Restoration Lock restoration

.     By the mid 1960s all 29 locks on the canal had ceased to work. The gates were rotting, the brickwork was deteriorating and the chambers were knee deep in mud, vegetation and rubbish. Ash Lock, the only lock in Hampshire, was restored in 1974 by Hampshire County Council canal rangers and fitted with lock gates built by volunteers. Derelict lock on the Deepcut flight in the 1960s     Work on the flight of 14 locks at Deepcut started in 1975 and took ten years to complete. They were restored by volunteers and teams of unemployed school leavers recruited under Manpower Services Commission (MSC) training schemes.     The Canal Society was granted more than £75,000 over a period of seven years from 1977. Most of the 72ft by 14ft chambers underwent major renovation work involving the demolition and subseqent rebuilding of lock walls, replacement of top and bottom cills, wing walls, new quoins, ground paddle culverts and the construction of by-pass weirs which previously did not exist. Surrey County Council supplied the materials and plant for both MSC workers and voluntary working parties. In addition to Canal Society members, a number of visiting groups contributed on a regular basis. One weekend in October 1977, 'Deepcut Dig' was held which attracted 600 volunteers from all parts of the country. MSC teams and Community Programme workers, and subsequently the Canal Society's own 4-man full time team, all led by Frank Jones, restored the three locks at Brookwood.

Woodham, Lock 3 The five locks at St John's and the six at Woodham were restored entirely by voluntary workers organised by Canal Society working party leaders. A major input was made by four annual summer work camps which engaged 50 or more volunteers. Lock 1 was restored by volunteer members of the Guildford and Reading branch of the IWA (Inland Waterways Association).     110 new gates, including a pair for the adjacent dry dock, were built by MSC workers and volunteers under the direction of Frank Jones in the Deepcut workshop which had been converted from a disused army open-air swimming pool.     Constructing lock gates in the workshop at Deepcut. Oak to build the frames came from Surrey CC's sawmills near Dorking.     The Canal Society's full time team carried out the installation of the new lock gates. Most locks had a footbridge put in by the lower gates and by-pass channels built to take excess water around the locks. New gates and balance beams, Lock 1   NEXT - Bridges BACK

Last updated January 2006; orig: July 2001