Shardlow

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Lock 13 of the canal beside Bridge 49

Shardlow is a village in Derbyshire, England about 8 km southeast of Derby and 12 km southwest of Nottingham. It is part of the civil parish of Shardlow and Great Wilne, and the district of South Derbyshire. It is also very close to the border with Leicestershire which follows the River Trent, passing close by the south of the village. Just across the Trent is the Castle Donington parish of North West Leicestershire.

The London to Manchester turnpike (now the A6) passes through, having crossed the river by means of rope-hauled boat at Wilden Ferry. In 1761 the Cavendish Bridge was opened as a toll bridge. In 1947 it washed away and the army provided a temporary Bailey Bridge, which replaced by the present structure in 1957.

The river is navigable as far as the sea at the Humber Estuary, as is the River Soar which joins it some two miles down. It had always been an important trading highway and, with the crossing of the turnpike had, by the 18th Century become a river port.

In 1770, James Brindley brought the Trent and Mersey Canal through the village to join the Trent at Great Wilne at the junction of the Derwent which was also, up to a point, navigable. Shardlow thus grew rapidly as a transhipment point, not only for road vehicles, but between the broad river barges and Brindley's canal narrow boats.

Two families made their fortunes, the Soresburys with rapid horse-drawn 'fly boats' on the Trent, and the Suttons with their barges and narrow boats. The population rose from three hundred to over a thousand but, in the 1840s the arrival of the railways signalled the beginning of the end.

Most of the warehouses and other buildings were converted to other uses or as private dwellings. Of the nine public houses only the Navigation Inn (which predates the canal) remains. What is left has been preserved as the Shardlow Wharf Conservation Area, including a milepost inscribed "Preston Brook 92 miles."