Ellesmere Port Memories: Clue to Ellesmere Port's canal past lies in its name

By Ellesmere Port Pioneer on Oct 2, 09 09:08 AM in 1500-1799

EVER thought how Ellesmere Port evolved?

As a comparatively new town, we have - unlike much older towns - an exact date to go on: July 1, 1795. And it's all to do with transport writes Laurie Stocks-Moore.

On July 1, 1795, the Ellesmere Canal, now the Shropshire Union, opened for business between Chester and the Mersey.

It had been cut through a valley running from near the Dee at Chester to the marshes of the Gowy on the Mersey shores. It was the canal company that built it which gave the town its name.

Canals flourished in the late 1700s and 1800s when taking heavy loads by boat became much easier and quicker than taking them along the muddy tracks that constituted roads at that time.

However, other forms of transport were evolving. Soon after the canal system was built, the railway age began and - being so much faster - soon became the dominant form of transport.

While labour was cheap, the canals continued to transport goods and materials, particularly heavy raw materials, such as coal.

Ellesmere Port was the ideal link between the industrial areas of the Midlands and the rest of the world, importing raw materials and exporting their products. It imported china clay and exported chinaware from the Potteries while other industries also made use of the canal.

With the improvement in the road network, and vehicles providing cheap and easy transport, the canals could not compete and their demise began.

The National Waterways Museum, South Pier Road, Ellesmere Port, tells the fascinating story of our waterways allowing visitors to find out how canals and boats were built, what it was like living and working on them and about life in the canal port itself.

The first picture shows a busy scene in the Lower Basin around 1925, with a barge exchanging cargo with a sailing ship. The second features a Hudson's Stanways charabanc 'buzzalong' in Westminster Road, and the third, a Wilson's Timber Merchant's steam-powered lorry c. 1920.