In 1788 William Reynolds proposed a canal joining the Donnington Wood canal of north Shropshire with the Severn, and pursuaded his father, Richard Reynolds, and two others, 'Iron Mad' John Wilkinson and Earl Gower (owner of the Donnington Wood canal and by now Marquis of Stafford, as well as Lord Privy Seal, Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Chamberlain to King George III) to join him. Due no doubt to the powerful members of the company, they gained an act of Parliament empowering the enterprise, and work started that year.

It started with an incline plane rising 120ft from the Donnington Wood Canal, the techniques for which had been perfected on the Ketley canal. However, instead of a top pound lock, the Shropshire Canal Inclines used a sloping end to avoid wasting water. The Donnington Wood incline needed a steam engine to power the lift, as the traffic was mostly uphill.

Bridge at the bottom of the Incline Plane	Looking down the Incline Plane. Pictured is Ernie Wood, the last Chief Electrician in the Lilleshall Company, a font of local history knowledge.

The canal skirted the Cockshutt, and the Silkin Way currently runs along side the old canal bed. It went through a short tunnel under Watling Street, and passed alongside John Wilkinson's Snedshill Iron Works, site of the first  Steam Powered Blast Furnaces, liberated from water power and placed near the coal and iron reserves.

Snedshill Ironworks, date unknown. The domed building is probably for coking coal.

The canal joined the Ketley to Oakengates canal, joined by a lock as there was a 1 ft difference in height, and then went into the Snedshill Tunnel, 279 yards long, emerged to run through what is now Telford Town Park, and into the Southall Tunnel, 281 yards long. On emerging and passing through Southall wharves, it split into two, the western branch going off to Horsehay, and the eastern branch going directly to Blists Hill and Coalport. To drop the height, there were two incline planes, the first at Windmill Farm, now under a housing estate, and the second at Hay, which still survives in reasonable order.

The Shropshire Canal at Blist's Hill	A surviving wooden tub boat.

The two parallel tracks are easily visible on the Hay Incline Plane.	The dock at the bottom of Hay Incline.

The end of the tub boat system at Coalport, where a lively trade base grew up due to the canal terminus, and the transferring of cargoes via short incline planes into river going barges took place.

	The other branch turned west from Southall towards Horsehay works, and passed over the main Bridgnorth to Wellington road, later the A442, on an aqueduct which still stands today, pictured below, and gives the surrounding village its name. The Aqueduct
The canal continued from Horsehay with a plate railway branch to the works, around to Brierley Hill overlooking Coalbrookdale, where the canal terminated. The waggonways from here were already well established as the picture below illustrates. A wagon and team descending the plate railway from Horsehay to the Dale

The way now was for a scheme similar to that employed at Hugh's Bridge on the Donnington Wood to Pave Lane canal. Two shafts 120 ft deep and 10 ft wide were sunk from the canal terminus into the hill. A plated railway was driven into the hillside below, into a cavern underneath, where crates carrying iron ore, coal or limestone were exchanged via the shafts. Again, as at Hugh's Bridge, the heavier coal and iron ore going down lifted the crates with limestone up, and the system was self powering.

The system unfortunately was not reliable, and was replaced in 1794 with a plateway incline plane, and as this plateway wagon system was the major form of traffic, it soon was extended to Horsehay  making the canal redundant.

The section of canal from Wrockwardine Wood to the Windmill incline closed in 1858, and rail line was placed on the canal. The Hay Incline was probably disused by 1894, and a short section carried coal from the Kemberton and Halesfield collieries to Blists Hill furnaces until 1912.

The canal at the Greyhound Roundabout,  in Oakengates, burst through into the railway tunnel below it in 1855 and flooded the town, draining the summit level. It was repaired, but not refilled. Luckily no one is reported to have been hurt.