Sunday, June 03, 2018

Shardlow: A Derbyshire port


Shardlow is a fascinating place - an inland port built where the Trent and Mersey Canal met the River Trent. Goods were transshipped from river to canal and canal to river.

The village was filled with warehouses and canal arms and basins. Its only equivalent in Britain is Stourport-on-Severn in Worcestershire.

Today, most of the arms and basins have long since been filled in, but many warehouses remain. Some have found new business uses, some have been converted into housing, some are derelict.

I was there yesterday. Despite the fact that I must have visited it on a canal holiday when I was 11 - the last middle-class summer of my childhood - I felt not a twitch nor a flicker of familiarity. Memory is a strange thing.












2 comments:

wolfi said...

Thanks for these fantastic photos, Jonathan1

It's a pity that these wonderful buildings (I especially like the bricks) are disappearing - in Germany as in Britain.
Can't they be reused? Most of the modern concrete buildings look so boring ...

Jonathan Calder said...

Thank you, Wolfi. It is a fascinating place.

I am sure it was more run down when I saw it in 1971. It's just that I can't remember it.