Foxton Locks closure March 2020

We have been out on the canal –The Cut as it’s called by the old hands – for nearly a month now and are beginning to settle into something of a routine. Well, as far as it’s been possible given the vagaries of the weather. Some days we’ve been unable to move due to wind and rain, and some days we’ve chosen not to move, just because. One thing we’re learning very quickly is, as Robbie Burns is said to have observed, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Despite our short apprenticeship, we have found it to be as we’d hoped – an opportunity to discover new places, explore small villages and observe different ways of doing. However, the less obvious aspects, the quieter more circumspect features that require searching out, are the things that have always piqued our interest. These are the elements that cause us to pause and set us wondering.

For it’s the actual canals and the locks that we find to be truly astounding – the simplicity of the engineering and the vision of the engineers and designers. Locks come in all forms – singles that take only one boat, huge doubles with 18” square timber gates that need to be coerced into place, the constant muscle-testing runs of stand-alone locks and the wondrous and daunting staircase locks. An example of the latter variety – where the top gate of one lock is the bottom gate of the next – is the Foxton Locks, with their “red before white” mantra of operating instructions. It’s no accident that, in the summer months, these locks are over-run with expectant gongoozlers who come to observe those passing through and hope, with a degree of mild anticipation and mawkishness it has to be said, to observe some operational calamity that will have made their outing worthwhile.

Knowing that the Foxton Locks were closed for maintenance and therefore, empty, our purpose, on this occasion, was to check them out and perhaps, sweet-talk our way down into the chambers for a look-see. As it turned out, no cajoling was necessary as, on the day we visited, a bevvy of volunteers was on hand to take the curious down into the bowels of the system.

Foxton Locks are also famous for the now redundant, inclined plane system of moving boats between canal levels. The machinery is long-gone but the concrete side-arms are still in place and help to give an idea of the scale of the system.

Those of you, who have travelled on the Peak Tram in Hong Kong, will be familiar with the counterweight system used to move the trams up and down the slope. The same principle operated the old Foxton Locks.

So as to save water, some locks were built with a side pound, a form of holding tank. As a lock is emptied, the water flows into the pound. To fill a lock, the water is returned to the lock

New gates in place

In the foreground is the triangular-shaped cill against which the gates close. The timber for the new gates is oak that has been seasoned for eight years. The gates each weigh about two tons and are approximately twenty feet high.

Here you can see the way the locks work in with the slope of the land, to move boats from the canal at the top to the canal at the bottom. The height of the lift over the two sets of staircase locks is 75 feet.

With the water drained from the system, the full depth of these locks can be appreciated.

Out with the old ..

in both senses. It's been a long time since these workhouses plodded the towpaths of England.

The Captain, The Commodore and The Cat