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The National Waterways Museum is based in the historic canal docks at Ellesmere Port at the northern extremity of the Shropshire Union Canal where it enters the Manchester Ship Canal at Ellesmere Port.

The museum site consists of the former canal port which initially linked the Shropshire Union Canal with the River Mersey (before the Ship Canal was built). The canal port consisted of a system of locks, docks and warehouses, together with a pump and engine room all of which have been preserved and used within the museum. The port was designed by Thomas Telford under the direction of William Jessop and continued to function as a working canal port until the 1950s after which it gradually became derelict until it was taken over as “the North West Museum of Inland Navigation”, later “The Boat Museum” in the 1970s. In the 1990s The Waterways Trust took on the management of the National Waterways Museum. Funding from Heritage Lottery Fund helped create new displays and improve visitor facilities.

The museum contains the largest collection of canal boats in the world.

Link National Waterways Museum website

The Shropshire Union Canal (from Autherley to Nantwich) was engineered by Thomas Telford and opened in 1835. There are long straight sections of this canal which required either embankments or cuttings to avoid the need for locks. Although this was a more difficult procedure, the end route was shorter and the progress for horse drawn working boats could be maintained with (hopefully) no stoppages. The canal (formerly the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal) was opened at a time when railways were making serious inroads into the canal companies' businesses.

The current Shroppie north of Nantwich was formerly the Chester Canal, opened in 1779, and has wider locks and bridges. Boats up to nine feet in beam can still navigate this section; Telford's canal accommodates only narrowboats up to seven feet in beam.