Whitchurch Arm

Whitchurch Waterway Trust is a registered charity that exists to promote the management and restoration of the Whitchurch Arm of the Llangollen Canal. It was formed in 1988, in response to plans by Whitchurch Town Council to bring the canal back into the town, as a way of promoting tourism.

The Whitchurch Arm was first authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1796, which also allowed the Ellesmere Canal Company to alter the route of its main line. The main line joined the Chester Canal at Hurleston Junction, and was opened throughout by 1805. The canal company decided to abandon the planned arm to Whitchurch in 1800, but in 1805 was approached by a group of businessmen who wanted to build both the branch and a short extension to Castle Well, so that the terminus was nearer to the centre of the town.

The canal company decided that it did not have the powers to delegate construction of the arm to the consortium, and so completed the construction of the original route using money borrowed from the businessmen. It was opened on 6 July 1808. The Act of Parliament needed to authorise the extension was not applied for until 1809, and the extra quarter mile (0.4 km) of canal was opened in 1811, featuring a narrow triangular basin at its terminus, rather than the rectangular one shown on the plans.

By 1939 all traffic on the Llangollen Arm of the Shropshire Union Canal from Hurleston to Llangollen had ceased, and both the Llangollen Arm and the Whitchurch Arm were formally closed to navigation under the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company Act of 1944. The Whitchurch branch was not reopened when the adjacent section of canal, now re-branded as the Llangollen Canal, was reopened in the 1950s.

In the early 1980s, Whitchurch Town Council began to consider options for bringing the canal back into the town, as a way of promoting tourism. In 1983, they funded a feasibility study to look at the costs, benefits and potential problems of restoring the infilled arm, which was carried out by Liverpool Polytechnic and the Civil Engineering Department of Aston University. After a public meeting was held to gauge support for the proposals, the District Council protected the route for the canal in its Local Plan.

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Wikipedia