Woodseaves Walks: Walk 6, The Water Bridge and the canal

By bus: Arriva Midland runs a two-hourly bus service between Stafford and Woodseaves calling at Great Bridgeford and Eccleshall

[1] Starting from the village crossroads, walk towards High Offley using the pavement on the left-hand side of the road. Pass, in turn, the end of Glebefields cul-de-sac, the entrance to the village hall and the end of Blackberry Way. At the point where the pavement comes to an end, Back Lane joins the High Offley Road (A) from the right.

The house (A) built into the corner of High Offley Road and Back Lane is the former Wesleyan Chapel; notice that the date 1844 is still displayed on the front of the building.

Turn left to leave the High Offley Road and follow the lane to The Green (C). At the T-junction, turn left, and immediately right to follow the lane to a gate next to which is a stile. Climb the stile and continue in the same direction for 50 metres where you will find a stile in the hedge on your right. Do not cross the stile. Turn half left and head for the double poles of a wooden electricity pylon standing on a slight hillock. The path passes just to the right of the poles. From the top of the hillock near to the poles continue in the same direction to a stile in the hedge below. 

[2] Cross the stile, walk slightly to the left, over the shoulder of a little hillock to a footbridge in the hedge opposite. Cross the bridge and its stile and enter the field. Ahead of you are the outbuildings of "Pool House". Just behind these, the trees of Loynton Moss Nature Reserve reach their greatest height. Walk across the field heading just to the right of the highest trees. On the other side of the field you come alongside a hedge on your left. Follow the hedge, keeping it on your left, to a gate by a stream. Go through the gate, closing it after you if you had to open it, and follow the stream round to the right for twenty metres to a smaller gateway. Just beyond this lies the "Water Bridge" (D) over the canal. Cross the Water Bridge and turn immediately right to descend a sloping path down to the Shropshire Union Canal (E). Walk along the towpath with the canal on your right for just over half a mile until you reach the next bridge, at Grub Street.

[3] Walk under the bridge and then climb the path on the left that takes you up to Grub Street (F). Cross over the road and turn left to walk over the bridge. After eighty metres, opposite the driveway of the first house on the left, there is a stile on top of the bank. Climb over the stile and enter the wood. Take care along this path if the ground is muddy because it can be slippery in parts.

At one point you find yourself following the path on top of a narrow embankment. Where the embankment begins to broaden out again follow the path to the left, keeping the stream on your left and the rising embankment on your right. Follow the path close to the stream and you will arrive at a wooden bridge.

[4] Cross the bridge and climb the stile into the field. Turn half right and cross the narrow field to a stile in the hedge opposite. Go over the stile and continue across the field heading towards the left of two tall trees. Walk to the field corner where there is a plank bridge with a stile at each end. Cross the bridge and enter the field. Walk across the field, heading to the left of an electricity pole that appears to be standing in front of a line of trees. This brings you into the field corner where there is a gateway in the hedge. Go through the gateway and follow the track, with the hedge on your left, to reach The Green. At The Green, retrace your steps at the start of the outward route to return to the crossroads.

(A) High Offley Road. Prior to the building of the Council Houses in the early fifties and before the arrival of the senior citizens' bungalows or the housing estates of Barn Common and Glebefields, in the sixties, this was a quiet country lane with neat hedges and rough verges. As you walk down the pavement, you pass some older property that formed a small community long before piped water arrived in the district. Those who lived there then obtained their water from a well in Well Alley, which runs between High Offley Road and Back Lane.

(C) The Green. A glance at the ordnance survey map for The Green, reveals just how many roads, paths, and bridle-ways converge on this little community, showing just how important it was in the past.

(D) The Water Bridge. At the time that the canal was constructed, when the water table was higher than its present level, the Water Bridge carried water from the stream we have just passed, to feed it into what was then Blakemere Pool on, what is now the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust's Loynton Moss Nature Reserve. The Reserve was acquired by the Trust in 1969 and was the first reserve it purchased.

Near to here, close to the Parish Boundary, we meet the distinctive red waymarks of the Norbury Millennium Boulder Trail. This is a six-and-a-half-mile circular walk that visits each of the five hamlets of Norbury Parish.

(E)The Shropshire Union Canal. The canal is the Shropshire Union, built by Thomas Telford but not finally completed until 1835, six months after he died. There are reports that in 1934, 10,000 cubic yards of marl and rock came thundering down from the side of Grub Street cutting, near to Blakemere Pool, and obliterated all trace of the canal for a length of sixty yards. You will notice that in some places the banks are cut quite a long way back to prevent a recurrence of this episode. While walking along the towpath you can see mallards, coot, moorhens, and occasional herons and kingfishers.

(F) Grub Street.  Ordnance Survey Maps have Grub Street spelt with one "b" but local opinion is that it should be spelt "Grubb" with double "b". It is interesting to speculate about the origin of the name. Most of the other roads leading to High Offley are "lanes", for example, Peggs Lane, Tunstall Lane, Park Lane. The word "Street" in country villages often implies a former Roman Road. A Roman road was traceable in the fields just north of High Offley Church at the beginning of the twentieth century before it was ploughed out, and Roman coins have been found amongst bricks, armour and fragments of pottery dug up in the churchyard.