Chester Canal, Chester

The Chester Canal was an English canal linking the south Cheshire town of Nantwich with the River Dee at Chester. It was intended to link Chester to Middlewich, with a branch to Nantwich, but the Trent and Mersey Canal were unco-operative about a junction at Middlewich, and so the route to Nantwich was opened in 1779. There were also difficulties negotiating with the River Dee Company, and with no possibility of through traffic, the canal was uneconomic. Part of it was closed in 1787, when Beeston staircase locks collapsed, and there was no money to fund repairs. When the Ellesmere Canal was proposed in 1790, the company saw it as a ray of hope, and somehow managed to keep the struggling canal open. The Ellesmere Canal provided a link to the River Mersey at Ellesmere Port from 1797, and the fortunes of the Chester Canal began to improve.

In common with many operational canals, the remains of the Shropshire Union system, including what had been the Chester Canal, were nationalised on 1 January 1948, and became the responsibility of the Docks and Inland Waterways Executive, which was part of the British Transport Commission. At the time, the function of canals was still viewed as commercial. An official reply to the Inland Waterways Association in 1947 stated that the Ministry of Transport "... do not look very favourably upon any scheme for pleasure craft on the canals at the present time." Despite such official attitudes, Eric Wilson, who produced the first edition of Inland Waterways of Great Britain in 1939, noted that those wishing to use the Shropshire Union for leisure cruising should apply to the Agent at Chester. He advised that application should be made well in advance, in case there were problems due to the condition of the waterway and its locks.

Control of the canal passed to the British Waterways Board on 1 January 1963, and for the first time in over 100 years, it was managed by an organisation which was not under railway control. The Transport Act 1968 classified all waterways under the jurisdiction of British Waterways into commercial, cruising and remainder waterways. All of the remaining Shropshire Union network was designated as cruising waterway, with the potential for leisure use. By that time there was little commercial traffic. The branch to the River Dee at Chester had been unused since 1932–34, with the demise of steel traffic from Shotton steelworks to Ellesmere Port, and long distance carrying of tar from Ellesmere Port to the Midlands had ended in 1957–58.

The canal is popular with pleasure boaters, as much of it is pleasantly rural, with added interest provided by the city of Chester and Ellesmere Port with its waterways museum. The towpath through Chester provides an attractive route for walkers. The canal is well connected, with links to the Trent and Mersey Canal via the Middlewich Branch to the east, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal via the former Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal to the south, and provides a route to the Llangollen Canal, from which the Montgomeryshire Canal, which is the subject of an ongoing restoration scheme, can be accessed. Boaters can also access the River Dee at Chester, although advance notice must be given, and the river is only accessible for four hours either side of high tide. At Ellesmere Port, the canal has connected to the Manchester Ship Canal since its opening in 1894. For many leisure cruisers, the requirements of the ship canal company for taking small boats onto a large commercial waterway are too daunting, and Ellesmere Port acts as the end of their journey.

The Chester Canal Heritage Trust was set up in 1997 to promote the canal and its heritage. Among other projects, they have received funding from the Local History Initiative and the Nationwide Building Society, which has allowed them to research the history of the canal and publish the results as a book. In 2012, responsibility for the canal passed from British Waterways to the newly formed Canal & River Trust.