The lock, tonight
Wind slowly. The water sets its own pace.
- Chamber
- 3ft 6in
- Head
- 5ft 10in
- Paddles
- Shut
The placeWhere the Kelmer drops
The chamber is sixty-eight feet long and seven feet two inches wide, cut into the bank where the Kelmer leaves the plateau and drops nine feet four to the water meadows. The stone is local — a grey sandstone that goes black when wet, which is most of the year. Two sallows stood on the towpath side when the navvies arrived. One of them is still there, leaning over the lower gates as if to check the level.
There is nothing else here. The road stopped coming in 1931 and the pub in the next village is a forty-minute walk along the cut. What you get instead is the sound of the paddles, which is the sound of a great deal of water being persuaded to go somewhere it did not intend, and the lamp on the coping, which the keeper lights by hand.
Boats still come. Three or four a week in summer, fewer in the dark months. They arrive to find the chamber at whatever level the last boat left it, and the lamp already burning.
KeepingTwo hundred and thirty years, more or less
- 1794
Chamber cut and gates hung. The navigation opens between Ashcombe wharf and the tidal basin at Wend.
- 1841
The cottage is built for a resident keeper, and a lamp bracket set into the coping on the lower side. The company pays for oil; the keeper supplies the match.
- 1889
Balance beams replaced after a laden barge misjudges the upper gates in fog. The scar in the top course of stone is still visible from the towpath.
- 1931
The last coal barge passes down. The company is wound up the following spring. The Hobbes family, who had kept the lock since 1876, stay on without pay.
- 1962
Gates re-hung in green oak by Wm. Hobbes and two sons over one dry August. Eleven tons a pair. They have not been off since.
- Tonight
Upper pound standing at nine feet four. Lamp lit at dusk. Chamber where you leave it.
Pinned inside the cottage doorFor anyone coming through after dark
You will find the windlass on the hook. Wind the paddle a quarter at a time and wait for the boil to settle before you wind again — the water knows what to do, you are only giving it permission.
Do not open both ends. It has been tried.
When you are through, drop the paddles, shut the gates behind you, and leave the lamp. It goes out on its own around four.
— M. Hobbes, keeper