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Join us every Saturday throughout the summer and bank holiday weekends for an afternoon of live music from local musicians by the water!
View our lineup for the summer here! ⬇️
SATURDAY SOUNDS BY THE WATERFRONT LINEUP
Enjoy great tunes, soak up the sun, and make unforgettable memories in a vibrant, family-friendly atmosphere.
✨ Hospitality at its best! Our licensed bar is open until late, serving beers, wines, cocktails, and soft drinks, along with delicious food.
Want the best spot? Bring a chair or picnic blanket and settle in!
⛺ If you want to make a night of it, why not stay on-site? Campers, glampers, and caravans welcome! Well-behaved dogs too!
Thank you to the Chamber for shortlisting us in the awards and another special thank you to Cheshire College – South and West for interviewing us at the judging stage and presenting us with the award on the evening.
Winning this award means a lot to us and it shows just how far we have come over the last 13 years as a business. Our whole team have gone above and beyond this year and to be recognised as South Cheshire Business of The Year proves that hard work pays off.
A company is only as good as the employees that work for you and we truly believe that our achievements are down to our great people. We look forward to see what the next 12 months bring for us in the ever-changing world.
A brief history lesson, Aqueduct Marina is located on the former site of a Dairy farm called “The Outlanes”.
The farm was called The Outlanes as it was in the “Outer-lanes” of Church Minshull, and in its prime was seen as an excellent farm with heavy clay land to the west and drier sandy land down to the River Weaver, meaning the grass grew in wet and dry seasons.
All was undisturbed until the Middlewich Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal linking Barbridge to Middlewich was opened in 1833 including the Aqueduct over the River Weaver, from which the existing marina name came from.
The construction of the canal resulted in some of the land being cut off to the north of the canal and only accessible via a now removed bridge, where the canal narrows at the north east corner of the marina. Despite this, Dairy farming continued until 2004 when the herd was sold, and plans started to enable the building of Aqueduct Marina which opened on Valentine’s Day 2009.
The original basis for the marina was that it was located in an area with heavy Cheshire clay so would hold water, was on a long stretch of lock free canal between Minshull Lock and Stanthorne Lock so levels would be stable, it is on the outside of a gentle curve so the silt should settle opposite the entrance, there was no need to cut through the towpath a public right of way, and probably most important to all boat owners, is that it is located at the centre of several canals all reachable within a few hours cruising.
The other benefits of the former farm location is that existing building could be converted, the workshops over looking the marina were formerly youngstock sheds and the facilities building is on the site of a former shippon and store, so designed to resemble the original shape. The large Brick Barns still await development.
The ensuing 14 years have seen the marina develop and the trees mature to what it is today. We believe many boat owners have enjoyed the location here in south Cheshire, with it 19th century canal and access to 21st century road, rail and airport links
Author Robert Parton, former dairy farmer and now marina owner!
Aqueduct Marina are delighted to be able to publish our Autumn 2022 newsletter.
Our here newsletter is here to provide you with all the latest information at the marina.
If there is anything in particular you would like to see featured in our newsletter, please email marketing@aqueductmarina.co.uk
Click on the document below to view your copy of the Autumn 2022 Newsletter.
|
Date |
Office |
Cafe |
|
Friday 23rd December |
8.00am – 5.00pm | 9:30am – 4:30pm |
|
Saturday 24th December |
8.00am – 12.00pm |
9:30am – 11:30am |
|
Sunday 25th December |
Closed |
Closed |
|
Monday 26th December |
Closed |
Closed |
|
Tuesday 27th December |
Closed |
Closed |
|
Wednesday 28th December |
9.00am – 4.00pm |
9:30am – 3:30pm |
|
Thursday 29th December |
9.00am – 4.00pm |
9:30am – 3:30pm |
|
Friday 30th December |
9.00am – 4.00pm |
9:30am – 3:30pm |
|
Saturday 31st December |
8.00am – 12.00pm |
9:30am – 11:30am |
|
Sunday 1st January |
Closed |
Closed |
| Monday 2nd January | Normal Office Hours |
Normal Office Hours |
At the end of September, we held a Cheese & Wine Tasting evening for our moorers and storers.
It was a very well attended event and it was so lovely to see all of our Moorers having a good time together and enjoying delicious cheese and wines. We would like to say a big thank you again to everyone that joined us for this evening.
Our cheese wheels were supplied by Nantwich Cheese Company and the Burts Blue, Clothbound Cheddar and Crabtree with Chilli supplied by The Cheese Shop in Nantwich. Nick from The Cheese Shop also joined us on the night and gave a fabulous talk regarding all things cheese!
At the end of the evening we held a raffle with numerous prizes, the number one prize being a luxurious cheese hamper. We are delighted to say we managed to raise £60 from this raffle which we have donated to The Wishing Well Project.
Aqueduct Marina Newsletter – Summer 2022
Aqueduct Marina are delighted to be able to publish our Summer 2022 newsletter.
We hope you enjoy reading our latest updates and news of the marina, we hope you have also had a fantastic summer and excellent cruising season!
Click on the document below to view your copy of the Summer 2022 Newsletter.
Aqueduct Marina is officially a Clean MarinaThis year’s Crick Boat show proved to be the ideal place for The Yacht Harbour Association (TYHA) to present Aqueduct Marina with the first Clean Marina award for an inland marina. Many of the marina’s staff attended the event at which MD Robert Parton and Jon White, TYHA’s General Manager, spoke after the presentation to staff members of a certificate of compliance and Clean Marina flag.
During the presentation, Jon White praised the team at Aqueduct for the amount of work they put in to gain the award, saying, “They have put a tremendous amount of time, effort and hard work, alongside some financial investment into gaining this award. When we first visited, we provided a report with an action plan, and they went away, committed to the plan and have delivered outstanding results.”
Jon White went on to say that gaining a Clean Marina Award is not a box-ticking exercise. “After the initial assessment, the marina is given an action plan, which may require some investment on their part, communications to berth holders or the introduction of new ways of working. They then have to provide evidence that they have committed to and fulfilled the plan and achieve an 80% score in each of the different components that make up the award.”
Robert Parton, Managing Director, Aqueduct Marina, said, “We are naturally delighted to achieve the new Clean Marina standard here at Aqueduct Marina. The inspection was rigorous, so we had to amend a few activities and embed some company policies, making the exercise a useful project. We are, without a doubt, a better and more environmentally aware marina as a result. Aqueduct Marina has, for some time, had an ongoing focus on reducing its environmental impact. We are delighted to win the accreditation and to be the first inland marina. Having already installed electric car charging, introduced greener products in the Chandlery and now offering HVO diesel, we aim to reduce our carbon footprint even more. And we’re pleased to say our customers are fully engaged and supporting the effort.”
The Clean Marina award was launched in 2021 to help marinas get the basics right such as blackwater capture and treatment, correctly managing segregated and hazardous waste, spill prevention and treatment, wash-down capture and filtration, drain interception, using sustainable products and preventing plastic pollution, and of course, influencing tenants, contractors and boaters to be more sustainable too. Initially launched in Australasia, the award has been gained by five coastal marinas, with a number of others currently looking to achieve the award.
April is usually seen as the start of the season for most people, and this year the team at Aqueduct began the 2022 season with an opportunity for people to come along and meet the team. The event gave visitors the chance to talk to a number of staff members and ask questions about moorings, maintenance and sales.
In preparation, marina staff undertook a spring clean to plant up the flower beds, spruce up areas that needed a lick of paint and even renovate the Elsan point! As a result of the spring clean, the marina was ready to welcome visitors with drinks and canapés.
The event saw good numbers of people participate and take the opportunity to discuss the coming season with staff in an informal setting. Phil Langley (Marina and Operations Director) led the event and said, “The Staff site maintenance day was a great success, giving all the team a chance to do something constructive and different around the marina; we also mixed people up, so we were not working with our normal colleagues, leading to some great inter-team bonding.”
Phil went on to say, “The meet the team day also had a positive impact on our customers who enjoyed seeing office staff out in their overalls. A couple of days later, this was followed by our meet the managers afternoon and marina customers social, which also saw a good-sized crowd attend. As a result, we booked in some extra work as well as gaining a couple of new moorers. It also allowed our existing customers to catch up with their fellow Aqueduct boaters while enjoying a glass of wine”.
These are just the first of a number of events planned throughout the 2022 season at the Church Minshull marina. Details of these will be posted on the marina’s website and social media channels.
Aqueduct Marina Newsletter – Spring 2022
Aqueduct Marina are delighted to be able to publish our Spring 2022 newsletter.
We hope you enjoy reading our latest updates and news of the marina, here’s to a fantastic summer ahead!
Click on the document below to view your copy of the Spring 2022 Newsletter.
Aqueduct help Canal & River Trust get the “Games On”Aqueduct Marina are proud to have been asked by the waterways and wellbeing charity Canal & River Trust to build a new boat in time for the Commonwealth Games in July in Birmingham. The new boat, which will be called Aquarius II, will replace the original craft Aquarius. Despite this being the name of the mythical water carrier, this boat will be used for something somewhat less glamorous but nonetheless important: to collect debris from the waterways in and around the Birmingham area during and after the games.
The engineers at Aqueduct are no strangers to building or refurbishing some of the Trust’s fleet of workboats and it is this experience, coupled with the unique skillset of the workshop team, that helped the Cheshire marina be awarded the contract.
Robert Parton, MD of Aqueduct Marina, said: “We are proud to be supporting the Trust in their program of bringing their workboat fleet up to modern standards, this one is more interesting with its connection to the Commonwealth Games this summer.”
Mick Carrington, Plant & Equipment Manager at Canal & River Trust, said: “Aquarius II is going to be another essential workboat for our fleet. It will be a vast improvement on the old craft, providing improved performance from its battery-powered electric propulsion drive, and the welfare provisions have been updated to provide 240-volt electrics and toilet facilities. The timely arrival of the new craft will ensure, with the help of the Trust’s dedicated volunteers, that Birmingham’s canals are looking their best as the city welcomes thousands of visitors for the Commonwealth Games. We have worked with Aqueduct Marina before and have been impressed by their operational capabilities and skilled engineers, and we are delighted to entrust them with the build.”
Aquarius is 35ft long and has battery-powered propulsion making it very environmentally friendly and quiet in operation.
RIVERS Project underway again at Aqueduct MarinaThe COVID pandemic halted many projects over the past two years, and those that did continue did so at a much-reduced pace. Such was the case at Aqueduct Marina when work began on an important project funded by the European Regional Development Fund just before the first lockdown.
Working with partners across the EU, Aqueduct and the Canal and River Trust embarked on constructing a workboat testbed to allow various power systems to be trialled in real-world situations. The projects aims are to reduce or eliminate the pollutants from conventional internal combustion engines. The objective is to achieve this by using Oxy-fuel combustion technology for diesel engines and capturing and storing all CO2 emissions. It is also hoped that as a result, fuel consumption could be reduced by up to 15%. The project’s goal is to design, develop, and integrate dedicated carbon capture and storage systems into inland waterway vessels, both commercial and leisure.
However, despite the test boat’s construction getting underway some time ago, work had to stop when lockdowns were imposed; even after lifting restrictions, progress has been slow due to supply chain issues. However, work on the project, including vessel adaptations, has commenced with a tilt test recently taking place at Aqueduct Marina.
As well as undertaking the practicalities of the preparatory work, progress has also been made on the funding and timeline of the remainder of the RIVERS project. Funding is now all in place to complete this project by December 2022. With that in mind, the team at Aqueduct are on track to complete the work on the boat by April 2022. This will then allow enough time to fit all of the testing equipment. This equipment has arrived at the workshops in Cheshire in preparation for installation onto the testbed boat.
With the world’s attention focused on the COP26 conference over recent months, it is timely that this important work is underway once again. The hope is that it will help develop new modes of propulsion and the capture and storage of carbon and other damaging gasses. Hopefully, these developments will eventually see their way into mainstream use in the not too distant future.
*Featured in Towpath Talk
Aqueduct Marina to focus on the environment during 2022As 2021 came to an end, Aqueduct Marina’s MD, Robert Parton, reflected on a recent trip to Birmingham and the possible implications to boat owners if cities decide to take more action to combat air pollution.
“Late last year, I attended a British Marine, Inland Boating seminar in central Birmingham where the attendees that arrived by car found themselves having to deal with the new central Clean Air Zone. At the moment, if you’ve arrived in Birmingham by boat, the clean air zone charges wouldn’t apply. As you might expect, the zone only applies to older diesel vehicles using city centre roads. The zone was finally introduced on 1st June last year after many delays. These vital changes that need to be put in place to combat climate change and improve air quality in many areas and will impact on us all in one way or another.”
“With the recent COP26 conference in Glasgow bringing such matters to the forefront of our minds, the green agenda is being widely discussed and, as a result, the regulations stemming from it are making the issue increasingly real. So it was apt that the new zone came into effect this year.”
“Although I travelled by train to the seminar, I noticed that the Clean Air Zone has Gas Street Basin within it and that, for now, the canal boats are unaffected. But the question is, how long will it be before canal boats also have to pay? Discussions with the city council well before the zone were put in place resulted in the spokesman saying that ‘they had no plans to charge boats on the canal within the zone.’ The feeling would seem to be that it would be too difficult to administer, but with boats using the Bridgewater canal being recorded from the first bridge, in an effort to stop overstayers, it makes you wonder if a similar arrangement could be put in place in the city centre?”
“The reasoning behind the establishment of the Clean Air Zone in Birmingham is to reduce the pollution levels within the city centre. With this in mind, are boaters to expect restrictions on the use of stoves within the zone? A number of other areas have introduced restrictions on the use of stoves so, could Birmingham will follow suit?”
“Moorings are another way of reducing pollution and emissions. Will the Canal and River Trust clamp down on the residential moorings, some of which have been blamed for the static running of engines to charge batteries? Local residents, too, have, in some locations, complained about the boaters using their stoves to keep warm. Restrictions on time limits or the implementation of local rules could tackle the problem?”
“Currently, there is a lot of talk about the use of HVO fuel, derived from used vegetable oil and, if used correctly, can dramatically reduce the emissions from a boat’s engine. The IWA are supporting moves in this direction, and CRT is currently trialling its use in some of their workboats. We, at Aqueduct, are also looking into the possibility of offering it to boaters and using it ourselves on-site. Though if the use of HVO takes off and requires the cutting down of the rain forest to grow Palm oil to meet demand, rather than just using recycled oils, the environmental benefits will be very questionable.”
“So the coming year looks interesting as more and more work is done to reduce the carbon footprint of the waterways, and we at Aqueduct Marina are keen to play our part so, keep an eye on our social media channels and website for news during 2022.”
The Marina is open:
Mon - Sat: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sunday: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
The Cafe is open:
Mon - Fri: 9:30 am - 4:30 pm
Sat - Sun: 9:30 am - 4:30 pm
The Chandlery is open:
Mon - Sat: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sun: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
© 2025 Aqueduct Marina Church Minshull.
