The Hanwell Locks

The 16 mile pound extends from Cowley (near Uxbridge) to Camden Locks and Paddington and to Norwood Top Lock which starts the Hanwell Flight down to the junction of the Grand Union Canal with the River Brent with which the canal (strictly now the River Brent Navigation) shares right to the River Thames.   Whilst we were transiting between Cowley and the top of the flight we remarked that the water levels appeared low by about 9 inches.   An hour later we arrived at Norwood Top Lock to find all the paddles fully up with quite a flow running.  In my experience it is common practice for lock-keepers to open half a paddle at the top of a flight if water levels are low, but never all, without being in attendance.  Knowing the Hanwell Flight there can be problems in some of the midway pounds, but never needing more than 5 minutes to sort out locally.   So I was suspicious that vandalism might be the cause and tried to get some intelligence from CaRT.   Waste of time!   On the railway I would phone "Control" and have an answer.  Not so simple on the canals.  Eventually I was told that the manager was unavailable.  The simplest thing was to pass the lock and shut and lock the paddles.   At the next lock we had our answer in the form of two volunteer lock-keepers clearing rubbish.  Yes they had opened the paddles because one pound below was empty and a boat had been stuck there.   Ever since I have been using this flight there are well know water level problems.  If first in the morning I used to get the bike out and check before starting.  On one occasion, before volunteer lock-keepers were invented I met one of the lengthsmen who was doing what I was.  He agreed that there were problems but said that they had failed to find out why.  Several years ago I had noticed that there was a leak into (and out of) the side pond at Lock 93, so that it took a much longer time (i.e. more water) to fill the lock, and longer to empty, although there was clearly a loss from the side pond itself.   There is now a notice on that lock saying that the problem will be fixed by 1st June.  Except that it hasn't been and word is that the leak is a much more complicated problem than just a leak through the side pond culvert.   In practical terms it means that one person struggles to open the top gates.  Once full with paddles closed the level falls quickly - several inches in a few minutes.   The locks in this flight are deep and have an uncared for look.  Some gates leak badly  and the intervening pounds are short, so that level fluctuations are inevitable.  One gate still cannot be fully opened one month after we first noticed this problem.  In summary this can be a hard work flight.    It took us 3 hours to pass the 10 locks down to Brentford.

Comments

[Stacy@ River thames canal boat hire]

After going through above post I think you've done a great job and made easy for canal boat to pass the lock. I can guess how tough it was that it took 3 hours. There are plenty of lock to be faced while getting journey with canal boat and this sort of effort gives inspiration others to face the same problem with confidence.