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Probably the smallest lock in the UK, with a fall of about a foot, and hand lifted gate paddles on single gates at each end, with a piled wooden chamber separating its waters from a small weir on the Abbot's brook at Bourne End on the Thames. The lock and an nearby set of rollers gave access from housing further up the brook to the Thames itself.
An old and nondescript family album photo from the fifties, showing the knuckle end of the top of the second lock up the flight. The location is easily identifiable today, the lock flight has been through a phase of near abandonment meanwhile, and the coping stones are now cold concrete, the painted notice on the building end, the waterlillies in the side basin, have vanished, a willow tree grows from what was grass, and an unneccesarily bland new hotel building, complete with red roof tiles, overlooks all from the left.
Too late in the year (1982?) to pass through the tunnel which was closed for extensive repairs (resulting in the 'Concrete drain' section), the skiff had to go over the top instead. This is a series of images from the horse path, much of which is now a minor road. One manages to include a vehicle, a traffic sign, me, the skiff and a tunnel ventilation shaft ... and the help of John and Nick Ryan, and Mark Edwards is *still* gratefully acknowledged. The final photo records one of the rare times a boat has left a lock at the bottom end without going into the top end first ...
There's been a certain amount of tidying up in that part of town. Here's some of it being done, 1977, as the church above the Broad Street Bridge makes one of its last appearences. We were aboard the narrow boat 'Kimberley', then in use as a camping hire boat. Photo courtesy of A.S.
Think this is 1969. The local council was in the process of filling the deep cuttings of the the GWR's 'Railway Number Nine' from Limpley Stoke - this was years before an old railway's potential as a long distance path was acknowledged. The east portal of this short tunnel bears unmistakable traces of the canal tunnel that preceeded it. The West end was not nearly so interesting, and I've no idea who the person is who is standing on the fresh infill of the railway cutting there.
Mid-January 2005, both portals of Combe Hay tunnel have recently received sympathetic repairs, with removal of vegetation, masonry pointed, brickwork repaired, and a guard fence above. This is the east portal, with the remains of the canal work more clearly visible than they have been for some time.
Early nineteen eighties. It's difficult to imagine an area with more canal remains than Combe Hay. Some of the locks still retain mouldering remains of gates.
This is the south portal of the tunnel on the North Wiltshire Canal at Cricklade. The site of Cricklade tunnel is easy to find once you know that a footpath leaving the lane that ran parallel to the cutting here passed above the tunnel's portal - the footpath survives, separating houses of different ages. The cutting here has been filled in and a row of houses built on the made ground. 1970 saw similar events, but with houses being built above the tunnel itself. To guard against subsidence, interlocking sheet steel piles had been driven from ground level to cut the tunnel and the bore behind them presumably broken out and infilled. Lurking beneath the ivy, the portal survived in good condition but a few yards in, the tunnel itself was blocked by the piling. Further on, the tunnel was crossed by a railway, the Midland and South Western Junction line, in a shallow cutting. There was very little separation between rail and canal tunnel, and after the line closed - how little was revealed after the line closed and a hole appeared in the cutting ... The north portal was situated to one side of a road junction and is buried, the cutting there likewise having been filled. It's possible that a low garden wall there is not unconnected with the facing of the portal ...
Dudley tunnel's never ending bore. Subsidence from coal mines has caused the roof to dip in places. This is one of them ...
The main tunnel intersects a cavern, with an opening to the ground above. Today, the new tunnel, created to form a circular route for the trip boats, reenters the canal tunnel at this point. The flare in the foreground is a candle lantern. It's sitting on the bow thwart of the skiff Tyho (still in use as a hire camping skiff from Richmond Bridge Boathouses in 2002). You may be able to see the outline of the skiff's saxboard.
Where the tunnel intercepts very good ground, the builders left it unlined, as in this short section through something igneous.
At a later date than the following photograph, with much weed growth in a thoroughly derelict Castle Mill Basin. Several excavations including three canal tunnels converge on this site from various directions - the one in the picture being the northern exit for boats today.
The ridge through which the canal tunnel passes is geologically rich. Tyho the skiff is alongside a fossilised coral reef, which makes up the whitish rock above the boat in this photograph. Close to, the origin of the rock is utterly obvious.
A Timms-of-Staines-built Skiff built 1879, and out of use for much of her existance in Hobbs boathouse above Henley Bridge until restored at Constables Boathouse and named 'Edward'. When this photo was taken she was on the last couple of days of a three week journey from Oxford to Lechlade that included some of the navigable tributaries including the Kennet navigation to its then head at Padworth, and the River Wey. Here, Edward, camping gear and standards of packing betraying three weeks travelling, is tied up beneath the very distinctive Ferruginous sandstone outcrop above Godalming. The shoes were nothing to do with us. Photo A.S.
This links to a four-frame animation of an earlier adventure in 'Edward', with a partly successful attempt to pass the weir at the head of the Swift Ditch at Abingdon. An original river channel and later navigation channel, it still contains the only survivor of the first three locks to be built on the Thames, the other two having been destroyed by later construction. The boatman has requested to remain unidentified.
Hardham canal tunnel lurks beneath the shards of the previous winter's brambles, some time in the seventies. The only tunnel to be situated on a river navigation, after closure it was blocked by the railway company whose tracks crossed it, the north end is now rather more full with water than its builders intended.
Napton's engine arm in 1970. A small pumping station at the end of the arm here supplied water to the Oxford Canal's summit. Taken from the brick accommodation bridge part way along the arm.
Rowena the skiff needed a heavy repair when she came to us - here's the sight of the end of the dismantling process, grey and white paint everywhere, and with a few missing lengths of planking for good measure. Rowena came out of a heap at Oxford. Does anyone know her previous history? The end result was some distance away when this photo was taken. In the background is a glimpse of a Bushnell's of Tring built icebreaker - Meadhurst IV - then in use by T. Harrison Chaplin as a work boat.
Sapperton tunnel a few years before the cutting's mature trees were removed. In those days the tunnel was to be found in the sun dappled gloom beneath a tree canopy, beech trees lining the cutting.
The beech trees having been removed, the portal partially taken down and rebuilt during one of the hottest summers on record, and water in the tunnel had fallen to dismal levels when this picture was taken by Mark Edwards.
The first canal holiday photograph. Having been fired up by the sight of the dry bed of the Basingstoke Canal passing Basing House, and tortuous explorations of Combe Hay, 1970 saw three of us attempt much of the Kennet and Avon, Westbound, in a canoe and canvas kayak. This first morning, camp site alongside the derelict Ufton lock, the sun streamed from beneath the eastern edge of a vast sheet of cloud that was covering the sky from the south west - this would be just about the last time we would see it in the week it took us to get to Newbury against a rising maelstrom in the Kennet river navigation...
A 'Pathfinder' tour with the Duchess of Hamilton. We'd been turned back at Appleby by engineering diversions, everyone was back aboard and waiting for the off, and snow was starting to fall
Much derided when it was built, as a hideous eyesore, this bridge carried the line to a town centre station. When the Ilfracombe branch shut, so did Barnstaple's well placed station along with this bridge, which lingered on for a few years before demolition came. There are now only a few traces of this structure, and those can only be seen at low water. Barnstaple's rail link still operates, but from rather remote former junction station on the edge of the town.
Save this as a bitmap to use it for an 800 x 600 wallpaper - it is suitably low contrast that icons aren't submerged in clutter. The Forth Bridge itself is reputed to have been built by the human race.
Not my photo but presumably a British Rail photographer, precariously at work ... and a thoroughly unpleasant image of the results of a mishap that ended human lives and the life of this enormous structure. No larger version of this one ...
Early days of rail preservation ... is this the Talyllyn? An old snap from a family album.
A correspondent writes '... it's indeed the Talyllyn - No 2 Dolgoch on a train of 4 coaches. This is probably 1951 or 1952; Dolgoch was spare engine in 1953 and was away from the line for rebuilding in 1954-1963, and by the time she was back, the track was in better condition than in the photo. Note also that her name is painted on above the boiler feed, not on a nameplate'.
A late photo of the viaduct at Torrington, 1984, after the rails had finally been lifted from this unlikely survivor and before its saving as a railway path. There's no mark in the fields to betray the previous viaduct, a wooden structure for narrow gauge, that occupied much the same position. Photograph taken near to the bed of the Torrington canal's road extension.
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All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.