Mile End Lock - Regent's Canal, London, UK
N 51° 31.514 W 000° 02.275
30U E 705471 N 5712394
Mile End Lock is one of thirteen locks on the Regent's Canal that runs from Little Venice, in the north west, to Limehouse Basin in the south east.
Waymark Code: WMEQHX
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/27/2012
Views: 6
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.
"