[1][2] Due to its location on the River Trent, which up to this point is easily navigable, there is much early evidence of human activity in the area, dating back to 1500 BC.

[1] In 1009 Æþelræd Unræd (King Ethelred the Unready) signed a charter at the Great Council which recognised the position and boundaries of Westune.

Under this charter Æþelræd gave his minister a number of rights that made him free from tax and to his own rule within the manor.

[6] The village is listed as Serdelau in the Domesday Book[2] - translated as a settlement near a mound with a notch or indentation – but there have been up to 20 different spellings noted by historians.

[1] The tariffs charged for goods proceeding through the port enabled industrialist Leonard Fosbrooke to build Shardlow Hall,[2] and later led to skirmishes being fought locally during the English Civil War for control of the strategic transport hub.

During this period the unstable gravel bed of the Trent was affected by a succession of large floods, which meant that the river shifted its course significantly during this time, demolishing the bridges and an adjacent Norman mill weir.

With a vision to connect all four of England's main rivers together – the Mersey, Trent, Severn and Thames – he created the only other comparative canal port to Shardlow in the town of Stourport-on-Severn.

[1] But the warehouses around them were extensively reconstructed as trade developed, so that by 1820 the larger structures with the sunburst windows which exist today, had replaced the earlier buildings.

[1] The importance and vitality of the port resulted in the town becoming referred to as "Rural Rotterdam" and "Little Liverpool",[2] with the population rising from 200 in 1780 to a peak of 1,306 in 1841.

Post World War II under the National Health Service it formally became "The Grove" hospital,[8] which was closed in 2005 and subsequently demolished in 2007.

A campaign led by the newly-formed Trent & Mersey Canal Society resulted in the designation in 1975 of the Shardlow Wharf Conservation Area, which today encompasses over 50 Grade II listed buildings.