Restoration works planned for Ellesmere Yard

The Canal and Riverside Trust has applied for planning permission for the scheme to take place at Ellesmere Yard.

This includes replacing garages and bin stores with new operational and boater facilities, and creating a new vehicle access, parking, landscaping, and pedestrian links.

The charity has formed an action group called ‘Forging Ahead’, which has considered the management and governance of the yard as “an enterprise, visitor experience and operations base”.

In a design and access statement, Cowper Griffith Architects said Ellesmere Yard “is a prized asset within the wider Trust portfolio, which covers 2,000 miles of waterways and includes innumerable waterside properties”.

“The Yard will maintain its working depot and offices, and alongside this continued, historic Trust use, the site will be transformed into a place of diverse activity, serving its community and acting as a catalyst for enterprise, education, culture, craft and leisure,” reads the statement.

“In so doing, it will embody the Trust’s aims to ‘transform places and enrich lives’, using the historic, arterial canal network which criss-crosses the country; once the circulatory system of industrial Britain, now an immense
resource of cultural, ecological and economic opportunity.”

Dating back to 1806, the Yard was once home of the home of the Ellesmere Canal Company, set up by Thomas Telford, designer of much of the Llangollen Canal on which the Yard sits.

The canal is highly revered as it includes the Chirk and Pontcysyllte
Aqueducts World Heritage Site, with Pontcysyllte recognised as one of the ‘seven wonders’ of the inland waterways.

“The yard too is held in high regard,” adds the statement.#

“It is important in that it retains its full complement of functionally distinct spaces, each contributing to the maintenance of boats, buildings and bridges across the canal network.

“It is unique in that it continues to fulfil its original function as a place of boat and canal maintenance to this day and it must continue to do so once the project is complete.

“This critical point sets Ellesmere apart from its peers and most heritage-driven visitor destinations, and it introduces a quandary of sorts; it cannot be fully restored as a ‘set piece’, nor can it continue in partial and underfunded use. This tension between heritage, function and public access has to be successfully resolved.”

The plans can be viewed by searching for reference 26/01383/FUL via Shropshire Council’s planning portal. A consultation period is open until May 13.