The Hackney Cut is an artificial channel of the
Lee Navigation built in England in 1769 by the River Lea Trustees to straighten and improve the Navigation. It begins at the
Middlesex Filter Beds Weir
The Middlesex Filter Beds Weir, or Lea Bridge Road Weir, marks the start of the Hackney Cut, an artificial channel of the River Lee Navigation built in 1770, in the London Borough of Hackney
The London Borough of Hackney ( ) is a London ...
, below
Lea Bridge, and is situated in the (modern)
London Borough of Hackney
The London Borough of Hackney ( ) is a London boroughs, London borough in Inner London, England. The historical and administrative heart of Hackney is Mare Street, which lies north-east of Charing Cross. The borough is named after Hackney, Lond ...
. When built it contained two
pound locks and a half-lock, but was rebuilt to handle larger barges in the 1850s, and now only
Old Ford Lock, which is actually a duplicated pair, remains.
History
The
River Lea
The River Lea ( ) is in the East of England and Greater London. It originates in Bedfordshire, in the Chiltern Hills, and flows southeast through Hertfordshire, along the Essex border and into Greater London, to meet the River Thames at Bow Cr ...
(or Lee) has a long history of use for navigation, with records indicating that the Abbot of Waltham was authorised to make improvements in 1190, and evidence for tidal gates at Bow from the reign of
King Edward I
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots (Latin: Malleus Scotorum), was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 ...
, when Henry de Bedyk, the prior at Halliwell Priory and owner of the nearby tide mills, erected a structure some time before 1307.
River levels were managed by
flash lock
A flash lock is a type of lock (water transport), lock for river or canal transport.
Early locks were designed with a single gate, known as a flash lock or staunch lock. The earliest European references to what were clearly flash locks were in ...
s or sluices, and as the volumes of traffic using the river increased, there was friction between the bargees and the millers, since use of a flash lock affected the head of water available at the adjacent mill. In 1765, the commissioners responsible for the river asked the engineer
John Smeaton
John Smeaton (8 June 1724 – 28 October 1792) was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent scholar, who introduced various ...
to survey the river and make recommendations for its improvement.
Smeaton produced his report in September 1766, in which he recommended that the flash locks should be replaced by
pound locks with two sets of gates, and that a number of new cuts should be built, including what became known as the Hackney Cut from Lea Bridge to Old Ford. The commissioners advertised in the ''London Gazette'' and other newspapers that they wanted to borrow £35,000 to finance the improvements, to which there was a huge response. Some £161,500 was offered, and subscribers had to be picked by a ballot. Work on the whole scheme progressed quickly, and the contract for the Hackney Cut was awarded to Jeremiah Ilsley on 18 January 1768. He was probably acting as a public works contractor, since he also had contracts for the Waltham Cut and part of the
Limehouse Cut, and so must have been managing a large labour force. He was to be paid 3 old pence (3d, 1.25p) per yard for the Hackney Cut, considerably less than the rate for the Limehouse Cut, which was 7d, and was given four months in which to complete the excavations.
Contracts for the construction of the locks were separate to the excavation, and the work on the two locks of the Hackney Cut was given to Henry Holland, a bricklayer from Piccadilly, on 23 April 1768. Despite tight schedules, the work seems to have been completed on time, and the Hackney Cut opened for traffic on 7 August 1769. At the northern end of the cut, the river flowed to the east, through a weir now known as Middlesex Filter Beds Weir. Beside it was Hackney Waterworks Lock, the third pound lock to be built on the Navigation in 1762. It was tidal, as the course of the Old River Lee was affected by tides from the Thames up to this point. The new cut was protected by Lea Bridge Half Lock, a single set of gates just below the junction. Homerton Lock, which was also known as Hackney Brick Cistern Lock, was about one-third of the way along the cut, while Old Ford Lock was located just above where the cut rejoined the old course of the river. The lock was semi-tidal, as the level on this section of the river was maintained by Bow tidal gates, but spring tides often flowed over the top of the gates and the locks which supplemented them after 1850, continuing to do so until the installation of extra flood walls and higher flood gates in 2000.
Development
An Act of Parliament obtained in 1850 paved the way for a major upgrade of the navigation. Among other things, it removed the restriction on the maximum load that could be carried by barges. This had been set at 40 tons in 1805, but with the clause removed, the navigation between the Thames and Tottenham was gradually rebuilt to take 100-ton barges.
Lea Bridge Lock remained in operation until 1853, when it was demolished. It was replaced by Pond Lane Lock, which was built in 1865 at Cow Bridge, about halfway between Lea Bridge and Homerton Lock. Seven years later, the navigation was rebuilt so that it was level from Tottenham to Old Ford, and the lock was then redundant, but was retained to help protect the navigation below it in times of flood. It was removed in 1931, when it was superseded by a new structure with vertical guillotine gates, located a little further upstream. These became redundant with the construction of the
Thames Barrier, and the gates were removed in 1987. Homerton lock was removed in the 1860s, following dredging of the river down to Old Ford.
Old Ford Lock was rebuilt as a pair of locks on a different alignment in 1856, and the junction with the old course of the River Lee was reworked to remove an awkward bend. They were known as the small lock and the large lock, one being wide and the other being wide. Both were rebuilt with a width of in 1935, but retained their names, the small lock being shallower than the large lock. Further rebuilding had to take place during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
after they were hit by a bomb on 19 October 1940, which also destroyed the lock houses. New lock houses were built in 1946, and were sold in the 1990s, after which they were used as the location for the television programme "
The Big Breakfast
''The Big Breakfast'' is a British breakfast light entertainment television programme that was broadcast on Channel 4 from 1992 to 2002, and as a revival from 2021 to 2022. The show had various presenters, starting with Chris Evans (presenter), ...
".
From 1829, water was abstracted at Lea Bridge, from the natural watercourse, by the
East London Waterworks Company, to avoid the increasing pollution of the Navigation. The waterworks was located to the south of Old Ford Locks, and the company built a canal in 1830 which ran along the east bank of the Hackney Cut to transfer water from Lea Bridge for processing.
William Hoof, who had gained a reputation as a specialist tunnelling contractor, after working on Strood Tunnel for the
Thames and Medway Canal and
Harecastle Tunnel on the
Trent and Mersey Canal
The Trent and Mersey Canal is a canal in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire in north-central England. It is a "narrow canal" for the vast majority of its length, but at the extremities to the east of Burton upon Trent and north of Middl ...
, worked on the waterworks project from 1829 until 1834.
In 1824, George Duckett, the son of
Sir George Duckett, 1st Baronet who had owned the
Stort Navigation, obtained an Act of Parliament to link the Hackney Cut to the
Regents Canal, which he hoped would result in much of the trade which passed onto the Thames from the Lee Navigation being re-routed to Regents Canal Dock. The
Hertford Union Canal, which was long, included three locks, and joined the cut a short distance above Old Ford Locks, opened in 1830 but failed to attract much traffic, due to the level of tolls.
Route
The Hackney Cut is long from Lea Bridge road bridge to Old Ford Locks. Excess water from the Navigation passes over the weir into the former natural channel of the
River Lea
The River Lea ( ) is in the East of England and Greater London. It originates in Bedfordshire, in the Chiltern Hills, and flows southeast through Hertfordshire, along the Essex border and into Greater London, to meet the River Thames at Bow Cr ...
that passes in a large meander to the east of the modern water course, forming the boundary with the
London Borough of Waltham Forest
The London Borough of Waltham Forest () is an Outer London, outer London boroughs, London borough formed in 1965 from the merger of the municipal boroughs of Municipal Borough of Leyton, Leyton, Municipal Borough of Walthamstow, Walthamstow an ...
. The old course used to rejoin the Navigation below
Old Ford Lock, but this route was modified by the construction of
Carpenter's Road Lock on the
Bow Back Rivers
Bow Back Rivers or Stratford Back Rivers is a complex of waterways between Bow, London, Bow and Stratford, London, Stratford in east London, England, which connect the River Lea to the River Thames. Starting in the twelfth century, works were ca ...
in 1930.
Prescott Channel was built at the same time to provide a bypass around the tide mill at
Three Mills, allowing the water to reach
Bow Creek and the River Thames.
A
lock
Lock(s) or Locked may refer to:
Common meanings
*Lock and key, a mechanical device used to secure items of importance
*Lock (water navigation), a device for boats to transit between different levels of water, as in a canal
Arts and entertainme ...
was built in the Prescott Channel in 2009.
References
Bibliography
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{{coord, 51.5501, -0.0287, type:landmark_region:GB-HCK, display=title
Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Hackney
Geography of the London Borough of Hackney
Lee Navigation
Canals opened in 1769