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Shropshire Union Canal - Nantwich Town, Cheshire - Nantwich Museum

Nantwich Town, Cheshire on The Shropshire Union Canal

Geographically, Nantwich is on the Cheshire Plain, on the banks of the (unnavigable section) River Weaver. The Shropshire Union Canal skirts around the town to the west.

By canal, Nantwich is around twelve miles north of Market Drayton and twenty miles south-east of Chester between 'Heartbreak Hill', Audlem Locks and the Llangollen Canal's, Hurleston Junction.

The town is a major road junction, being the meeting point of the A51, A500, A529, A530 and A534 roads. The stretch of the A534 from Nantwich to the Welsh border is regarded as one of the ten worst stretches of road in England for road safety.

The closest moorings to the town are at the Nantwich Aqueduct - MAP over the A534, a ten to fifteen minute walk to the town centre. The Arriva Bus No.84 (Chester - Nantwich -Crew) has a bus stop at Malbank High School (MAP) about 100m from the Nantwich Canal Aqueduct with buses in to Nantwich (Bus Station) through to Crew (Bus Station) Willaston and Wells Green around every half hour, with a similar service to Chester via Calveley, Tarporley, Tarvin and Littleton.

Nantwich contains over a hundred listed buildings, with the largest collection of historic buildings outside Chester in the county! The oldest building in the town is St Mary's Church, which dates from the 14th century. The town has many timber-framed or "black-and-white" buildings dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in the centre on Barker Street, Beam Street, Churchyard Side, Hospital Street and High Street, and extending across the River Weaver towards the canal on Welsh Row. Two particularly important examples are Churches Mansion, an Elizabethan mansion house dating from before the fire, and the Crown Hotel, a former coaching inn built immediately after the fire. There are also many fine Georgian town houses and some examples of Victorian corporate architecture.

There is a great local FREE museum founded in 1980. (The building was formerly Nantwich Public Library which stood on the site of a gaol.) Located in Pillory Street, at the heart of the town, the museum has main galleries telling the story of Nantwich through the ages - Roman salt making, Tudor Nantwich's Great Fire, the Civil War Battle of Nantwich (1644) and the more recent shoe and clothing industries. See details on www.DoFreeStuff.com.