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Visit Audlem Locks, Shropshire Union Canal - Audlem Mill - The Shroppie Fly Pub - Audlem Village, Cheshire

Audlem village is a slowly expanding canalside village in Cheshire around five miles south of the historic salt town of Nantwich

The 15 locks at Audlem are a popular place for summer visits by Gongoozies. The Audlem Locks are spread over a distance of over a mile, most of them to the south of the historic Shroppie Fly pub, a converted wharf warehouse, with its bar built like a narrowboat, complete with a cratch.

Locks 1 to 12 take boaters down to Audlem Village where there are visitor moorings and a water point above and below Lock 13. By this lock is the picturesque Shroppie Fly pub, which often appears in canal photographic postcards, and occasionally even on TV. Next to the pub is the Audlem Mill canal shop. Audlem village, accessed at bridge 78 is close by.

The locks are really quite busy from April to October as they are on the 'Four Counties Ring' a regular hire boat circuit for a number of hire companies as well as pleasure boaters notching up this ring.

The wharf area has an air of a working canalside, even though the 'wharf crane' actually is an ex-railway goods yard crane but adds a flavour to the area around the Shroppie Fly and the restored Audlem Mill, now a Canalia and needlework shop.

Audlem Mill was known locally as Kingbur (Kingsley Burton) Mill, as the mill was built around 1916 for the miller H Kingsley Burton as a corn and animal feed mill, operated by him and then his son John Burton until the mid 1960s, when it was sold to another local miller, closing a few years later. Soon after milling ended, the top floor was converted into living accommodation, and the lower floors became the present canal shop. Much of the other internal mill fittings, such as the hoppers and chutes, still survive, and are incorporated into the shop. Over the years, Audlem Mill has become one of the best-known canalia shops on the canal system.

The pleasant village of Audlem has a Post Office, shops, garage, butcher, chemist, charity shops, cafe, etc. The centre of the village is home to a massive church on a small hill on terraced battlements.