The name ‘Llangollen Canal’ is a relatively new one for what was for many years known as the ‘Ellesmere Canal’ and the ‘Welsh section’ of the Shropshire Union Canal.  The new name only became used once the route with the opening up of leisure traffic in the 1950s after becoming all but derelict, having been kept open just for water supply, despite being legally abandoned in a 1944 Act of Parliament.  An early, possibly the earliest, printed use of the name ‘Llangollen Canal’ is in a November 1951 edition of a British Waterways staff magazine.

What we now call the Llangollen Canal was constructed in stages by the Ellesmere Canal Company as part of a planned network of waterways linking the River Mersey at Ellesmere Port, formerly a small fishing village called ‘Netherpool’, on the Wirral to the River Severn at Shrewsbury, and with the coal mines of the Ruabon area (near Wrexham) and the limestone quarries around Llanymynech on the Welsh border.  The Act authorising construction was passed in 1793 as part of ‘Canal Mania’, when many ambitious canal schemes were approved on a wave of investors clamouring to put their money into the latest get-rich-quick fashion.

1797 also saw the opening of about 6 miles of canal, from the bottom of Frankton Locks to Weston – part of the intended line to Shrewsbury, but this section never progressed further, as the Shrewsbury Canal had already reached the town and the upper Severn was considered a poor navigation and unlikely to produce through trade.  The next section to open was that from Trevor (near Ruabon) to Frankton, completed in 1805 with opening of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.  The 29-mile section from Frankton to Hurleston Junction on the Chester Canal, opened in 1806.  As construction of a planned canal extending to the Dee from Trevor had been abandoned, a navigable feeder was then made to connect to the Dee as a water supply at Llantysilio to Trevor, which opened in 1808.  This water supply now feeds the whole Llangollen Canal and onto the Shropshire Union Canal, and became the crucial factor that saved the canal for use today.

These waterways comprised a self-contained network, as the Middlewich Branch (connecting to the Trent and Mersey Canal) and the southern half of the Shropshire Union Canal (then known as the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal), connecting to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, and then to the Birmingham Canal navigations, had yet to be built.  The Chester Canal Company had intended to build a line to Middlewich at the same time as its line to Nantwich, but had run out of money, and the Trent & Mersey Canal Company had refused them a connection anyway.  The Ellesmere and Chester canal companies were mutually dependent on each other’s waterways, and after 9 years of talks, a merger was agreed in 1813.  Opening of the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal in 1835 brought more traffics to the merged company’s canals.  Perceiving a threat to its trade when construction plans were announced, the Trent & Mersey Canal Company had relented and permitted a connection at Middlewich, and the Ellesmere and Chester’s branch to the town was opened in 1833.

The Chester Canal Company had already built (opened in 1779) a canal from the River Dee in Chester to Nantwich.  The first part of the Ellesmere Canal Company’s canals to be built was the Wirral line, connecting Chester to Ellesmere Port, which opened in 1795.  Work started simultaneously on several parts of the planned network, but next to open was the section between Llanymynech and the bottom of Frankton Locks, opened as an isolated section in 1796.  A connection between the Chester Canal and the Wirral Line followed in 1797.

The Ellesmere & Chester and the Birmingham & Liverpool companies merged in 1845 to form the Shropshire Union Canal Company, which a year later merged with Shropshire rail interests with a plan to close canals and build railways on the canal beds.  However, almost immediately the operations of this combined company were leased to the London & North West Railway, which prevented the planned railway building and the waterway interests were developed, especially where they were in the territories of rival rail companies.  Competition from rail, and then roads, took its toll and gradually many of the company’s canals were left to decay, though there remained viable traffics on the Ellesmere and Llanymynech lines until the 1936 when a breach below Frankton locks led to abandonment of the Llanymynech line, by which time the company had been fully bought out by the London & North West Railway in 1922, and absorbed into the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923.  The latter gained legal abandonment of all the Shropshire Union system west of Hurleston Junction in 1944, but the line to Llantysilio was kept open because it was a water feeder to the main Shropshire Union line.

Growing leisure traffic and a 1955 water supply agreement with the Mid & South East Cheshire Water Board secured the future of the line, which became known as the ‘Llangollen Canal’, and has  since become one of the busiest canals on the UK inland waterway network, with visitors attracted by the spectacular scenery and outstanding industrial architecture, mostly notably the Pontcysyllte and Chirk aqueducts.