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The Shropshire Union Canal

The Shropshire Union Canal, or’Shroppie runs for 67 miles from Ellesmere Port near Liverpool to Autherley Junction near Wolverhampton. It was formed in 1846, when there was an amalgamation of several different canals and waterway companies. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards railways began to take over the transport of freight and in the decades following the First World War parts of the Shropshire Union were closed, but in the 1 960s there was a revival of interest in the canal network and today the Shropshire Union Canal is a very important part of the pleasure boat network. It is also one of Britain’s most haunted canals. At the old Northgate in Chester a Roman centurion has been seen guarding the entrance to the city. An American pilot who crashed during the Second World War has been seen at Little Onn, near Church Eaton in Staffordshire. At Betton Cutting, near Market Drayton, ghostly shrieking has been heard, while just beyond Market Drayton, at Tyrley middle lock, it is said that if you arrive in the middle of the night the resident ghost will close the lock gates behind you.

Probably the best-known phantom on the Shropshire Union, however, appears at the lovely ham let of Norbury junction. At this point the canal descends into the dark Grub Street cutting. The High Bridge above this, the double-arched Bridge 39, is supposedly haunted by a black shaggy-coated or even simian creature said to be the ghost of a boatman who drowned there in the nineteenth century. He is known locally as ‘the Monkey Man’.