Caen Hill Locks
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Caen Hill Locks () are a flight of 29 locks on the
Kennet and Avon Canal The Kennet and Avon Canal is a waterway in southern England with an overall length of , made up of two lengths of Navigability, navigable river linked by a canal. The name is used to refer to the entire length of the navigation rather than sol ...
, between Rowde and
Devizes Devizes () is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It developed around Devizes Castle, an 11th-century Norman architecture, Norman castle, and received a charter in 1141. The castle was besieged during the Anarchy, a 12th-cent ...
in
Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...
, England. Of the 107 locks on the canal, those at Caen Hill are numbered 22 to 50, and they are near the canal highpoint at Cadley Lock (number 54).


Description

The 29 locks have a rise of 237 feet in 2 miles ( in ) or a 1 in 44
gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function f of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p gives the direction and the rate of fastest increase. The g ...
. The locks come in three groups: the lower seven locks (nos 22 to 28), from Foxhangers Wharf to Upper Foxhangers Bridge, are spread over ; the next sixteen locks (nos 29 to 44) form a steep flight in a straight line up the hillside and are designated as a scheduled monument and are also known as one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways. Because of the steepness of the terrain, the pounds between these locks are very short. As a result, fifteen of them have unusually large sideways-extended pounds, to store the water needed to operate them. A final six locks (nos 45 to 50) take the canal into Devizes. The locks take 5–6 hours to traverse in a boat. The side pounds, the areas around them and adjoining fields to the north, are managed as nature habitat by the
Canal & River Trust The Canal & River Trust (CRT), branded as in Wales, holds the guardianship of 2,000 miles of canals and rivers, together with reservoirs and a wide range of heritage buildings and structures, in England and Wales. Launched on 12 July 2012, the ...
. Over 30,000 trees were planted in 2012–13 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.


History

This flight was
John Rennie the Elder John Rennie (7 June 1761 – 4 October 1821) was a Scottish civil engineer who designed many bridges, canals, docks and warehouses, and a pioneer in the use of structural cast-iron. Early years John Rennie was born near Phantassie in Haddin ...
's solution to climbing a steep hill and, in 1810, was the last part of the route of the Kennet and Avon navigation, commenced in 1796, between Bristol and Reading, to be opened. A brickyard had been established to the south of the site for the manufacture of bricks for the lock chambers. This remained in viable commercial use until the middle of the 20th century. John Blackwell oversaw the locks' construction as Rennie's site agent. Between 1801 and 1810, a tramway had provided a trade link between Foxhangers at the bottom and Devizes at the top, the remains of which can be seen in the
towpath A towpath is a road or trail on the bank of a river, canal, or other inland waterway. The purpose of a towpath is to allow a land vehicle, Working animal, beasts of burden, or a team of human pullers to tow a boat, often a barge. This mod ...
arches of the road bridges over the canal. In the early 19th century, between 1829 and 1843, the flight was lit by gas lights. After the coming of the railways, the canal fell into disuse and was closed. The last cargo through the flight was a consignment of grain conveyed from Avonmouth to Newbury in October 1948. From the 1960s there was a major clearing and rebuilding operation, culminating in a visit by
Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...
in 1990 to open the new locks officially, although the flight had been navigable for a number of years before then. Because a large volume of water is needed for the locks to operate, a back pump was installed at Foxhangers in 1996 capable of returning of water per day to the top of the flight, which is equivalent to one lockful every eleven minutes. In 2010 British Waterways planned to install sixteen new lock gates in twelve weeks as part of its winter maintenance programme, in an attempt to reduce the amount of water lost. The exceptionally cold weather delayed work, and when the section was re-opened at Easter 2010 only twelve pairs of gates had been dealt with. The wood from the old gates was donated to
Glastonbury Festival The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts (commonly referred to as simply Glastonbury Festival, known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts held near Pilton, Somerset, England, in most su ...
and used to build a new bridge which was named in honour of Arabella Churchill, one of the festival's founders.


Lock names

A few locks at either end are named after topographic features. More have been named after benefactors, beginning in 1984 with locks 44 to 48. Those named include number 22 (Lower Foxhangers), 23 (Foxhangers), 27 (Marsh Lane), 28 ( Moonrake), 29 (Youth Division), 30 (Fundraisers'), 33 (Lloyds), 36 (Peter Lindley-Jones), 38 (Jack Dalby), 39 (Skaggs Foundation), 40 (Paul Ensor) 41 (Boto-X), 42 (Monument), 43 (
Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...
), 44 (Sir Hugh Stockwell), 45 (Cave), 46 ( A. P. Herbert), 47 (
Manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a N ...
), 48 ( Trust), 49 (Maton), and 50 (Kennet).


Restoration

File:Devizes locks plan.png, Plan from 1949, when still completely watered (Contour lines at 25 feet) File:Devizeslockspreresotoration.jpg, Before any restoration, early 1970s File:Caen_Hill_repair1.jpg, 1977, looking west File:Caen_Hill_repair2.jpg, 1977, looking uphill File:Caen_Hill_repair3.jpg, 1977, from the bottom File:Devizeslock during restoration.png, 1985 — rewatered


See also


References

{{Coord, 51.35253, N, 2.02559, W, type:landmark_scale:5000_region:GB-WIL_source:enwiki-osgb36(ST978614), display=title Locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal Canals in Wiltshire Hills of Wiltshire Lock flights of England Scheduled monuments in Wiltshire