall and the Knights Templar Cave armed only with a terrible samsung to take pictures, we also swung by this aqueduct. And for some reason I didn't take any pictures. I mean, I appreciated it for its historic significance, and I thought it was cool, but at the time I was young and riding a wave of exhilaration from having snuck into some abandoned houses for the first time after years of scaling every building in Shrewsbury, so this didn't excite me quite as much. I was still a baby in urbex terms, and I was prioritising the adrenaline rush over the history. 

But a decade or so of urbex has made me humble, and it's time to give this thing the attention it deserves. 

The aqueduct is sixteen feet high and 187 feet long, and was built for the Shropshire Union Canals "Shrewsbury branch" which was established way back in 1793 when canals were all the rage.

It was originally built out of stone by a chap called Josiah Clowes, but he passed away in 1795 and a freak flood washed his aqueduct away shortly after. And that is rather hilariously tragic. It's almost like the universe just wanted to smite him. It's cancel culture of biblical proportions.

 

But the canal trade still needed an aqueduct, so along came Thomas Telford, the engineer extraordinaire. I spoke about him in my blog about St Chads, where he strongly advised doing work on the church, and was promptly ignored, resulting in its collapse. And in case it wasn't obvious, the town "Telford" is named after him too, which I guess gives him more in common with Howard Taylor Ricketts and Daniel Alcides Carrion. 

However, despite hogging the credit for the aqueduct, just how much input he had on it is questionable. Most will agree that there was some committee involved, or that Thomas Telford was merely carrying out someone else's idea. 

But this was still a proving ground for Thomas Telford's ambitions, because this demonstrated the efficiency of cast iron aqueducts, requiring less material and taking less time. After this, Thomas Telford went on to create the much larger and more famous Pontcysllte aqueduct in 1805, which can still be traversed to this day. And this thing, rotting away in a field, was the prototype.

Naturally, there's no end of photos showing this thing over the decades. It's been enjoyed for numerous generations.

 (Image not mine, obviously)

 

 So this photo was apparently taken on September 18 1974, at which point the canal was long dried up and the aqueduct long abandoned. There's a woman and her son enjoying the view. And I kinda love that people have been appreciating this place for so long, despite it being long redundant. 

At either end of the aqueduct are these brick arches that are allegedly retained from the original Josiah Clowes aqueduct. Thomas Telford incorporated them into his designs, giving the whole thing a bit of a hybrid appearance. 

Now they're just areas where livestock can go to piss and shit, but much to my amazement there is one image of this aqueduct that shows the river flowing through these archways.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Check it out! I haven't got a date for this image, but it has to be pretty damn old, because all others show the river where it is today. Somehow, over the course of two hundred years, the river has altered its course somewhat.

Here's another old picture that shows the river in its more familiar location.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

The entire river has moved. Isn't that intriguing?

 

Getting up onto the aqueduct is a doddle. The canal is long gone and the ground just slopes up to it. 

 

 

While it's often said to be the first ever cast iron aqueduct, even by Thomas Telford himself in his own notes, he was beaten to the punch by mere weeks by Benjamin Outram, who built one for the Derby Canal. But that ones not around anymore, meaning that this is only the oldest surviving cast iron aqueduct, and that is still pretty cool.

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

Frustratingly, while there was loads of photos of people mooching about on the aqueduct, very few of them seem to show it with water. But what this one image does show us is the end of the aqueduct still somewhat elevated above the ground and surrounded by trees, unlike the gentle grassy incline that we have today.

 

 But much to my delight, I did find one photo that shows the aqueduct with water.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

And here it is. It's a bunch of guys on a boat coming down the aqueduct while a bunch of other people stand at the side on the tow path. And it all looks rather precarious, with the footpath being set on the same level as the waterbed. On most canal tow paths, the water surface is usually level with our feet, but not here. The water level is belly-height on these pedestrians.

 

This was often remarked on as a rather odd design. Horses towing the barges could turn their heads and slurp up some canal water if they were thirsty. So can humans, but it's not recommended. 

 

Here we are at the back of the aqueduct...

The Backqueduct. 

 

So the canal was actually considered for closure as long ago as 1899 due to its declining trade, and apparently the aqueduct was in need of maintenance even then. But the canal managed to chug along for a few more decades, until 1944 when a decline in trade led to it being abandoned. 

 

From what I understand, the aqueduct was dried out in the 1950s, and the embankment was leveled sometime after that. There's actually very little evidence that the canal was ever even there.

In 1968 there were plans to remove the aqueduct and take it to Blists Hill to be part of the Ironbridge Gorge museum, and honestly I would have loved that. That's a much nicer fate for it than outright demolition. But for some reason this didn't happen, and now the aqueduct just sits here as a monument to a former thriving industry.

The gate here would indicate that the farmer is using the aqueduct now, but even this is looking a little worse for wear. I don't think anyone has been through here in a while.

That's all I've got. So the aqueduct is publicly accessible, making it slightly anomalous on this blog. But it still ticks my boxes. It's old, it's disused, and it's historically significant. I think it's rather photogenic too, and I've taken far too many shots than I really needed, but hey-ho. 

My next blog will be short and sweet, but also pretty exciting, and as always if you prefer more traditional urbex then my travel blog has some pretty cool adventures from all over Europe.

In the meantime, to stay updated on my blogs, then give my social medias a follow. I know, they're all shit and algorithmic, but it's the best way unfortunately. I'm on the big ones, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as the spawn of the Zuckerberg/Musk dick measuring contest, Threads. And I'm on the ones that people have made to try make the social media landscape less shit, Vero and BlueSky. Give me a follow wherever you happen to be.

Thanks for reading!