Stoke Bruerne Duplicate Locks

[Leo No2]

Living here I know I should know the answer to this but can't find it anywhere on line (or maybe I am just using the wrong search criteria).

 

I know the duplicate locks were established in 1835 to counteract the threat of the railways but I can't find a date for their demise. I think they stopped being used in 1865 having been told, I think, by David Blagrove a few years ago that they lasted 30 years. Does anyone have a more positive feel for the date they closed rather than my 'I think' answer.

[David Mack]

Living here I know I should know the answer to this but can't find it anywhere on line (or maybe I am just using the wrong search criteria).

 

I know the duplicate locks were established in 1835 to counteract the threat of the railways but I can't find a date for their demise. I think they stopped being used in 1865 having been told, I think, by David Blagrove a few years ago that they lasted 30 years. Does anyone have a more positive feel for the date they closed rather than my 'I think' answer.

 

Presumably the duplicates were wide locks, as is the extant unused top lock. But further south I think the duplicate locks were narrow. Why?

[Leo No2]

Presumably the duplicates were wide locks, as is the extant unused top lock. But further south I think the duplicate locks were narrow. Why?

David I think I almost mis-read your post - by further south I assume you mean south of Stoke Bruerne because the sites of the duplicate locks on the Stoke Bruerne flight, which I walk regularly to improve my strength after the hip issue, look to have been wide locks. Have I understood you correctly?

[alan_fincher]

My understanding is that the duplicate locks introduced at Stoke Bruerne were indeed all wide ones, whereas the added locks that ran North from Tring summit down Marsworth and on out to Stoke Hammond were all narrow locks, (the evidence for the latter remains very much in place at several of the locations involved).

 

The book "the Grand Union Canal In Hertfordshire, by Alan Faulkner suggests that work on doubling the Stoke Bruerne locks started in March 1835, but gives no completion date, and that "after less than 20 years the need for the extra locks had diminished, and one set was taken out of use", so if correct 10 years less than you say David suggested.

 

The same book suggests the narrow locks from Tring Summit to Stoke Hammond were in use by the middle of 1839, and says that like their wide counterparts at Stoke Bruerne they did not stay in use for long. However no date for abandonment of these is suggested.

 

Assuming that all (broad and narrow) were out of use before 1860, I guess it is not surprising I have never seen a photographic record of them in use.

 

The reasons given for the narrow locks was that many workings were a single boat, so their use would have halved the amound of water being used on a length that always had notorious problems with shortages.

 

One of the interesting things, (well to me anyway!) is that many of the locks in the Marsworth flight clearly show a bricked off culvert half way along the lock, leading towards where the narrow lock has been removed in each case, (and not towards the former side ponds also present). Almost certainly these locks had interconnecting paddles that allowed one lock to act as a side pond for the other - the same arrangement that used to exist on all Regents Canal paired locks, and similar to what there is still the mechanisms in place for at Hillmorton.

I have not seen enough Stoke Bruerne locks with their chambers emptied out, to know if there might also have been paddles connecting the twin locks there, but it would seem to have been an obvious water saving measure.

Edited January 16, 2017 by alan_fincher

[David Mack]

David I think I almost mis-read your post - by further south I assume you mean south of Stoke Bruerne because the sites of the duplicate locks on the Stoke Bruerne flight, which I walk regularly to improve my strength after the hip issue, look to have been wide locks. Have I understood you correctly?

 

Indeed that is what I meant - I was thinking of the duplicates between Tring and Stoke Hammond, as Alan notes.

[Leo No2]

 

I have not seen enough Stoke Bruerne locks with their chambers emptied out, to know if there might also have been paddles connecting the twin locks there, but it would seem to have been an obvious water saving measure.

 

Alan - thank you for all the information that I have snipped.

 

To pick up on the one bit I have left - Stoke Bruerne Open weekend 11/12-February-2017 - you can have a good ferret around and see what's there.

[Pluto]

Not sure if it is any use, but this letter appeared in the Mechanics Magazine in 1834. It also has a drawing of gates, and can be found via Google Books:

 

Sir, –Though the canal proprietors between London and Birmingham seem as if they did not intend to adopt Mr. McNeill's scheme of “facing the banks a foot high with masonry,” and, by making the boats rise to the surface of the water, go with a speed of ten miles per hour making every thing, by the bye, “comfortable to themselves”—and so endeavouring to “bear up against the sharp competition with which they are threatened, from the rapid extension of the railway system,” yet they are by no means inactive in endeavouring, by all the means in their power, to accelerate the progress of the passage of the boats “flies” in particular, to and from London.

On the Grand Junction the following plan has been adopted with evident success, and though it does not effect a very great saving of time, it appears to be almost the only practicable plan for the purpose.

Paddles are introduced into the top gates of the lock,—two in each gate which are both raised in the same instant; and so there are now six apertures (nearly of an equal size, I should judge,) opened for the water to flow into the lock, while before there were only two; and these two were not connected so as to be raised at the same time. The prefixed sketch will give some idea of their situation:

a a represent the posts standing on the lock wall, which hold the rack-work, &c. for raising the two old constant paddles, bbbb are the posts placed on the beams of wood, cc, called the “balance-beams,” and these posts answer exactly the same purpose as the ones, aa.

cc are connecting rods, or spindles fixed to rods, proceeding vertically from the additional paddles dddd, each pair being opened instantly, the handles, ee, which move the rack-work and pinions placed at ffff, are turned.

By this improvement I am informed that a saving of three minutes, and some times more, is effected in the passage through one lock; it filling, now, in about two minutes, while, before, five were occupied. There appears to be some danger of sinking the boats, especially very heavy laden ones, in consequence of the water rushing in with very great force, and dashing against their “fore parts,” but with a little care on the part of the boatmen, all accidents may be easily avoided.

Now, Mr. Editor, what think you of this improvement? It seems to me to be the only available method of cutting short the time which was so very long, and I should apprehend that after all it will not do them much good. For let us calculate: there are on the Grand Junction 90 locks, (whether that number is exactly correct I cannot say, but I think it is not a great way out) and three minutes saved at each lock gives a total of minutes saved, 270, which is equivalent to four hours and a half. This, then, is all the time gained in a voyage from Braunston (the spot where the Grand Junction unites with the Oxford) to London!! To be sure it is a material saving, comparing the present canal system with the old; but, then, on contrasting it with the time occupied by a steamer on a railway, (which I suppose would nearly perform the same journey in the said “four hours and a half,”) it sinks into utter insignificance.

I am, Sir, obediently yours,

A SUBSCRIBER.

Dec. 10, 1833.

1834 Mechanics Magazine, p230

[mykaskin]

Not sure if it is any use, but this letter appeared in the Mechanics Magazine in 1834. It also has a drawing of gates, and can be found via Google Books:

 

 

Now, Mr. Editor, what think you of this improvement? It seems to me to be the only available method of cutting short the time which was so very long, and I should apprehend that after all it will not do them much good. For let us calculate: there are on the Grand Junction 90 locks, (whether that number is exactly correct I cannot say, but I think it is not a great way out) and three minutes saved at each lock gives a total of minutes saved, 270, which is equivalent to four hours and a half. This, then, is all the time gained in a voyage from Braunston (the spot where the Grand Junction unites with the Oxford) to London!! To be sure it is a material saving, comparing the present canal system with the old; but, then, on contrasting it with the time occupied by a steamer on a railway, (which I suppose would nearly perform the same journey in the said “four hours and a half,”) it sinks into utter insignificance.

I am, Sir, obediently yours,

A SUBSCRIBER.

Dec. 10, 1833.

1834 Mechanics Magazine, p230

 

He of course was talking about the introduction of the 'center' paddles on the top gates:

 

Mike