Life on the locks (From The Oxford Times)

Life on the locks

3:03pm Thursday 18th February 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

My father once told me that if he had a pound for every time someone said ‘I wish I had your job’ he could have retired much earlier! It is a popular misconception that lock keepers on the River Thames have an easy life, strolling about in the sunshine, chatting with passers by and letting the odd boat through.

The truth is somewhat different, and although many elements of the job have improved over the years, it is not easy as some people seem to think.

My connection to the River Thames goes back to 1925, when my grandfather was appointed ferryman at Keen Edge Ferry, near Shillingford. He was later lock keeper at Benson and Romney Locks, serving the Thames Conservancy for 25 years.

My father, Eric,was also a lock keeper at Radcot, Clifton Hampden, Abingdon, Marlow and Sunbury, spending 33 years in the job.

I vividly remember being taken to school at Clifton Hampden in the boat that dad kept permanently moored at the back door during wintertime. This was an exciting adventure for me, doubtless a pain for him

Life for both men was tough, living in unheated and often isolated houses with no electricity or mains water, and outside toilets. Their working hours were long in the summer, working from 9am to sunset.

My grandfather Jim only had one day off a week, and his annual holiday had to be taken in October, outside of the boating season. This was an improvement on 1903, when the lock keepers’ annual leave was dictated as ‘seven days annually on full pay, and they may have a further seven days at intervals if they desire, provided that such leave involves no cost to the Conservators’.

Winters on the lock were sometimes harsh with the house cut off for days by flood water or snow. Often the only way out to buy food was by boat, or a dangerous walk across a flooded weir.

I vividly remember being taken to school at Clifton Hampden in the boat that dad kept permanently moored at the back door during wintertime. This was an exciting adventure for me, doubtless a pain for him.

Both my father and grandfather often worked in appalling conditions with no life jackets, lighting or safety lines, sometimes venturing out in the middle of the night to work on a weir that was covered with ice.

My father summed it up, saying: “You just needed your wits about you and a strong sense of self preservation!”

If you were to ask a lock keeper why a lock is needed, the jokers among them might reply ‘to annoy the boaters of course!’ More seriously, locks are needed to bypass weirs and the locks we see today have evolved over many years. To fully understand their necessity, one needs to have a brief look at Thames history.

Hundreds of years ago, the River Thames had no water control and floods, as well as droughts, were commonplace. It is said that one could walk across dry footed from Binsey to Port Meadow at that time.

The 1593 floods in Oxford saw nearly 13 feet of flood water in Christ Church Meadow, the High Street and St Aldates.

Over time, many haphazard weir structures were erected along the Thames, some to alleviate flooding, others to serve as fish traps or other purposes such as milling. Monks, millers, landowners and professional fisherman all had a vested interest in water control, yet the management of the river was as haphazard as these early weirs.

Eventually, these weirs were to become locks, not in the form we see today, more of a dam with removable parts. In order to allow vessels to travel up river, parts of the dam had to be taken out or swung to one side. Vessels were then winched or hauled upstream once the flow had subsided.

Heading downstream was more hazardous with the vessel going down on a ‘flash’ of released water. Not surprisingly, these weirs became known as flash weirs (or flash locks) and were usually named after the men who owned or built them.

Eaton Hastings, Skinner’s, Hart’s, Ridge’s, Harper’s, Eynsham, King’s and Medley were all flash weirs above Oxford. Of these, King’s and Eynsham were converted to modern weirs with the building of pound locks on virgin sites around 1927. The rest of the weirs were completely removed, with Medley Weir, near Port Meadow, the last to go in 1937. Releasing all this water (even if there once was a timetable for the flash) was wasteful and time consuming. Clearly a better method was needed and this came with the building of ‘pound’ locks. These locks were the forerunner of the locks in use today but much cruder and prone to collapse. Water was held in a ‘pound’ with wooden gates and sluices at each end.

Around 1632, the Oxford-Burcot Commission built the earliest pound locks on the River Thames at Iffley, Sandford and Swift Ditch near Abingdon. Of the three, Sandford was filled in and part of Iffley can be seen in the current weir stream. Only Swift Ditch remains virtually intact, surviving over 350 years.

Like the locks themselves, the role of lock keeper evolved as well. Sometimes he was the landlord of a tavern, a fishing weir owner or a miller who charged a toll for passing through their weirs.

By far the most important role of a lock keeper is the maintenance of water levels. These are read several times a day from markers positioned at the top and bottom of each lock.

Weir adjustments are then made to maintain these levels within a small range. Each weir is different and the effect of weir adjustments can take a while to learn. These levels are also monitored remotely, but debris, such as a tree branch blocking the weir can’t be spotted remotely!

The resident lock keeper is the person best placed to deal with it quickly. Unlike book keeping where errors may lie hidden for years; if a lock keeper makes a mistake, the result could be catastrophic.

As we know from the Thames flood in the summer of 2007, even a small amount can make a critical difference. For example, Osney lock keeper Ray Riches took hourly water levels and worked tirelessly for three days and nights to minimize the flooding on Osney Island. Unusually, this even meant opening the top lock gates and the lower gate sluices to create a small weir, thus diverting excess water away from the island.

Despite extraordinary efforts during such a crisis, the Environment Agency recently attempted to abolish the post of resident lock keeper at some locks and, with the addition of ‘public power’ (or self service) it cannot be long before it will be attempted again. This move was fiercely opposed and rightly so.

In my opinion, there will always be a need for a resident lock keeper to give help and advice, alongside the vital task of managing England’s much loved river.

Brian Eade is the author of three books about the River Thames, Along the Thames (Sutton Publishing) 1997; Forgotten Thames (Sutton Publishing) 2002; The Changing Thames (The History Press) 2009, and produces limited edition signed River Thames prints. E-mail brian.eade@virgin.net or call 01865 727827