Mersey Rivers Trust has been awarded a grant from the European Open Rivers Programme to carry out planning and design work to remove the disused Gas House Weir on the River Duckow on the Shavington Estate at Adderley, near Market Drayton. 

The Mersey Rivers Trust is a charity focused on improving rivers for people and wildlife. It has an ambitious 30-year fish improvement strategy for all the Mersey rivers, including the River Duckow, a tributary of the River Weaver.

The European Open Rivers Programme is a grant giving organisation dedicated to restoring rivers across the European continent and funded by a charitable foundation, Arcadia.

Gas House Weir is one of many hundreds of disused weirs across the Mersey rivers that have been left behind from previous industrial activities, which prevent the free movement of fish. The weir is too high for fish to be able to swim over it and move upstream in the River Duckow to reach their spawning grounds. 

John Sanders, co-Director at the Mersey Rivers Trust commented: “We are delighted to have secured funding from the European Open Rivers programme and be part of an ambitious programme across Europe to open up rivers for fish movement. We are very grateful for the full support from Shavington Estate and the funding from the European Open Rivers programme.  Together we can now start to improve fish life in the River Duckow.”

“We will use the funding to design the safe removal of the weir, obtain environmental permissions and confirm the cost of the removal work.  Further funding will then be sought to carry out the weir removal”. 

For more information on this project please click here