Stark’s Bridge, Whixall,

by H R Hannaford

Archaeology Service Archaeology Service Report Number 225 © Shropshire County Council March 2003

STARK’S BRIDGE, WHIXALL, SHROPSHIRE

by H R HANNAFORD MIFA

A Report for

COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT SERVICES, SHROPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

Archaeology Service Unit 4, Owen House, Radbrook Centre, Radbrook Road,Shrewsbury, SY3 9BJ Tel: (01743) 254018 Fax: (01743) 254047 TELFORD & WREKIN COUNCIL Stark’s Bridge, Whixall, Shropshire

CONTENTS Page No SUMMARY 1 1 INTRODUCTION 2 2 THE CANAL 3 3 THE BRIDGE 3 4 THE RECORDING 4 5 REFERENCES AND SOURCES CONSULTED 4

ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Selected prints from colour slides: 1: Stark's Bridge, looking northeast 2: Stark's Bridge, looking southwest 3: The northeast bank, showing the sheet piling and collapsed northeast wing wall 4: The remains of the northeast wing wall 5: The southeast bank 6: The northwest bank 7: The southwest wing wall 8: The southwest wing wall (detail)

SUMMARY In 2003 the Archaeology Service carried out archaeological recording at Stark's Canal Bridge, Whixall, Shropshire. The purpose of the exercise was to record the canal walls and any other features revealed when the section of the canal around the bridge was drained to enable repairs to the walls. Three of the four bridge wing walls lining the canal were seen to have collapsed into the canal bed. No other archaeological features or deposits were revealed.

Archaeology Service, Shropshire County Council 1 Report No. 225 March 2003 Stark’s Bridge, Whixall, Shropshire 1 INTRODUCTION Stark's Bridge is a timber canal lift bridge of late 18th-century date. The bridge carries a lane, Maltkiln Lane, across the Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal (originally the ) at Dobson's Bridge, Whixall, near in north Shropshire (NGR: SJ 491 346).

The bridge is a scheduled ancient monument as defined by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 (Stark's Lift Bridge at Windmill (sic) Lane Whixall, Shropshire, County Monument No. 321).

There has recently been a programme of repairs to the bridge, initially involving the replacement of a number of decayed timbers, and more recently to repair impact damage from a boat, which twisted the deck and disaligned part of the superstructure (H Thomas, correspondence).

In February 2002 a third phase of repairs (also resulting from the previous boat- strike) were undertaken to the bridge abutments and deck-seating. These repairs were to involve the draining of a short section of the canal in order to repair, underpin and/or rebuild sections of the wing walls and abutments. A condition of the Scheduled Monument Consent for these repair works was that there should be arrangements for archaeological recording; it was considered appropriate that this recording should comprise a scaled photographic record and brief description (SCB03 Site Archive, correspondence).

The Archaeology Service was commissioned to make this record. A series of colour slide and black and white photographs were taken of the bridge after the section of the canal at the bridge had been drained and before the repair works commenced in February 2003.

Archaeology Service, Shropshire County Council 2 Report No. 225 March 2003 Stark’s Bridge, Whixall, Shropshire 2 THE CANAL The Ellesmere Canal was built during the Canal Mania of the 1790s. In 1791 a committee to promote the construction of a canal linking the Rivers Severn and Mersey was formed, a route was chosen by the engineer, William Jessop, who was appointed by the canal committee in 1792 (Morriss, 1991), and an Act of Parliament was passed in 1793 for the construction of the Ellesmere Canal. In October 1793 Thomas Telford, then Surveyor of Public Works for the County of Shropshire, was also appointed to assist Jessop as part-time General Agent, Surveyor, Engineer, Architect and Overlooker of the Works. Work on the canal began in 1794, and continued until c. 1806, although the link between the Rivers Severn and Mersey was never completed. The Prees Branch, one of many branches on the canal, was originally intended to reach Prees Higher heath, but by 1806 had only reached , and it was decided to terminate it here.

In 1845 the Ellesmere and Chester and the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal Cos. merged and became part of the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company. By the 1930s lack of revenue had made it uneconomic to repair and maintain the canal and the canal fell into disuse. An Act of Parliament for its formal abandonment was obtained in 1944. The canal has slowly deteriorated since its abandonment, and a number of its associated features have disappeared in recent years (Deamer, 1993, pp3-6).

3 THE BRIDGE Stark's Bridge (County Sites and Monuments Record [SMR] No. 01009) crosses the Prees Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal (SMR No. 03414) at Dobson's Bridge. The bridge is a timber bascule bridge operated by a counterweight and chain system, and is set between brick abutments and wing walls with buff (probably Grinshill) sandstone copings. The bridge crosses the canal at a skew angle, and thus both the bridge deck and lifting gear have a parallelogram shape (Blackwell, 1985, p58). The bridge is thought to date to c. 1800-06 and to have been designed by William Jessop and Thomas Telford, the engineers for the Ellesmere Canal.

Archaeology Service, Shropshire County Council 3 Report No. 225 March 2003 Stark’s Bridge, Whixall, Shropshire 4 THE RECORDING A site visit was made at the beginning of the current phase of repair works, in order to photograph and record features revealed by the draining of the section of the canal around the bridge. Plan and elevation drawings showing the extent of the dilapidations had previously been prepared by Parkman, engineers for the Phase 3 repairs.

The draining of the canal showed that the canal walls immediately beneath the bridge were both intact, though in a poor state of repair. The walls were of orange brick of late 18th- to early 19th-century type and were likely to have been part of the original bridge structure. However, either side of the bridge, three of the four wing walls had collapsed to the extent that the canal sides here comprised earth banks. On the east bank of the canal, the bridge wing walls were missing on either side of the bridge. A few courses of the northeast wing wall's brickwork remained (Fig. 1.4), but only the foundations of the southeastern wing wall survived, buried beneath grey silt and rubble (Fig. 1.5). The same was the case for the northwest wing wall on the west bank of the canal (Fig. 1.6). No earlier features or deposits were exposed in the soils behind the collapsed walls.

Only the southwestern wing wall survived to its full height (Figs. 1.7 & 1.8). This wall was also of orange brick of late 18th- to early 19th-century type with a buff (Grinshill) sandstone capping, and was continuous with the west abutment wall beneath the bridge. A further coping layer of shaped purple engineering bricks and concrete had been added at a later date over the original sandstone coping. This wing wall was also in a poor state of repair, with large sections of the brickwork missing from the wall face.

No further archaeological features or deposits were revealed.

5 REFERENCES AND SOURCES CONSULTED Crowe, N, 1994: Canals Deamer, G, 1993: The Conservation of the Built Environment on the Montgomery Canal, The Inland Waterways Association Denton, J H, 1984: Montgomeryshire Canal and the Llanymynech Branch of the Ellesmere Canal, Tow-path Guide No. 4, Lapal Publications, Birmingham Blackwell, A, 1985: Historic Bridges of Shropshire, Shrewsbury, p58 Morriss, R K, 1991: Canals of Shropshire, Shrewsbury

Archaeology Service, Shropshire County Council 4 Report No. 225 March 2003 Stark’s Bridge, Whixall, Shropshire

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7 8 1: Stark’s Bridge, looking northeast 2: Stark’s Bridge, looking southwest 3: The northeast bank, showing the sheet piling and collapsed northeast wing wall. 4: The remains of the northeast wing wall 5: The southeast bank 6: The northwest bank 7: The southwest wing wall 8: The southwest wing wall (detail) STARK’S BRIDGE, WHIXALL 2003 Figure 1: Selected prints from colour slides

Archaeology Service, Shropshire County Council 5 Report No. 225 March 2003