Mile End Lock - Regent's Canal, London, UK - Waterway Locks, Planes and Lifts on Waymarking.com

The lock, at this point on the canal, has a drop of eight feet when heading south to Limehouse Basin. For a vessel to navigate from Little Venice to Limehouse Basin there are various restrictions on size but none are imposed by this lock.

The Inland Waterways website (visit link) lists the restrictions:

Length	74' 0" (22.56 metres) - Hampstead Road Lock (No 1)
Beam	14' 6" (14.42 metres) - Hawley Lock (No 2)
Headroom	9' 2" (2.79 metres) - Mile End Road Bridge
Draught	4' 10" (1.48 metres) - cill of Johnsons Lock (No 10)

The same page also tells a little of the canal:

"The Regent’s Canal runs from the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal at Little Venice to Limehouse Basin, which joins on to the Tidal Thames and Limehouse Cut.  It is 8.6 miles (13.8 km) long and has 13 locks.  The Regent's Canal is joined by the Hertford Union Canal between Locks 8 (Old Ford) and 9 (Mile End).  The Hertford Union Canal is 1.3 miles (2 km) long, has 3 locks and joins to River Lee Navigation just above Old Ford Locks. "

This PDF file also gives some historical background to the canal and locks:

"Within Tower Hamlets the canal passes through five locks Old Ford Lock, Mile End Lock, Johnson’s Lock, Salmon Lane Lock and Commercial Road Lock. Like the other seven locks, they were built with two chambers to allow two-way working. But in most cases, the chamber furthest from the towpath has been converted to a weir.

Johnson’s Lock is the only lock in the Regent’s canal to have retained its central paddle gear; and its upper pound contain the Conservation Areas only two surviving horse ramps. When horses worked along the towpath towing barges, they occasionally fell in the canal and the horse ramps were used for leading them back up to the towpath. Associated with some of the locks are the lock cottages these are small scale two storey stock brick buildings with slate roofs in the main.

The surviving lock-keeper’s cottages at Salmon Lane and Mile End date from 1864. Each had an attached single-storey boiler house with a steam pump maintaining the water level in the pound above the locks. A new system for keeping parts of the Locks at this end of the canal supplied with water was introduced in 1898. A 3-foot diameter back-pumping pipe was laid from a new pumping station on the River Thames to the pound above Mile End Locks. The massive pipe is still seen crossing the canal by Commercial Road Bridge where it continues under the towpath to the Mile End pound. "

Waterway Name: Regent's Canal Connected Points: Little Venice & Limehouse Basin (for the River Thames) Type: Lock Date Opened: 01/01/1820 Elevation Difference (meters): 2.00 Site Status: Operational Web Site: [Web Link] Date Closed (if applicable): Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/06/2014 ntpayne visited it